Hubble Space Telescope Photographs NGC 248 — A Pair Of Glowing Hydrogen Nebulae In The Small Magellanic Cloud

As part of a study called the Small Magellanic Cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have captured an image of two glowing hydrogen nebulae in the Milky Way’s dwarf satellite galaxy. The image, captured using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), show the two “festive” looking nebulae, located so close to each other that they are referred to by one collective name — NGC 248.

The glowing red appearance of NGC 248 is most likely the result of intense radiation of its central stars heating up hydrogen in their surroundings. Scientists believe that the Small Magellanic Cloud, located roughly 200,000 light-years from Earth, contains many such glowing hydrogen nebulae, and that studying these can help better understand the birth and evolution of stars in galaxies.

“Astronomers are using Hubble to probe the Milky Way satellite to understand how dust is different in galaxies that have a far lower supply of heavy elements needed to create dust,” NASA said in a statement accompanying the image. “The Small Magellanic Cloud has between a fifth and a tenth of the amount of heavy elements that the Milky Way does. Because it is so close, astronomers can study its dust in great detail, and learn about what dust was like earlier in the history of the universe.”

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard NASA’s space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Since then, it has not only captured photos of an unimaginable number of truly spectacular nebulae and galaxies, it has also peered back over 13 billion years to look at our cosmos in its infancy, giving us, as NASA aptly put in an earlier statement, “a front row seat to the awe inspiring universe we live in.”

Most recently, Hubble snapped an image of the IC 5201 — a barred spiral galaxy over 40 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Grus. The image, which reveals a bar of stars slicing through the center of IC 5201 — a feature visible in two-thirds of all spiral galaxies in the observable universe — was also captured using the ACS.