NASA has released a spectacular photograph from deep space of an “undersea world.” The image depicts the Cosmic Reef, which is made up of two distinct nebulae.
Cosmic Reef
The first nebula is a large star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, with a red and blue colour against a black backdrop speckled with glittering lights.
The Cosmic Reef is the name given to the complete structure, which includes the second nebula shown in blue. According to NASA, this Cosmic Reef spans 600 light-years and is 160,000 light-years away from Earth.
The Image
The Hubble Space Telescope captured the image, which NASA released in April 2020 to commemorate the telescope’s 30th anniversary.
The image depicts the wonder and mystery of space during the birth of a star. “Nicknamed the Cosmic Reef because it resembles an undersea world,” NASA wrote in the description. “This is a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way”.
The red region’s centrepiece is a cluster of bright, massive stars, each 10 to 20 times the mass of our Sun. The blue nebula, on the other hand, is home to a single star 15 times more massive and 200,000 times brighter than the Sun.
Through a sequence of eruptions that resulted in the partial loss of its outer shell, this massive star has created magnificent blue gas.
In the Instagram post, one person remarked, “The universe is stunning.”
Hubble Space Telescope
NASA’s Hubble telescope has proven to be an eye on the sky like no other, catching the world’s imagination with millions of magnificent photographs after more than 30 years of service. It has the clearest view of the entire universe.
This NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) collaboration is expected to run until the end of the decade. In December, it will be joined by the more powerful James Webb Telescope. Webb is another joint venture between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency.
