The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a glimpse of an incredible star,
one of the brightest stars in our galaxy. This giant Luminous Blue Variable star, known
as AG Carinae, is huge! 70 times more massive than our Sun
and shining with the brilliance of a million Suns.
The star is surrounded by a glowing halo of gas and dust. This vast structure was created
from giant eruptions from the star about 10,000 years ago, creating an expanding shell that
is now nearly 5 light-years across, similar to the distance from our Sun to its nearest
neighbor star. The outbursts expelled the star s outer layers, blowing out material
nearly 10 times the mass of our Sun. The nebula around the star from these ancient
eruptions is being impacted by a powerful wind of charged particles flowing out from
the star at a million kilometers per hour, 10 times faster than the nebula itself is
expanding. As this outflowing gas slams into the slower
moving outer nebula, it creates a snowplow effect, clearing a cavity around the star,
and sculpting structures in the nebula. Searing radiation from the star is lighting
up the nebula, as seen by Hubble in both visible light and in the ultraviolet light that can
only be seen from space. Red colors indicate glowing hydrogen gas laced with nitrogen gas;
at the upper left in the image, the diffuse red glow shows a region where the stellar
wind has broken through a tenuous region of material and swept it into space. Blue features,
shaped like tadpoles and bubbles, are dust clumps shaped by the stellar wind and illuminated
by the star s reflected light. This incredible image from the Hubble Space
Telescope shows how even one star can be incredibly beautiful and powerful as it impacts its surrounding
environment. Since Hubble orbits above the Earth s atmosphere,
it can give us a clear, detailed view of this kind of awe-inspiring beauty and activity
in the universe. For more than years, the Hubble Space Telescope
has changed the way we think of space and our place in the cosmos. Hubble has revealed
an incredible diversity of stars, and gives us pristine views into beautiful interstellar
nebulas, where new stars and their surrounding disks of dust and planets continue to form.
Looking even deeper into space, Hubble makes it possible for us to see across billions
of light-years, revealing ancient, adolescent galaxies that we can compare with our own
Milky Way. Hubble is even refining our understanding of the age of the universe and its rate of
expansion. It sees the telltale effects of mysterious black holes, dark matter,
and dark energy over time. In the past year alone, Hubble revealed a
large concentration of small black holes nestled within the heart of a globular cluster of
stars. It rewound the clock to calculate the age and site of a supernova blast. It also
detected a possible new second atmosphere formed on a distant exoplanet. And closer
to home, Hubble spotted a comet lurking near Jupiter and its Trojan asteroids. These are
just a handful of Hubble s recent discoveries. Hubble remains in excellent technical health
and is expected to continue its exploration of the universe for years to come.