This video is sponsored by Magellan TV. Welcome back to Launch Pad, I'm Christian Ready, your
friendly neighborhood astronomer. And here we are, the 30th anniversary of the launch
of the Hubble Space Telescope. April 24th 1990 saw the space shuttle Discovery lift
off its pad at Cape Canaveral and deploy the Hubble telescope into space the following
day. It's really been an incredible journey for this observatory because nothing's really
revolutionized our understanding of the universe, as well as capturing the public's imagination,
quite like the Hubble Space Telescope. And to that end they released this beautiful 30th
anniversary image of a pair of nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud. And I'd like to
tell you about that Nebula in a moment but but first I do want to thank Magellan TV for
sponsoring today's video. Magellan TV is a new type of documentary streaming membership.
It was founded by filmmakers and their team of producers and curators bring together premium
content which dives deep into a wide range of subjects and interests. Now one of my favorite
subjects is the Hubble Space Telescope, so that's why I really enjoyed their documentaries
on the Age of Hubble and Hubble's Enduring Legacy. Magellan TV can be enjoyed anytime,
anywhere, on your television, laptop, or mobile device. It's compatible with Roku, Amazon
FireTV, Apple TV, Google Play, and iOS. You can even cast from your phone directly to
your TV. Magellan TV kindly extended an exclusive offer to my viewers for a free month of Magellan
TV if you sign up at Magellantv.com/LaunchpadAstronomy. I'll have a link in the description below.
For the last several years, astronomers have released a gorgeous image celebrating the
anniversary of the launch of Hubble, and for the 30th anniversary, I didn't know what was
going to be coming out until just this morning when I finally saw the image and I was just
blown away! I had to make a video about it even though I thought maybe everybody else
in the world would make a video about it! I just was so inspired by this image I just
had to share with you and geek out with you a little bit. So what we're looking at is
a pair of nebulae in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite
to our Milky Way galaxy it's a galaxy in its own right, but it's been tidally disrupted
and there is a tremendous amount of star formation taking place as a result of that tidal disruption,
so it's home to all kinds of star forming regions. And the one that we're looking at
here in this image is NGC 2014. That's the larger, reddish colored star-forming region.
Now, it's home to about a thousand stars, most of which are much lower mass than our
Sun and are barely visible at all in the Hubble image. They're not just hard to see because
they have low luminosities, but they are also surrounded by shells of gas that still surround
them. So these are newly-formed stars that have yet to emerge from many of their stellar
cocoons. However, in the very center of the nebula is a cluster of about 100 very hot
massive stars. Now, each of these stars are thousands of times more luminous than our
Sun so they ionize the surrounding nebula with intense ultraviolet radiation. Ultraviolet
light has a tendency to break down the molecular bonds of gas, so this central region of the
nebula has kind of been hollowed out. Not only that, but these stars are also blowing
out powerful stellar winds which are way more powerful than anything our Sun produces. So
whatever doesn't get hollowed out kind of gets snow plowed and built up along the walls
of the surrounding nebula. Inside those walls are protostars and that's what we see here
at the very bottom of the central region. There are these pillars of gas and dust that
are clinging to the newly forming stars inside these pillars remind me of the pillars of
creation in the heart of the Eagle Nebula. The densest regions are basically all that's
left from the surrounding onslaught of ultraviolet radiation and fierce stellar winds of these
nearby stars. In the Southwest of the image we find enormous bubbles, each of which are
tens of light-years across. These are also being blown out by massive stars that recently
formed inside. NGC 2014 is a beautiful complex of newly forming stars, but for me the real
interesting part of this image is a dying star in NGC 2020. At the center is a single
star called HD 269748. It is a star that is at least 15 times the mass of our Sun and
shines at least 200,000 times brighter. it's a very rare type of star called a Wolf-Rayet
star. Wolf-Rayet stars are rare. They are massive stars that are evolving but in a very
specific way. Their inner cores became so hot they literally blew out the outer shells
of its upper layers. In other words, the star didn't go supernova - at least not yet - but
it's already cast out its outer layers. This occurred in two phases. The first phase formed
the outer nebula which you can see here is about 140 light years across. This occurred
about 420,000 years ago. But then there was an even more powerful faster wind that occurred
much later, about two 250,000 years ago and this opened up a 72 light year bubble in the
surrounding nebula. Astronomers have measured the outflow velocities of the nebula and were
able to build up a really cool 3d model of NGC 2020. Now, the hourglass can be explained
if the star was surrounded by like a a torus... kinda like a doughnut-shaped dust ring, and
that's a pretty common situation for many stars, particularly massive ones. Anyway,
this torus would have acted to funnel the outflow of the star into the hourglass that
we see. Now from our perspective, the star appears to be off-center due to the angle
at which we're looking down the hourglass. The blue color of NGC 2020 is due to the oxygen
that was dredged from the core. Remember, the core started out as pure hydrogen which
then fused into helium, which then fused into carbon and oxygen. The core's temperature
is hot enough to ionize and cause the oxygen to glow blue. Even though its outer layers
have already been cast off the star is still evolving and will undoubtedly go supernova
within a million years at the most. NGC 2020 is not just in a chance alignment with NGC
2014. The two nebulae are physically related to each other because the star at the center
of NGC 2020 formed inside the cluster in NGC 2014. The stars in the cluster move around
each other in a complex orbital dance and eventually one of those stars got ejected
from the cluster and eventually became the Wolf-Rayet star that we see today. In fact,
the star is moving away from the cluster at speeds up to 46,000 miles per hour. Now, surrounding
NGC 2014 are smaller nurseries that light up because of the massive stars that are up
to 30 times the mass of our Sun. They're forming inside these clouds and they're ionizing the
surrounding gas, causing them to glow. The stars themselves are not visible - at least
not yet. They will be in about 500,000 years or so. But for now we still get to see the
glowing orb that surrounds them. Now if that weren't a cool enough celebration of Hubble's
30th year on orbit, the astronomers at Space Telescope Science Institute created this beautiful
3d model of both nebulae and gave us this beautiful fly through. The Hubble Space Telescope
is a testament to our ingenuity, but also to our curiosity. I mean that is why we built
it, for no other reason than to understand the universe that surrounds us. No other observatory
has fundamentally changed the way we perceive the cosmos, not just scientifically but also
from a public perception. And that's a good thing because we the public paid for it. It's
our telescope, it's our data, it's available to all of us, and it's something that we all
should share and enjoy and celebrate. You know, when I came to work at the Space Telescope
Science Institute way back in 1992, I had no idea it would last this long. In fact,
we didn't even know if it was going to really last more than a few years because, well,
when it launched it had a terrible flaw. Its mirror was ground to the wrong shape. That
meant there was no way to bring all of the light it collected into focus. We made do
for a little while with some computer algorithms to restore light, but in reality the Hubble
Space Telescope was widely perceived as a flop. And it was pretty frustrating to know
that we did not have a fully-working observatory. That's why I stayed up all night long in December
of 1993 watching the first servicing mission unfold live on television. I watched every
extra vehicular activity, watched every repair every upgrade as they installed a package
of corrective optics which restored Hubble to its full correct prescription. At the time
I was working as what's called a program coordinator at the Space Telescope Science Institute where
I basically helped set up observations to be executed onboard the spacecraft. So yeah,
some of the pictures that you've seen and enjoyed are ones that I helped to "take".
even though nobody really actually takes a picture, but you get the idea. It was a small
role to play, but I'm very proud of the fact that I got to play it and I consider it really
my claim to fame in life. You know, everybody has their own perspective of what the Hubble
Space Telescope has meant to them, whether it was that first image that you saw that
made you go "WOW!", or...well...that's usually what it is that draws people in, but I know
that it's the result of a lot of hard work by thousands of people, many of whom have
literally dedicated their lives to the success of this mission. It really is a testament
to their hard work that the Hubble Space Telescope is still going strong even after its last
servicing mission over a decade ago. So what I like to do is take my mug here from the
very first servicing mission...[pours soda]...a toast to the men and women who have kept the
Hubble Space Telescope going after all these years and a special thanks to my Patreon supporters
who've helped keep Launch Pad Astronomy going after all this...year. Especially to Michael
Dowling and a Steven J Morgan for their cosmological level support. Now if you'd like to join me
on this journey through this amazing universe of ours, well please make sure that you subscribe
and ring that notification bell so that you don't miss out on any new videos.
Until next time, stay home, stay healthy, and stay curious, my friends - Cheers.