Messier 76, also known as M76, NGC 650/651 or the Little Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula located approximately 3,400 light-years away in the northern constellation of Perseus.
Since its launch in 1990, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made 1.6 million observations of over 53,000 astronomical objects.
To date, the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute holds 184 terabytes of processed data.
Since 1990, 44,000 science papers have been published from Hubble observations.
Hubble is the most scientifically productive space astrophysics mission in NASA history.
The demand for using Hubble is so high it is currently oversubscribed by a factor of six-to-one.
Most of Hubble’s discoveries were not anticipated before launch, such as supermassive black holes, the atmospheres of exoplanets, gravitational lensing by dark matter, the presence of dark energy, and the abundance of planet formation among stars.
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of Hubble’s launch, astronomers took a snapshot of the planetary nebula Messier 76.
“Messier 76 is located approximately 3,400 light-years away in the northern constellation of Perseus,” the Hubble astronomers said.
“It is classified as a planetary nebula, an expanding shell of glowing gases that were ejected from a dying red giant star. The star eventually collapses to an ultra-dense and hot white dwarf.”
“Planetary nebulae are unrelated to planets, but have that name because astronomers in the 1700s using low-power telescopes thought this type of object resembled a planet.”
“Messier 76 is composed of a ring, seen edge-on as the central bar structure, and two lobes on either opening of the ring. Before the star burned out, it ejected the ring of gas and dust.”
“The ring was probably sculpted by the effects of the star that once had a binary companion star.”
“This sloughed off material created a thick disk of dust and gas along the plane of the…
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