The Hubble Space Telescope Structural Dynamic Test Vehicle serves as the backdrop during the 25th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope Awards Ceremony as John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate and veteran of three Hubble servicing missions speaks, Friday, April 24, 2015 at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit by STS-31 on April 24, 1990.
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Credit: NASA/Joel Howsky
Image Number: 201504240016HQ
Date: April 24, 2015
Tags: DC Hubble 25th Anniversary Hubble Space Telescope 25th Anniversary John Grunsfeld Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Washington
This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light. These stars reside in a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus, mountains, and valleys that are reminiscent of the Grand Canyon.
The Orion Nebula is a picture book of star formation, from the massive, young stars that are shaping the nebula to the pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. The bright central region is the home of the four heftiest stars in the nebula. The stars are called the Trapezium because they are arranged in a trapezoid pattern. Ultraviolet light unleashed by these stars is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars. Located near the Trapezium stars are stars still young enough to have disks of material encircling them. These disks are called protoplanetary disks or "proplyds" and are too small to see clearly in this image. The disks are the building blocks of solar systems.
The bright glow at upper left is from M43, a small region being shaped by a massive, young star's ultraviolet light. Astronomers call the region a miniature Orion Nebula because only one star is sculpting the landscape. The Orion Nebula has four such stars. Next to M43 are dense, dark pillars of dust and gas that point toward the Trapezium. These pillars are resisting erosion from the Trapezium's intense ultraviolet light. The glowing region on the right reveals arcs and bubbles formed when stellar winds — streams of charged particles ejected from the Trapezium stars — collide with material.
The faint red stars near the bottom are the myriad brown dwarfs that Hubble spied for the first time in the nebula in visible light. Sometimes called "failed stars," brown dwarfs are cool objects that are too small to be ordinary stars because they cannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. The dark red column, below, left, shows an illuminated edge of the cavity wall.
The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Astronomers used 520 Hubble images, taken in five colors, to make this picture. They also added ground-based photos to fill out the nebula. The ACS mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full moon.
The Orion observations were taken between 2004 and 2005.
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Credit: NASA, ESA, Massimo Robberto (STScI, ESA), Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team
Release Date: January 11, 2006
Tags: Orion Nebula M42 NGC 1976 Hubble Space Telescope
Full Description:The Space Shuttle Columbia on Pad 39A during the picture-perfect ascent of sister ship Discovery after lift off of STS-31. This was the first time since January 1986 that there was a Shuttle on each pad, which are separated by 1.6 miles. Discovery, carrying a five-member crew and the Hubble Space Telescope, lifted off at 8:34 a.m. EDT, April 24. Columbia, with its Astro-1 observatory, was scheduled for launch in May.
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Credit: NASA
Image Number: SPD-GRIN-GPN-2000-00 0684
Date: April 24, 1990
Tags: Kennedy Space Center Columbia Discovery STS-31 Hubble Space Telescope Launch
Test inflation of a PAGEOS satellite in a blimp hangar at Weeksville, North Carolina.
The Pageos (Passive Geodetic Earth-Orbiting Satellite) satellite inflated in the Weeksville blimp hangar. Langley managed the Pageos project. The satellite was virtually identical to Echo 1. Pageos was used by the U.S. Coastal and Geodetic Survey to determine the precise location of the earth's continents.
Image Number: L-1965-06541
Date Taken: August 5, 1965
Tags: Langley PAGEOS Satellite balloon
In this photo, the Apollo 16 Command and Service Module (CSM) "Casper" approaches the Lunar Module (LM). The two spacecraft were about to make their final rendezvous of the mission, on April 23, 1972. Astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr., aboard the LM, were returning to the CSM in lunar orbit after three successful days on the lunar surface. Astronaut Thomas K. Mattingly II was in the CSM.
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Credit: NASA
Image Number: AS16-113-18282
Date: April 23, 1972
Tags: Apollo 16 CSM Casper Charles Duke Command Module John Young LM Lunar Module Service Module Thomas Mattingly