Hubble Team Produces 30th Anniversary Calendar for 2020 | Astronomy – Sci-News.com

In September 2019, the Hubble team announced a social media initiative to celebrate three decades of success in discoveries with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The campaign showcased 30 hidden gems from the Hubble image archive. The 12 images that received the most likes were compiled to produce a special 30th Anniversary Calendar for 2020 (.pdf file, high-resolution print-ready .pdf file).

The cover page of the Hubbles Hidden Gems 2020 Calendar. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

The images featured in the Hubbles Hidden Gems 2020 Calendar are described below:

Cover: the calendars cover features NGC 3256, a distorted galaxy located some 131 million light-years away in the constellation of Vela; the galaxy is approximately the same size as our own Milky Way Galaxy and belongs to the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster complex; it is the relic of a collision between two spiral galaxies, estimated to have occurred 500 million years ago.

January: this picture is the result of the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field project; it contains approximately 10,000 distant galaxies.

February: this colorful image shows a small section of the Veil Nebula, one of the best-known supernova remnants; also known as NGC 6960, the Cirrus Nebula and the Filamentary Nebula, this object spans approximately 110 light-years and lies in the constellation Cygnus, about 2,100 light-years away.

March: this Hubble picture shows IRAS 14568-6304, a young star that is cloaked in a haze of golden gas and dust.

April: this image shows Trumpler 14, one of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.

May: this snapshot features the fine detail and exceptionally perfect spiral structure of NGC 634, a spiral galaxy located 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Triangulum.

June: this composite image shows Sh 2-106, a compact star forming region in the constellation of Cygnus, which combines two images taken in infrared light and one that is tuned to a specific wavelength of visible light emitted by excited hydrogen gas.

July: this image shows Saturn and six of its 82 known moons: Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas.

August: this Hubble image shows NGC 5189, a planetary nebula located in the constellation Musca, some 3,000 light-years away; the intricate structure of the stellar eruption looks like a giant and brightly colored ribbon in space.

September: this colorful and star-studded view of our Milky Way Galaxy was captured in 2016 when Hubble pointed its cameras towards the constellation of Sagittarius.

October: in January 2002, a moderately dim star called V838 Monocerotis suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun; a Hubble snapshot shows remarkable details in the shells of dust that were lit up during the titanic stellar eruption.

November: in 2011, Hubble captured a stunning close-up shot of part of the Tarantula Nebula; this is a star-forming region rich in ionized hydrogen gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

December: in 2002, Hubble revealed a rainbow of colors in IC 4406, a planetary nebula located 2,000 light-years away near the western border of the constellation Lupus; like many other planetary nebulae, IC 4406 exhibits a high degree of symmetry; the nebulas left and right halves are nearly mirror images of each other.

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This article is based on text provided by the European Space Agency.

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Hubble Team Produces 30th Anniversary Calendar for 2020 | Astronomy - Sci-News.com