Hubble Reopens Eye on the Universe

In its first glimpse of the heavens following the successful December 1999 servicing mission, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a majestic view of a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a dying, Sun-like star. This stellar relic, first spied by William Herschel in 1787, is nicknamed the "Eskimo" Nebula (NGC 2392) because, when viewed through ground-based telescopes, it resembles a face surrounded by a fur parka. In this Hubble telescope image, the "fur parka" is really a disk of material embellished with a ring of comet-shaped objects, with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star. The Eskimo's "face" also contains some fascinating details. Although this bright central region resembles a ball of twine, it is, in reality, a bubble of material being blown into space by the central star's intense "wind" of high-speed material.

Credits: NASA, A. Fruchter and the ERO Team (STScI)

Images are available on the Internet at: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/07 http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/08 and via links in http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/latest.html and http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html

Higher resolution digital versions (300 dpi JPEG and TIFF) are available at: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/07/pr-photos.html and http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/08/pr-photos.html

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The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

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