NASA’s Hubble Telescope discovers the cosmic reef in the nearby galaxy

Cosmic events are something that keeps happening with gas and radiation explosions. Thanks to telescopes like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers can capture a phenomenon as great as life. On the occasion of the Hubble Telescope’s 30th birthday, it revealed a striking new portrait of a firestorm from the birth of a star in a neighboring galaxy.

The new image shows two young nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), an attached Milky Way galaxy located about 163,000 light-years away. NASA researchers have named this image the “Cosmic Reef” for its resemblance to a coral reef in Earth’s oceans, full of color and life, but hidden just out of reach of human sight.

With just five percent of the Milky Way’s mass, LMC contains where tiny, baby stars are forming. According to NASA’s blog post, the nebulae captured by the Hubble telescope here are ‘stellar nurseries’. While viewed as baby stars, these stars are, in fact, at least 10 times more massive than Earth’s Sun and significantly brighter.

As shown in the image, these stunning colors are the result of radiation from these stars which in turn makes the surrounding stars shine. NASA explains that these massive baby stars are also driving powerful winds of charged particles, which are sculpting the bubble and ridge structures that we can see through the nebula.

Celebrating NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope

On April 24, 1990, Hubble was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin its long mission of looking into the deepest reaches of space. Since then, it has been a crucial team in helping to better discover and understand our universe.

“Hubble has provided us with surprising information about the universe, from nearby planets to the farthest galaxies we’ve seen so far,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate science administrator at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. “It was revolutionary to launch such a large telescope 30 years ago, and this astronomy powerhouse is still delivering revolutionary science today. Its spectacular images have captured the imagination for decades, and will continue to inspire humanity for years to come.”