On August eleventh this year NASA Hubble telescope completed one hundred thousand orbits around the planet and in doing so it has provided astronomers with eighteen long years of excellent service. To commemorate this momentous occasion the NASA Hubble telescope was aimed at an exciting region of the universe where celestial renewal and births are taking place.
Star Cluster NGC 2074
The NASA Hubble telescope has been able to provide excellent pictures of tiny portions of the nebula that is located close to a star cluster known as NGC 2074. This region is in fact characterized by firestorms where absolutely raw stellar creations take place which is suspected to have been caused by exploding supernovas that may have exploded close to this cluster of stars.
The distance to this region that was captured by the NASA Hubble telescope is believed to be approximately one hundred and seventy thousand light years from the Tarantula nebula that in turn is believed to be among the most active of all star forming areas in our local galaxy group.
Most of the pictures taken by the NASA Hubble telescope owe their clarity to the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The next time that astronauts visit the NASA Hubble telescope they will be performing some running repairs meant to improve the armor of this dependable space telescope. It is expected that the astronauts will reenergize as well as revamp the telescope before the NASA Hubble telescope is finally decommissioned. Included in the repairs is the installation of a New Outer Blanket Layer.
Among its many wondrous achievements, the NASA Hubble telescope has been able to peer into landscapes that seem to have been drawn from pure fantasy where towering towers of dust can be seen rising high above – filled with gas – forming molecular clouds in the shape of seahorse shapes.
Scientists have used the images obtained from the NASA Hubble telescope to positively identify the region as being in what is known as the Large Magellanic Cloud that is a Milky Way galaxy satellite.
The Edwin Hubble telescope too has proved to be an amazing instrument that helped Edwin Hubble realizes that if a galaxy lies further away from Earth, it will appear to move away that much faster. This in turn has led to the notion that the universe was expanding and it also enabled astronomers to form the theory known as Big Bang Theory.
Unfortunately, the NASA Hubble telescope is going to end its life in another five years; however, in the eighteen years of service it has proved to be a real boon for astronomers.