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The Hubble Space Telescope, for its 31st birthday, has captured a glimpse of an incredible star,
one of the brightest stars in our galaxy. This giant Luminous Blue Variable star, known as AG Carinae,
is huge! 70 times more massive than our Sun and shining with the brilliance of a million Suns.
The star is surrounded by a glowing halo of gas and dust. This vast structure was created
from giant eruptions from the star about 10,000 years ago, creating an expanding shell that
is now nearly 5 light-years across, similar to the distance from our Sun to its nearest
neighbor star. The outbursts expelled the star’s outer layers, blowing out material
nearly 10 times the mass of our Sun.
The nebula around the star from these ancient eruptions is being impacted by a powerful
wind of charged particles flowing out from the star at a million kilometers per hour,
10 times faster than the nebula itself is expanding. As this outflowing gas slams into the slower
moving outer nebula, it creates a snowplow effect, clearing a cavity around the star,
and sculpting structures in the nebula.
Searing radiation from the star is lighting up the nebula, as seen by Hubble in both visible
light and in the ultraviolet light that can only be seen from space. Red colors indicate
glowing hydrogen gas laced with nitrogen gas; at the upper left in the image, the diffuse
red glow shows a region where the stellar wind has broken through a tenuous region of
material and swept it into space. Blue features, shaped like tadpoles and bubbles, are dust
clumps shaped by the stellar wind and illuminated by the star’s reflected light.
This incredible image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows how even one star can be incredibly
beautiful and powerful as it impacts its surrounding environment.
Since Hubble orbits above the Earth’s atmosphere, it can give us a clear, detailed view of this
kind of awe-inspiring beauty and activity in the universe.
For the past 31 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed the way we think of space and
our place in the cosmos. Hubble has revealed an incredible diversity of stars, and gives
us pristine views into beautiful interstellar nebulas, where new stars and their surrounding
disks of dust and planets continue to form.
Looking even deeper into space, Hubble makes it possible for us to see across billions
of light-years, revealing ancient, adolescent galaxies that we can compare with our own
Milky Way. Hubble is even refining our understanding of the age of the universe and its rate of
expansion. It sees the telltale effects of mysterious black holes, dark matter,
and dark energy over time.
In the past year alone, Hubble revealed a large concentration of small black holes nestled
within the heart of a globular cluster of stars. It rewound the clock to calculate the
age and site of a supernova blast. It also detected a possible new second atmosphere
formed on a distant exoplanet. And closer to home, Hubble spotted a comet lurking near
Jupiter and its Trojan asteroids. These are just a handful of Hubble’s recent discoveries.
Hubble remains in excellent technical health and is expected to continue its exploration
of the universe for years to come. From 1993 to 2009, there were five astronaut servicing
missions for repairs and upgrades of the telescope. These, along with an ongoing crew of attentive
experts on the ground, are keeping the telescope today at the peak of its scientific capabilities.
You can find out more about the Hubble Space Telescope at the website: nasa.gov/hubble
and on social media @NASAHubble.
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