Hubble Enters 100,000th Orbit

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completed its 100,000th orbit of Earth on the morning of August 11. In commemoration of this event in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., aimed Hubble at a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of this nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074.

The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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