When it comes to drama and amazing pictures For space, few can handle what appears to be an image of, well, absolutely nothing: a fascinating image of what appears to be a hole in the fabric of space, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Described by experts as a “cosmic keyhole,” the phenomenon captured by the telescope is what’s known as a reflection nebula – a piece of debris left behind by the formation of a newborn star, or in this case, a small, multiple star system known like V380 Orionis in the constellation Orion.
The ghostly celestial body you see here, called NGC 1999, is located about 1,350 light-years from our planet; Not far from is Orion Nebula – a stellar plant of huge size that happens to be the closest of its kind to Earth.
This gap in the middle of the Reflection Nebula is really an empty part of space, although astronomers initially thought it might be poke ball: a dense, cold cloud, consisting of gas, particles, and dust, which appears to obscure the background light.
Around the hole we can see a cloud of dust reflecting light from the star V380 Orionis, which can be seen near the center of the cosmic keyhole. This is where the name reflection nebula comes from, nebula meaning “cloud” or “fog” in Latin.
space agencies described as “Like fog writhing around a street lamp,” but at this point, the cause of the huge gap in the middle of the cloud is unknown. However, if we were shooting a sci-fi movie, we might say it’s the perfect opening for aliens to arrive – or a perfect place to set a portal to another world.
After it was first grabbed by 2 . Wide Field Planetary Camera On Hubble in 1999, the image was monitored by telescopes including the European Space Agency Herschel Space Observatory. The final image and the story behind it is really a team effort of many tools.
Hubble has been capturing the stars and galaxies around us for more than 30 years now, and it’s still going strong. We saw that recently Take a nice close up from the Orion Nebula, and Snapshot of a strange galaxy “mirror” Created by gravitational lensing.
Of course, the telescope is about more than just beautiful images — it helps scientists deepen their understanding of the universe, too, whether it’s in Discovering new asteroids or Anticipating the death of the sun.
You can see more images from Hubble at ESA Hubble website.