As a science geek married to someone who attended both Space Camp and Space Academy (and who introduced me to the wonders of astronaut ice cream), it wasn’t lost on me that this year was the twentieth anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s longest-lived and most productive space observatory. Hubble has brought us visions of space that are wondrously sharp and clear; though their purpose is scientific, the images have more than a touch of the sublime. Here are my favorites from among the Hubble photographs NASA released this year; more can be seen in the Abrams book “Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time,” created in collaboration with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Captions courtesy NASA and STScI.
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This image shows the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks. It lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 observed the pillar on February 1 and 2, 2010. The colors in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red).<br><br><em>Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI).</em>
