Gorgeous rose-colored Hubble photo is your daily reminder that space is super cool
Outer space is vast and full of darkness. But there is beauty to be found all throughout, as Hubble constantly reminds us.
Take this newly shared image of NGC 972, a spiral galaxy discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel in 1784. It's not our closest neighbor, at around 70 million light-years away, but it sure takes a good photo.
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The image was snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope, and as you no doubt read already in the above tweet, those orange-pink flourishes peppered throughout the image are the product of hydrogen gas, a key building block for star formation, reacting to the light emitted by newborn stars. The darker patches of black mixed in among the brighter bits are cosmic dust.
NASA shares photos like this one all the time, and they never get old. Hubble is a frequent source of the stellar imagery, but remember: it launched in 1990 and is almost 30 years old now. It's been serviced and upgraded over time, but it's still an older piece of technology.
While Hubble is expected to stick around and continue beaming imagery back to Earth for another 10-20 years, its successor -- the James Webb Space Telescope -- is expected to launch in early 2021, and bring an array of improvements to Hubble's core mission of peering into deep space.
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
