US space agency NASA has released a series of new images captured by its extraordinary Hubble Space Telescope to celebrate its 25th anniversary of launch into low Earth orbit.
The incredible images have been wowing the amateur astronomers, scientists and laypeople ever since its launch 25 years ago.
NASA has named the compiled images as “Pillars of Creation”. Some of the first images captured by Hubble in the year 1995 include three giant columns of interstellar gas and dust located in the Eagle Nebula that is about 7,000 light-years away.
Paul Scowen, an astronomy researcher at Arizona State University who led the Eagle Nebula exploration, said, “We laid the pictures out on the table, and we were just gushing because of all the incredible detail that we were seeing for the very first time.”
The new photos of the phenomenon were caught by a new and improved Hubble last year. In order to keep the telescope cope with the changing spatial conditions, it is upgraded with new instruments in every few years.
The Hubble telescope is a joint operation of US space agency NASA and the European Space Agency. The Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland manages all its missions.
The discovery of phenomena like Eagle Nebula is the best method to peer back in time and also observe which environment gave birth to our own sun, Scowen said.
Eagle Nebula is an unstable star-forming region having full of light, energy and cosmic matter.
Along with the sharing of images online, NASA will also formally present the creative photographs at the meeting of American Astronomical Society scheduled for this week in Seattle.
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