![]() ![]() Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) Nebulae are often also regions where new stars are born. Many nebulae are formed from the remnants of dying stars. Nebulae are interstellar clouds of gas and dust. This includes the popular images of the Lagoon Nebula (Hubble’s 28th-anniversary image), NGC 2014 and NGC 2020 (the 30th-anniversary image), the Pillars of Creation, the Crab Nebula, and more. You can explore the vast ESA/Hubble archive of hundreds of nebula images here. Some of the most popular images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope have been of beautiful and colorful nebulae. The word ‘nebula’ used to have a much broader meaning, referring to any celestial object that appeared to have a diffuse structure, including the objects that we now know as galaxies. Nebulae are usually mind-bogglingly big, spanning several light years in size. They are also often regions of intense star formation, as the rich reservoirs of dust and gas provide the necessary raw material from which new stars are born. Nebulae are frequently formed from the remnants of dying stars: from planetary nebulae or the dispersed debris from supernova explosions. These days, the term ‘nebula’ refers to an interstellar cloud of dust and gas. ![]() Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble) What Is a Nebula? Credit: NASA, ESA, and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University). It was assembled from 24 individual exposures taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and is the highest resolution image of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. This image is the largest image ever taken with Hubble’s WFPC2 camera. The Crab is among the most interesting and well-studied objects in astronomy. This Hubble image gives the most detailed view of the entire Crab Nebula ever. ![]()
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