Stunning NASA image snapped by Hubble reveals a ‘blobby jellyfish’ in the Orion constellation made from vast clouds of gas belched out by a dying star
- NASA’s world-famous observatory satellite found the luminous star, last week
- Officially known as NGC 2022, the star is a ‘red giant’ and is bigger than our sun
- This luminous type of object is called, somewhat confusingly, a planetary nebula
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a ‘blobby jellyfish’ star in deep space.
NASA’s observatory satellite found the luminous star last week during a survey of the Orion constellation.
Officially known as NGC 2022, the luminous orb is actually a vast collection of gas in space, cast off by an ageing star.
In fact, scientists describe it as a ‘red giant’ that’s bigger than the sun.
Portrait of star’s gaseous glow: The site is a vast orb of gas in space, cast off by an ageing star
The core glows a bright yellow-orange while the layers of gas emanating from it are picked up in hues of pink and purple by Hubble.
The image has been titled the ‘Inky Abyss’ and a star is visible in the orb’s centre, shining brightly through the gases it formerly held onto for most of its stellar life.
When stars like the sun grow advanced in age, they expand and glow red.
These so-called red giants then begin to lose their outer layers of material into space.
More than half of such a star’s mass can be shed in this manner, forming a shell of surrounding gas.
‘This rounded object, named NGC 2022, is certainly no alga or tiny, blobby jellyfish,’ Hubble researchers wrote in a blog post.
‘Instead, it is a vast orb of gas in space, cast off by an ageing star. The star is visible in the orb’s centre, shining through the gases it formerly held onto for most of its stellar life.’
Home: Orion is one of the most easily recognisable constellations in the world and visible in Britain from November to February
At the same time, the star’s core shrinks and grows hotter, emitting ultraviolet light that causes the expelled gases to glow.
This type of object is called, somewhat confusingly, a planetary nebula, though it has nothing to do with planets.
The name derives from the rounded, planet-like appearance of these objects in early telescopes.
WHAT IS THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE?
The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, via the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
It is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889.
He is arguably most famous for discovering that the universe is expanding and the rate at which is does so – now coined the Hubble constant.
The Hubble telescope is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889 (pictured)
Hubble has made more than 1.3 million observations since its mission began in 1990 and helped publish more than 15,000 scientific papers.
It orbits Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude.
Hubble has the pointing accuracy of .007 arc seconds, which is like being able to shine a laser beam focused on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s head on a dime roughly 200 miles (320km) away.
The Hubble telescope is named after Edwin Hubble who was responsible for coming up with the Hubble constant and is one of the greatest astronomers of all-time
Hubble’s primary mirror is 2.4 meters (7 feet, 10.5 inches) across and in total is 13.3 meters (43.5 feet) long – the length of a large school bus.
Hubble’s launch and deployment in April 1990 marked the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo’s telescope.
Thanks to five servicing missions and more than 25 years of operation, our view of the universe and our place within it has never been the same.