To celebrate the 34th anniversary of the launch of the legendary NASA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers photographed the Little Dumbbell Nebula on April 24, 1990. Also known as Messier 76, M76 or NGC 650/651, this system consists of an edge-on ring as a central band structure and two lobes at each ring opening.

The red giant star belched out a ring of gas and dust before burning up. The ring was probably formed by the influence of a double companion star. This spilled material formed a thick disk of dust and gas along the companion’s orbital plane. The hypothetical companion star is not visible in the Hubble image, so it may have later been swallowed by the central star. The disc would be forensic evidence of this stellar cannibalism.

The Photogenic Nebula is a favorite target of amateur astronomers. Professional astronomers first took a spectrum in 1891 showing that this was a nebula and not a galaxy or star cluster. They suggested that M76 might appear like a donut-shaped ring nebula (M57) when viewed from the side.

Hubble celebrates 34 years by looking at the Little Dumbbell Nebula

Celebrating the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA/ESA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers captured a photo of the Little Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Messier 76, M76, or NGC 650/651) on April 24 at 3,400 angle of light. far. Years in the circumpolar constellation Perseus. The Photogenic Nebula is a favorite target of amateur astronomers.

M76 is classified as a planetary nebula, an expanding envelope of glowing gas ejected from a dying red giant star. Eventually the star collapses into a super dense and hot white dwarf. Planetary nebulae are not related to planets, but are so named because astronomers using low-power telescopes in the 1700s thought such objects resembled a planet.

M76 consists of a ring seen from the edge as the central core structure and two leaves located in both ring holes. The star belched out a ring of gas and dust before burning up. The ring was probably formed by the impact of a star that was once a binary companion star. This spilled material formed a thick disk of dust and gas along the companion’s orbital plane. The hypothetical companion star is not visible in the Hubble image, so it may have later been swallowed by the central star. The disk would be forensic evidence of this stellar cannibalism.

The primary star collapses to form a white dwarf. It is one of the hottest known stellar remnants, with a temperature of 120,000 degrees Celsius, 24 times higher than the surface temperature of our Sun. The sizzling white dwarf can be seen as a dot at the center of the nebula. The star seen in the projection below is not part of the nebula.

Two particles of hot gas pushed by the disk escape from the upper and lower parts of the “belt” along the star’s rotation axis perpendicular to the disk. They are propelled by a tornado of material from a dying star hurtling through space at two million miles per hour. That’s enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in just over seven minutes! This turbulent “stellar wind” impinges on cooler, slower-moving gas ejected from the star early in its life, when it was a red giant. The intense ultraviolet radiation of the superhot star causes the gases to glow. The red color is from nitrogen and the blue color is from oxygen.

Considering that our solar system is 4.6 billion years old, the entire nebula is a point in cosmological time. It will disappear in about 15,000 years.

Hubble’s record scientific results

Hubble has made 1.6 million observations of more than 53,000 astronomical objects since its launch in 1990. Today, the Mikulsky Space Telescope Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, holds 184 terabytes of processed data ready for scientific use by astronomers worldwide for research and analysis. The European Public Data Mirror is hosted by ESA’s European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) in the European Hubble Space Telescope (eHST) Science Archive.

Since 1990, 44,000 scientific papers on Hubble observations have been published. This includes 1,056 articles published in 2023, 409 of which are led by authors from ESA member states. Demand for Hubble is so high that there is currently six times more demand.

In science operations last year, Hubble made new discoveries, including the detection of water in the atmosphere of the smallest exoplanet to date, the observation of a strange cosmic explosion far from any large galaxy, the observation of bars in the rings of stars. I can’t see Saturn and the unlikely home of the most distant and powerful fast radio emission ever. Hubble’s investigation of asteroid Dimorphos, the object of a deliberate collision of a NASA spacecraft to alter its orbit in September 2022, continued with the discovery of rocks released during the impact.

Hubble also continues to provide spectacular images of celestial objects including spiral galaxies, globular clusters, and star-forming nebulae. The newly formed star became the source of the cosmic light show. The Hubble image was also combined with infrared observations from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to create the MACS 0416 image of the galaxy cluster, one of the most complete images of the universe ever.

Many of Hubble’s discoveries, such as supermassive black holes, exoplanet atmospheres, gravitational lensing by dark matter, the existence of dark energy, and the abundance of planet formation among stars, were not predicted before launch. Hubble will continue research in these areas and will also use its unique ultraviolet light capacity to study things like solar system events, supernovae, the composition of exoplanet atmospheres, and the dynamic radiation of galaxies. Hubble research continues to benefit from long-term observations of Solar System objects, variable star events, and other exotic astrophysical processes in space.

The performance capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope are designed to be a unique complement to Hubble, not a replacement. Future Hubble studies will also take advantage of the opportunity to interact with Webb, which observes the universe in infrared light. Combined, the additional wavelength coverage from the two space telescopes expands groundbreaking research in areas such as protoplanetary disks, exoplanet composition, extreme supernovae, galactic nuclei, and the chemistry of the distant universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make groundbreaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe.