A Hubble Space Telescope image shows a region filled with warm gas. J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology), Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America), and NASA are all pictured.
A new release from the Hubble telescope has a space snowman filled with glowing gas.
The image shows a cloud of gas and dust in space. The object was picked up by the Hubble Space Telescope and rendered in a time exposure since the glow of the gas is very faint.
NASA said in a statement that mission nebulas are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby massive stars that they glow with their own light.
The Hubble Space Telescope has the best images.
The statement says that the radiation from the stars strips electrons from the hydrogen atoms. The light from the light emitting electrons causes the gas to glow.
This new image was picked up by the famed telescope during a survey of newly forming stars. NASA officials wrote that Hubble used its Wide Field Camera 3 to look for hydrogen ionized by ultraviolet light from the stars.
The region's full context is provided by data from the Digitized Sky Survey, which shows part of the Snowman Nebula. J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology), Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America), and NASA are all pictured.
Hubble is not working at its best. The science instruments were offline in October due to a communication error.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys was recovered on Nov. 7. WFC3 is the most used of Hubble's instruments.
The observatory's other three instruments are in a protective "safe mode" as ground engineers continue to carefully fix issues on the observatory. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph is an instrument that can observe far-ultraviolet light.
Although astronauts on five different missions visited Hubble to repair and upgrade the observatory, no additional visits are planned; servicing missions relied on NASA's space shuttle program, which ended in 2011.
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