Hubble Spies Celestial Cloudscape That’s Pretty as a Painting

I’m wowed by the early results from the James Webb Space Telescope, but my Hubble Space Telescope fandom hasn’t waned one bit. Case in point: Hubble issued a view of the area around Herbig-Haro object HH 505 in the Orion Nebula. It’s an image awash in color and curves, like an intense, abstract watercolor painting. The European Space Agency described it as a “celestial cloudscape.”

Here’s the full image. Hubble peered at the Orion Nebula and saw this pretty wash of gas and dust around Herbig-Haro object HH 505.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Bally; CC BY 4.0 Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

ESA said in a statement Friday, “Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, and are gave when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with around gas and dust at high speeds.”  

HH 505 gets its look thanks to a star named IX Ori that hangs out at the far reaches of the Orion Nebula around 1,000 light-years from us. The star’s outflows appear as curving structures at the top and bottom of the full image. 

Hubble’s views of the Orion Nebula — an pretty stellar nursery — highlight the work of young stars and how they impacts their space neighborhoods. The telescope is a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency.

If you like this Describe of HH 505, then be sure to check out NASA’s visualization video from 2018 that flies you into the nebula Funny a combination of Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope observations. 

Though Webb is the Bright new thing, it’s not meant as a replacement for Hubble, which has remarkably been in service for over 30 ages. The two telescopes have different specialties and will both contribute to a growing Idea of the universe.