It was April 24, 1990, when the Hubble Space Telescope arrived in the Earth’s low orbit, the beginning of a very long observation mission that was able to give us the most suggestive images of the cosmos ever. To commemorate the important event, NASA and ESA have decided to share a new image showing the two nebulae NGC 2014 and NGC 2020 placed nearby. These are vast clusters of cosmic debris from which the stars originate.
The two nebulae are located within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy of the Milky Way that is located about 163,000 light-years from Earth. We offer you the suggestive image to follow.
All the photos taken through Hubble are unique and immediately recognizable, and despite having suffered a series of malfunctions, it has continued to delight us for three decades with images of nebulae, galaxies, comets, planets and much more. The numbers say that thanks to him 1.4 million observations have been made, the data collected have allowed the creation of over 17,000 scientific articles subject to peer review, giving rise to a mass of discoveries that will continue to reverberate in the scientific communities for many years.
Forecasts say that Hubble will be able to operate for at least 10-20 years, after which it will return to Earth and fall back into the atmosphere of our planet. Of course, work is already underway on his successor, the James Webb telescope, which should be launched in about 1 year unless delayed.
