Hubble snaps cosmic smokescreen around 4350 light-years from Earth

This latest image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a portion of the open cluster NGC 6530, a collection of several thousand stars, that appears as a roiling wall of smoke studded with stars.

The cluster lies around 4350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius and is set within the larger Lagoon Nebula, a gigantic interstellar cloud of gas and dust.

Using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFC2), astronomers scoured this region in the hope of finding new examples of proplyds, a particular class of illuminated protoplanetary discs surrounding newborn stars.

In the above Hubble image, clouds of gas cover the entire view, in a variety of bold colours. In the centre the gas is brighter and very textured, resembling dense smoke. Several small, bright blue stars are scattered over the nebula.

1/ A portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 appears as a roiling wall of smoke studded with stars in our ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week. NGC 6530 is a collection of several thousand stars lying around 4350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. pic.twitter.com/EJMmb4CQ8V

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) December 12, 2022

The Hubble Space Telescope has been beaming back stunning images of stars, galaxies, and other astronomical objects since its deployment in 1990. The space-based observatory is an indispensable tool for understanding starbirth and the origin of exoplanetary systems.

In its 30+ years of operation, the premium space-based telescope has made more than 1.5 million observations and deepened humanity's knowledge of the cosmos.

NASA's newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will complement Hubble observations by allowing astronomers to peer through the dusty envelopes around newly born stars and investigate the faintest, earliest stages of starbirth.