Hubble Space Telescope Offers A Close Look At Carina Nebula

The legendary Hubble Space Telescope recently turned its lenses towards a scene previously captured by its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb's image showed the Carina Nebula, a striking structure of gas and dust located in a region of our galaxy known as the Carina-Sagittarius arm. Recently, Hubble also captured the amazing nebula.

Webb's version of Carina was captured in infrared wavelength, while Hubble image seems more pastel. Although the latter operates primarily in visible light, it used its infrared capabilities to view past the nebula's dust and snap its structure.

Hubble Visits Carina Again

"It is an emission nebula, meaning that the intense radiation from its stars ionizes the gas and causes it to glow," Hubble's team explained. "That gas is widely and thinly spread out over a large area, earning it the added designation of a diffuse nebula. Carina is a dynamic area of the sky with bursts of star formation occurring alongside star death. As stars form and produce ultraviolet radiation, their stellar winds disperse the gas and dust around them, sometimes forming dark, dusty cloaks and sometimes creating empty patches for the stars to become visible."

It isn't Hubble's first outing capturing Carina nebula. The telescope captured it for the first time in 2007 or another in 2010. Both images showed a different area of the nebula, merging wavelengths from infrared, UV, and visible light to bring out additional features of the region, such as stars, dust, and gas.

The nebula spans 300 light-years across, with several areas showing scientifically interesting regions, including the ones where stars are formed.

Hubble Snaps Lagoon Nebula

The team working with the Hubble Space Telescope recently shared a breathtaking image of the cluster NGC 6530. It is a cluster of thousands of stars covered in dust and is part of the massive and magnificent Lagoon Nebula.

The Lagoon nebula is 4350 light-years away from Earth and is located in the constellation of Sagittarius. The cluster can be seen in a smoke-like shape, formed due to interstellar dust and gas, which drives star formation in the region.