Tomorrow marks thirty-four years since the launch of NASA and ESA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope.

From its launch in 1990 Mrthen, Hubble has realized 1.6 million observations on over 53,000 astronomical objects. To date, 44,000 scientific papers have been published from his observations, and in 2023 alone, 1,056 papers were published.

Throughout his journey, the Hubble has changed our perspective on the universe. It has refined our knowledge of the age of the universe and its rate of expansion. Its deep-field images have made it possible to see billions of light-years away, revealing ancient teenage galaxies that we can compare to our own galaxy.

For its 34th anniversary, ESA and NASA have released a snapshot of the nebula Messier 76 (M76), located 3,400 light-years away in the constellation Perseus and a favorite shooting target for amateur astronomers. M76 is classified as a planetary nebula, an expanding shell of incandescent gas ejected from a dying red giant star. The star eventually collapses into an extremely dense and hot white dwarf.

M76 consists of an annulus, seen at its edge as a central rod structure, and two lobes at each aperture of the annulus. Before the star went out it ejected the ring of gas and dust. The ring was likely sculpted by the effects of the star that once had a companion star. This detached material created a thick disk of dust and gas along the plane of the companion star’s orbit. The hypothetical companion star is not visible in the Hubble image, so it could have been swallowed up by the central star. The record would be proof of that fact.

The main star collapses to form a white dwarf, which can be seen as a spike in the center of the nebula. Cut off from the disk, two lobes of hot gas escape from the top and bottom of the “belt” along the star’s spin axis, which is perpendicular to the disk. Fierce ultraviolet radiation from the very hot star causes the gases to glow: the red color comes from nitrogen and the blue from oxygen.