Tomorrow marks 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope orbiting Earth, so NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) just released this image to celebrate.
In this image, the sparkling centrepiece of Hubble's silver anniversary fireworks is a giant cluster of about 3000 stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20 000 light-years away in the constellation Carina.
The stellar nursery is difficult to observe because it is surrounded by dust, but Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 peered through the dusty veil in near-infrared light, giving astronomers a clear view of the cluster. Hubble's sharp vision resolves the dense concentration of stars in the central cluster, which measures only about 10 light-years across.
The giant star cluster is two million years old, and its stars are carving out a cavity in the surrounding region.
This is the stellar nursery known as Gum 29 that surrounds the cluster.
The pillars in the region are made from dense gas and dust and are "a few light years tall."
And the red spots of light you can see are very young stars, still surrounded by their dusty cocoons.
Here's that same star cluster seen from a ground-based telescope.
You can fly through the star cluster for yourself here:
