Hubble celebrates 24th anniversary with brilliant image of the Monkey Head Nebula

No matter how many images I see from the Hubble Telescope they never cease to amaze me. We are incredibly fortunate to live in a time when technology gives us the opportunity to see parts of our Universe that are incomprehensibly far away.

This colorful Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of a small portion of the Monkey Head Nebula unveils a collection of carved knots of gas and dust silhouetted against glowing gas. The cloud is sculpted by ultraviolet light eating into the cool hydrogen gas. As the interstellar dust particles are warmed from the radiation from the stars in the center of the nebula, they heat up and begin to glow at infrared wavelengths, as captured by Hubble. The space photo superficially resembles the “The Great Wave” print by 19th century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.