Hubble As Art: Anniversary Image Released

A project that looks at Hubble Space Telescope images as art is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month with the release of a "landscape" of the cosmos captured in a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula.

You can click to enlarge and save this beautiful piece of aesthetic astronomy, which shows a wide vista of "hills and valleys" that actually are interstellar gas and dust. Set against a soft blue backdrop of faraway stars and galaxies, the brown mountains of dust and gas act as a womb for newborn stars.

The image was formed from a composite of data from two Hubble science instruments: the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The ACS was added to Hubble in 2002 and now is shut down as a result of a power supply failure. Astronauts will attempt to revive it during a fifth and final telescope servicing mission in early 2009.

The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was installed in December 1993 and has been the optical work horse of the observatory ever since. It will be replaced with a next-generation camera -- Wide-Field Camera 3 -- during the upcoming mission.

The Hubble Heritage Project debuted 10 years ago this month and since has released more than 120 images worthy of wallspace in the world's best art galleries.

Scientists, engineers and others involved mine vast Hubble data archives and use a small amount of observing time to create images that serve as a bridge between scientists and the public while piquing curiosity about the universe.

The project is operated out of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, D.C.

The anniversary image shows the edge of a giant gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, which is located 7,200 light years away in the Carina constellation.

"The glowing nebula has been carved out by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from several hot, young stars. A cluster of extremely massive stars, located well outside this image in the center of the nebula, is responsible for the ionization of the nebula and excavation of the cavity," project members said in a news release.

"The image also reveals dramatic dark towers of cool gas and dust that rise above the glowing wall of gas. The dense gas at the top resists the blistering ultraviolet radiation from the central stars, and creates a tower that points in the direction of the energy flow. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot, young stars in NGC 3324 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away."

Seen from the southern hemisphere, NGC 3324 is at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), which also is home to the Keyhole Nebula and the exploding star Eta Carinae.

PHOTO CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley)