Best ever photo of deep space? Hubble says 'yes'
Meteorologist/Science Writer
Friday, April 24, 2015, 7:00 AM - In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, a contest was held - a showdown between some of the best of the best that the telescope has captured over the years - to determine which would come out on top as the ultimate image that Hubble has ever given us.
The video, above, is a 3D simulation, using real imagery and data about the relative distances and positions of all the parts of the object in the view. However, it is essentially the equivalent of using flat paper cutouts to construct a 3D paper diorama of a piece of scenery (just far more complex).
For the real Hubble view of this celestial fireworks show, scroll down:
The Westerlund 2 star cluster - Hubble’s 25th anniversary image (CLICK TO ENLARGE). Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team
According to NASA:
The sparkling centerpiece of Hubble’s anniversary fireworks is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2, named for Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund who discovered the grouping in the 1960s. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina.
The giant star cluster is about 2 million years old and contains some of our galaxy’s hottest, brightest and most massive stars. Some of its heftiest stars unleash torrents of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds of charged particles etching into the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud. The nebula reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges and valleys. The pillars, composed of dense gas and thought to be incubators for new stars, are a few light-years tall and point to the central star cluster. Other dense regions surround the pillars, including reddish-brown filaments of gas and dust.
The brilliant stars sculpt the gaseous terrain of the nebula and help create a successive generation of baby stars. When the stellar winds hit dense walls of gas, the shockwaves may spark a new torrent of star birth along the wall of the cavity. The red dots scattered throughout the landscape are a rich population of newly-forming stars still wrapped in their gas-and-dust cocoons. These tiny, faint stars are between 1 million and 2 million years old - relatively young stars - that have not yet ignited the hydrogen in their cores. The brilliant blue stars seen throughout the image are mostly foreground stars.
To capture this image, Hubble’s near-infrared Wide Field Camera 3 pierced through the dusty veil shrouding the stellar nursery, giving astronomers a clear view of the nebula and the dense concentration of stars in the central cluster. The cluster measures between 6 and 13 light-years across.
"Hubble has completely transformed our view of the universe, revealing the true beauty and richness of the cosmos" John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a NASA press release. "This vista of starry fireworks and glowing gas is a fitting image for our celebration of 25 years of amazing Hubble science."
WATCH BELOW: Curious about what Westerlund 2 beat out to become the best. See the other contenders in the video below.
