A new release from the Hubble telescope's vast archive shares an incredible space \"snowman\" filled with glowing gas.<\/p>\n
The image shows the Snowman Nebula, which is a cloud of gas and dust in deep space. The Hubble Space Telescope's sharp eyes picked up the object from a distance of 6,000 light-years away, and rendered the image in a time exposure since the glow of the gas is very faint.<\/p>\n
\"Emission nebulas are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby massive stars that they glow with their own light,\" NASA said in a statement about the new image.<\/p>\n
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!<\/p>\n
\"The radiation from these massive stars strips electrons from the nebula's hydrogen atoms in a process called ionization,\" the statement continues. \"As the energized electrons revert from their higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, they emit energy in the form of light, causing the nebula's gas to glow.\"<\/p>\n
The famed telescope picked up this new image during a survey of massive- and intermediate-size \"protostars,\" or newly forming stars. Hubble used its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument \"to look for hydrogen ionized by ultraviolet light from the protostars, jets from the stars, and other features,\" NASA officials wrote.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hubble isn't quite working at its best. In late October, a synchronization error with its internal communications forced all five of its science instruments offline.<\/p>\n
The team recovered the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on Nov. 7, and the same Wide Field Camera 3 responsible for this image on Nov. 21. WFC3 is the most heavily used of Hubble's instruments.<\/p>\n
The observatory's other three instruments remain in a protective \"safe mode\" as ground engineers continue to carefully troubleshoot issues on the 31-year-old observatory. The Hubble team will next address an instrument called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which can observe far-ultraviolet light.<\/p>\n
Although astronauts on five different missions visited Hubble to repair and upgrade the observatory, no additional visits are planned; servicing missions relied on NASA's space shuttle program, which ended in 2011.<\/p>\n
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.<\/p>\n
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Go here to see the original: A new release from the Hubble telescope's vast archive shares an incredible space \"snowman\" filled with glowing gas. The image shows the Snowman Nebula, which is a cloud of gas and dust in deep space. The Hubble Space Telescope's sharp eyes picked up the object from a distance of 6,000 light-years away, and rendered the image in a time exposure since the glow of the gas is very faint Continue reading
\nHubble telescope sees a space 'snowman' thousands of light-years away - Space.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"