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Hubble Spots Giant Space Bubble On Its 26th Birthday – Massive ‘Bubble Nebula’ Creates Gigantic Cosmic Soap Bubble 10 Light Years In Diameter

By Alap Naik Desai
Published on: 09:37 PST, Apr 22, 2016

Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a giant space bubble. Just as the trusty eye in sky is about to turn 26, the Hubble telescope captured, in stunning clarity, the “Bubble Nebula” in all its majestic glory.

To celebrate Hubble Space Telescope’s 26th anniversary, astronomers released an image the telescope captured of a gigantic bubble being blown in space. The supper-massive bubble is, in fact, identified as the Bubble Nebula, which lies approximately 8,000 light years away from Earth. Technically, the bubble is a ever-growing cloud of gas and dust created, as well as illuminated, by a large star which lies within, shared John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at its headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“As Hubble makes its 26th revolution around the Sun, we celebrate the event with a spectacular image of a dynamic and exciting interaction of a young star with its environment. The view of the Bubble Nebula reminds us that Hubble gives us a front row seat to the awe inspiring Universe we live in.”

The Bubble Nebula, catalogued as NGC 7635, lies about 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is approximately seven to 10 light-years across, which is about one-and-a-half times the distance from our Sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, reported Times of India. In terms of size, the nebula is about 45 times the size of our Sun.

The Bubble Nebula is continually expanding due to the hot gas that the star is constantly spewing into the vast expanse of space. The outer shell of the bubble is actually a result of a powerful flow of gas, known as a “stellar wind.” The star has been officially named as SAO 20575 and is about 10 to 20 times the size of our Sun. The star is about 4 million-years-old and in another 10 to 20 million years, will explode into an even more spectacular supernova.

The bubble gets its appearance due to the intense pressure created by the stellar winds forcing the surrounding interstellar material outwards. The stellar winds are moving at a mind-boggling speed of over 4 million-miles-per-hour. This high speed outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it.

This gas tries to stop the expansion, but the interaction between the two gives the Bubble Nebula its spectacular bubble-like appearance. These gases also give the Bubble Nebula its asymmetrical appearance. The density of the cold outer gases isn’t uniform and hence the star appears dramatically off-center from the bubble. Scientists aren’t sure why a perfectly round bubble has been created, even when the star isn’t at the center of the bubble nebula, reported Earth Sky.

The Hubble telescope even managed to pick up the different colors of the bubble, the most prominent being blue, which is due to the presence of oxygen. Hydrogen and nitrogen lend the bubble its other color: yellow. Of course, it is the intense ultraviolet radiation that’s primarily responsible for the glow.

The Hubble telescope has captured images of the Bubble Nebula in the past. However, owing to the enormity of the celestial formation, the telescope wasn’t able to capture a complete picture. This image is essentially a mosaic of four images from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which has allowed us to gaze upon the Bubble Nebula as a whole, in one picture, for the first time.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, into the low-Earth orbit. It rode into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. It was the first space telescope of its kind and has survived numerous setbacks, but continues to offer never-before-seen images of space, and helps unravels its mysteries.

[Photo by NASA/ESA via Hubble Heritage Team]

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