Hubble Celebrates 29th Anniversary with Unparalleled View of South Crab Nebula

heic1907 – Photo Release

April 18, 2019

This incredible image of the hourglass-shaped Southern Crab Nebula was taken to mark the 29th anniversary of the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula, created by a binary star system, is one of the many objects that Hubble has debunked throughout his productive life. This new image adds to our understanding of the nebula and demonstrates the continuous capabilities of the telescope.

On April 24, 1990, the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope was launched on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Since then, he has revolutionized the way astronomers and the general public view the Universe. The images that it provides are spectacular both from a scientific point of view and from a purely aesthetic point of view.

Each year, the telescope devotes a small portion of its valuable observation time to creating a special birthday image, focused on capturing particularly beautiful and meaningful objects. This year's image is the Southern Crab Nebula. [1].

This particular nebula, which has hourglass-shaped nested structures, was created by the interaction between a pair of stars at its center. The uneven pair is composed of a red giant and a white dwarf. The red giant loses his outer layers in the last phase of his life before living his last years as a white dwarf. Some of the material ejected from the red giant is attracted by the gravity of his companion.

When a sufficient amount of this discarded material is attracted to the white dwarf, it also ejects the material to the outside during an eruption, thereby creating the structures we see in the nebula. Eventually, the red giant will eventually get rid of its outer layers and stop feeding his white dwarf companion. Before that, there can also be more eruptions, creating even more complex structures.

Astronomers did not always know it. The object was first written in 1967, but was supposed to be an ordinary star until 1989, when it was observed using telescopes at the La Silla Observatory of the European Southern Observatory. . The resulting image shows an extended nebula shaped like a crab, consisting of gas bubbles and symmetrical dust.

These observations only showed the outer hourglass emanating from a bright central region that could not be resolved. It was only when Hubble observed the Southern Crab in 1999 that the whole structure appeared. This image reveals nested internal structures, suggesting that the phenomenon that created the external bubbles has occurred twice in the recent (astronomical) past.

It is normal that Hubble returned to this object twenty years after his first observation. This new image adds to the story of an active and evolving object and contributes to the story of Hubble's role in our evolutionary understanding of the Universe.

Remarks

[1] The South Crab Nebula is so named to distinguish it from the best known Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant visible in the constellation Taurus.

Bethany Downer
ESA / Hubble, responsible for public information
Garching, Germany
Email: [email protected]