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By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Unveils a Glittering View of Sh2-284
Hubble’s infrared view of emission nebula Sh2-284 provides a glimpse of the brilliant young stars hidden within clouds of gas and dust. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Andersen (European Southern Observatory – Germany); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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A tiny fraction of the stellar nursery known as Sh2-284 is visible in this glittering, star-filled NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. This immense region of gas and dust is the birthing place of stars, which shine among the clouds. Bright clusters of newborn stars glow pink in infrared light, and clouds of gas and dust, resembling puffy cumulus clouds, are dotted with dark knots of denser dust.
This image shows an infrared view from Hubble, giving an excellent view of the stars that might otherwise be obscured by Sh2-284’s clouds. Unlike visible light, infrared wavelengths can travel through clouds of gas and dust, providing a glimpse of the stars forming within the obscuring clouds.
The nebula is shaped by a young central star cluster, Dolidze 25 (not visible in the Hubble image), whose stars range from 1.5 to 13 million years old (our Sun, in contrast, is 4.6 billion years old). The cluster blasts out ionizing winds and radiation, pushing at the gas and dust of the nebula and carving out intricate shapes and pillars, as seen in detail here. This ionizing radiation gives Sh2-284 its classification as an HII region, an emission nebula consisting primarily of ionized hydrogen. An emission nebula like Sh2-284 glows with its own light as stars within or nearby energize its gas with a flood of intense ultraviolet radiation.
The ground-based image (top) of M24 shows the location of the Hubble view (bottom). The European Southern Observatory’s visible-light image shows prominent clouds of gas and dust, while the Hubble image’s infrared vision highlights the stars within and behind the clouds. Ground-based image: ESO/VPHAS+ Team; Hubble image: NASA, ESA, and M. Andersen (European Southern Observatory – Germany); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) Sh2-284 is also a low-metallicity region, which means it is poor in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. These conditions mimic the early universe, when matter was mostly helium and hydrogen and heavier elements were just beginning to form via nuclear fusion within massive stars. Hubble took these images as part of an effort to examine how low metallicity influences stellar formation and how this would apply to the early universe.
Sh2-284 resides 15,000 light-years away at the end of an outer spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Monoceros.
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Hubble’s Nebulae
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Mar 08, 2025 Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
That’s a great question. And it’s a question that NASA will seek to answer with the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
Europa is a moon of Jupiter. It’s about the same size as Earth’s Moon, but its surface looks very different. The surface of Europa is covered with a layer of ice, and below that ice, we think there’s a layer of liquid water with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
So because of this giant ocean, we think that Europa is actually one of the best places in the solar system to look for life beyond the Earth.
Life as we know it has three main requirements: liquid water — all life here on Earth uses liquid water as a basis.
The second is the right chemical elements. These are elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur. They’re elements that create the building blocks for life as we know it on Earth. We think that those elements exist on Europa.
The third component is an energy source. As Europa orbits around Jupiter, Jupiter’s strong gravity tugs and pulls on it. It actually stretches out the surface. And it produces a heat source called tidal heating. So it’s possible that hydrothermal systems could exist at the bottom of Europa’s ocean, and it’s possible that those could be locations for abundant life.
So could there be life on Europa? It’s possible. And Europa Clipper is going to explore Europa to help try to answer that question.
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Last Updated Feb 25, 2025 Related Terms
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