Stunning image released to mark Hubble's 100,000th orbit
The Tarantula nebula about 170,000 light years away from Earth
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Tuesday, 12, Aug 2008 09:21
A stunning image of star birth and renewal taken by the Hubble space telescope has been released by Nasa to mark its 100,000th orbit.
The telescope, which has spent 18 years peering into the far reaches of the universe, looked at a small area known as the Tarantula nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074.
This lies about 170,000 light years away from Earth and is one of the most active star-forming regions in Earth's local group of galaxies.
The image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation" and gaseous filaments glowing under ultraviolet radiation.
The seahorse-shaped pillar in the lower right section of the image is about 20 light years long, roughly four times the distance between the Sun and its nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
"[On Monday] the greatest scientific instrument since Galileo's telescope has reached another great milestone - its 100,000th orbit around the Earth," said Senator Barbara Mikulski, chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds Nasa.
"Hubble has given us amazing insight into the origins of our universe, and I'm so proud of the men and women at Goddard and the Space Telescope Science Institute for their contributions and dedication to these great discoveries."
A servicing mission is due to take place in October to provide Hubble with new scientific instruments, new batteries and new gyroscopes.