To mark the Hubble Space Telescope’s 26th birthday, NASA has released a spectacular video of a flight through a nebula 7,100 light years away.
The Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635, was created as a young, hot star blows its gases into space.
The star is about 45 times more massive than our own sun. Gas on the star gets super-heated and escapes along its stellar wind (like our solar wind), travelling at a mind-boggling 6.5 million km/h. The interstellar gas gets swept up by the outflow of gas, forming the outer edge of the bubble.
The host star lies in the 10 o’clock position in the bubble.
As for the different colours, they are due to different gases and varying temperatures. Oxygen emits blue light, while the cooler pillars seen are yellow from the combination of hydrogen and nitrogen.
The Bubble Nebula was discovered in 1787 by renowned British astronomer William Herschel. The star is extremely bright and massive, but is short-lived. It’s about four million years old and has already lost most of its hydrogen. In about 10 to 20 million years, it will likely explode as a fantastic supernova.
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