Hubble celebrates its 17th anniversary and gives the world a big present—a 29,566 x 14,321 pixel image (500 MB TIFF image) of the Carina Nebula*. For those who don't feel like downloading the entire TIFF image, there is a JPEG available for download from the same site; however, it is still nearly 250MB in size. If you click on the image shown here in the NI article, you get a much more download-friendly version of the spectacular image.

The Carina Nebula is located a mere 7,500 light years away in the southern constellation Carina, the keel of the old southern constellation Argo Navis. The Carina Nebula is a stunning view of a birthplace of new stars, there are more than a dozen stars present in the nebula that are estimated to have a mass of greater than 50 to 100 times the mass of the Sun. The unreal landscape began its formation around 3 million years ago when the first stars in the nebula ignited amid a cloud of molecular hydrogen. The radiation that these stars gave off etched away the matter that started out in the nebula. The remaining globs of matter are those that have resisted being destroyed by the intense photoionization. New stars are being formed thanks to the violent stellar wind and intense radiation compressing the surrounding wall of cold molecular hydrogen.

It is believed that our own solar system began in a similar cosmic blast furnace. This image shows that Hubble can still offer an unparalleled view into the outer workings of the universe around us. As our astute NI readers know, the colors are added later, for the interested, the image was taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Color was later added by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile; red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission. Hopefully this image shows just how much can still be learned from a "old" piece of equipment, which is sadly destined to end up as space junk in the not so distant future.

* Note: The link to the image is NOT the full size image, but a page where you can download it or wallpapers of the image. The image is credited to NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley) and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)