Scientists working with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have released this beautiful image of a "Blue Bubble" nebula thousands of light-years away.
NASA currently has multiple new high-powered space telescopes in the works, which are slated to replace the Hubble as our primary means of photographing distant pats of the universe. That doesn’t mean that the Hubble is out of commission, however – According to a Mashable report, the Hubble is very much still in action, and just sent home this stunning photo of a blue-tinted bubble more than 30,000 light-years from the Earth.
The beautiful new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a star called WR 31a, encircled by a shimmering Wolf-Rayet nebula. The nebula can be seen in the photo as a bubble-shaped cloud surrounding the star. It is made up of a massive cloud of dust and gas, and gives off a hypnotizing iridescent blue that dazzled even the most seasoned NASA scientists.
According to Hubble researchers, the life cycle of a Wolf-Rayet star is relatively short. The star lasts for only a few hundred thousand years, which they called “the blink of an eye” in terms of the cosmic time scale. The star began its life with a mass at least 20 times that of our own sun, but burned through half of its fuel within the first 100,000 years of its life.
Researchers believe that the “Blue Bubble” nebula in the photos first formed roughly 20,000 years ago, and is currently expanding at a rate of 136,700 miles per hour. The nebula will continue to disperse until the star explodes in a massive supernova when it burns through enough of its solar fuel.
A statement from researchers working with the Hubble Space Telescope about the recent image can be found here.