
The Hubble Telescope captures images of the Lagoon Nebula's spectacular demise.
According to Immortal News, NASA’s world famous Hubble Space Telescope has recently captured unbelievable images of the Lagoon Nebula. This nebula, about 5,000 light years from earth, is a cluster of stars, gas and dust. This Nebula, sometimes called Messier 8, has a long history of dramatic solar activity. The most recent image shows massive funnels of dust and gas from the stars causing equally massive amounts of solar wind.
The Lagoon Nebula was first discovered by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna in 1654, and it is named for a cloud of dust in its center which is shaped like a lagoon. Although the nebula can be identified with the naked eye by its position in the constellation Sagittarius, this close view provided by the Hubble Telescope give more detailed images of the events that occur when a nebula dies. Although NASA refers to these images as representations of the Lagoon Nebula’s “final moments,” the actual death of the nebula will take tens of thousands of years.
For the past twenty five years, the Hubble Telescope has captured revealing images of distant objects in space, including planets with atmospheres similar to the earth’s. As the Lagoon Nebula continues to die, the telescope will record drastic reduction of the light given off, and its eventual disappearance from the night sky.
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