The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 35th birthday this month - and to celebrate, it has released a stunning new image taken of a section of the Milky Way.
Hubble has taken photos of NGC 346 before - a young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. But the new image includes new data and is the first to combine Hubble observations made at infrared, optical, and ultraviolet wavelengths into an intricately detailed view of this "vibrant star-forming factory" that lies some 200,000 light-years away.
"NGC 346 is home to more than 2500 newborn stars", we are told. "The cluster’s most massive stars, which are many times more massive than our Sun, blaze with an intense blue light in this image. The glowing pink nebula and snakelike dark clouds are sculpted by the luminous stars in the cluster"
"Hubble’s exquisite sensitivity and resolution were instrumental in uncovering the secrets of NGC 346’s star formation. Using two sets of observations taken 11 years apart, researchers traced the motions of NGC 346’s stars, revealing them to be spiraling in toward the centre of the cluster. This spiralling motion arises from a stream of gas from the outside of the cluster that fuels star formation in the centre of the turbulent cloud".
A joint venture between US and European space agencies NASA and ESA, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched from the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.
