Published 17:55 IST, February 2nd 2022
What did Hubble Telescope see on your birthday? Here's how to find out
For those celebrating their birthdays on Feb 2, this is the day when Hubble captured the famous Carina Nebula Pillars that are located 7,500 light-years away.
The Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990, is in its third decade of service and in all those years, it has captured uncountable marvellous images of fascinating cosmic entities. For over thirty years, the telescope has always been active to take pictures, which can now be easily accessible on NASA's website. Thanks to the agency, you can get your hands on these images based on the dates corresponding with your birthday. "Hubble explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday", NASA says.
Here's how you can find your Hubble birthday image
A variety of images captured by Hubble on a certain day has been organised by NASA, and you can check out your birthday special photograph by visiting this website. To find out what the telescope observed on your special day, just enter the month and date and a picture captured on that day will appear.
This is what Hubble observed on February 2
For those celebrating their birthdays on February 2, this is the day when Hubble captured the famous Carina Nebula Pillars that are located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. According to NASA, the pillar of clouds in this nebula are three light-years tall and are being eaten away by nearby stars. This picture was taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 when the telescope was celebrating its 20th anniversary.
"The pillars, which are basically made of gas and dust, are causing new stars to form within them as the high amounts of radiation and winds from super-hot newborn stars are shaping and compressing the pillar. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks", NASA said in its description of the image.
Image: Twitter/@NASAHistory
Updated 17:55 IST, February 2nd 2022