Keeping an eye on the sky-1

With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.
-Edwin Hubble

Few months ago Hubble completed its 20 years of space service. Through this blog post let me take you through some of my all time favorite snaps ( well, its actually difficult to say which one is not a favorite ), from the whole array of pictures that Hubble has taken. One must visit the Hubble site to get the complete story as to what Hubble has been doing.
Just in brief; this huge piece of mirrors, cameras, antennas and other stuff was put into orbit around Earth on 22nd April 1990. Since then it has been working tirelessly and increase our understanding of the universe. From new planets to dark energy Hubble has seen it all.
You can also read in details of Hubble’s history in Wikipedia


Into nothing:
This is what Hubble's WFPC2(Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2) camera came up with when it was made to stare at blank space(seemingly) for days:


From being just a blank sky to buzzing cluster of galaxies! Hubble made us realize how packed the space is!

Blast from the past:
This one is the image of a supernova(SN 1987a) that happened in 1987, one of the brightest in the last 400 years. Hubble has been monitoring the aftermaths.


Into the orion:
One of my favorites, the orion nebula. As in any Nebula action always happens here.New stars are formed , they spew out gases , hurricanes of stellar winds. From 1,500 light years away , here is what Hubble has for us:
Bit of explanation on what you are seeing:
Bowl is the radiation rich bright center made of the stellar winds and the star factory.
M43, the young star carving out its own space in the nebula.
Brown dwarfs are the failed stars which failed to kick start their nuclear fusion.
Arcs and bubbles are formed of charged particles from the stellar wind.

A peek into our future:
Billions of years hence our Sun is going blow its outer region and become a white dwarf. Hubble has brought us the image as to what may be our sun’s fate too. When stars around the size of our sun exhaust the hydrogen supply in their core, they start shrinking due to their gravity. But fusion still happens in the outer layers.The shrinking core heats up and causes the outer layers to expand. Finally outer layers burst and end up forming planetary nebula . A planetary nebula will exist till all the gases are dissipated into the space leaving behind the cool white dwarf. The best of the planetary nebula is the cat’s eye nebula.


The bright inner spot is the core of the star. The rings are the gases thrown out by the dying star.

There are still more to come , but in the subsequent posts.