Hubble’s new eyes snap amazing images
| September 9, 2009 | 1:03 PM
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An inside look at the Omega Centauri globular cluster, which lies 16,000 light-years from Earth. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team)
A week after releasing cool new photos of Mars, NASA has released cool new photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, which was refurbished during a space shuttle mission in May.
New imagers installed on the telescope capture a broad range of light wavelengths, creating vivid and detailed pictures of objects that are millions and even billions of light-years away.
The photo above is one of those images, taking a close-up of a tiny part of the globular cluster Omega Centauri. This gigantic cluster has nearly 10 million stars closely packed together, but Hubble’s new eyes are so refined that the stars in this section appear separate and distinct.
The photo also shows a wide range of stars in various life stages, from yellow-white adult stars, like our sun, to burned-out white dwarfs (seen as faint blue dots in this photo). The bright red dots are red giants, which form as adult stars begin to cool.
astronomy, hubble space telescope, nasa, stars
