On April 24, 1990, the Hubble space telescope was launched on the shuttle Discovery. Since then, he has revolutionized humanity’s view of the universe. The images he provides are impressive both from a scientific and purely aesthetic point of view.
Every year, the observatory devotes a small part of its precious time of observation to a special anniversary image, focused on the shooting of especially beautiful and significant objects. This year’s image, the South Crab Nebula (He2-104), is no exception.
This peculiar nebula with an hourglass in the center was created by the interaction of a duet of stars. The unequal pair consists of a red giant and a white dwarf. The red giant still has to lose the outer layers to meet old age as a white dwarf. Meanwhile, a certain amount of material thrown away by him has already fallen under the influence of the gravity of its satellite.
When a sufficient amount of material falls on a white dwarf, it pushes it outward, creating the structures that we see in the nebula. In the end, the red giant will stop dumping the outer layers and stop feeding its companion, but up to this point more eruptions can occur that will create even more complex forms in the Southern Crab.
History of the Southern Crab
Anyway, astronomers did not always know about this celestial firework. The object was first seen in 1967, but its nature remained unknown until 1989, when it was not accessed by the telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla. The resulting image showed an expanding crab-shaped nebula formed by symmetrical gas and dust bubbles.
ESO telescopes detected only external hourglasses emanating from the bright central region, which could not be viewed. It was only after observing Hubble in 1999 that the whole structure of the nebula was revealed. The picture revealed internal elements, which indicates that the phenomenon that created the external bubbles was repeated in the recent past by astronomical standards.
It is entirely appropriate that Hubble returned to this object twenty years later. The new image complements the history of the active and developing South Crab Nebula and emphasizes the role of the cosmic long-liver in studying the Universe.
Hubble's special anniversary image – South Crab Nebula (He2-104)
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