Hubble celebrates 25th anniversary with 'Pillars of Creation' return visit

GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Twenty-five years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit. It's been wowing scientists, amateur astronomers and laypeople ever since. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, NASA released a series of new photos of the "Pillars of Creation."

"Pillars of Creation" is the name given to the images -- first captured by Hubble in 1995 -- of three massive columns of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, which lies some 7,000 light-years away. Bathed in the light of juvenile stars, the trunk-like columns of cold gas were breathtaking.

"We laid the pictures out on the table, and we were just gushing because of all the incredible detail that we were seeing for the very first time," recalled Paul Scowen, who led the original Eagle Nebula exploration and is now an astronomy researcher at Arizona State University.

The new images of the phenomenon were captured last year by a new and improved Hubble. The telescope is upgraded with new instruments every few years. The telescope is a joint operation between NASA and the European Space Agency; its missions are managed from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Scowen says finding phenomena like the Eagle Nebula -- a turbulent star-forming region packed full of energy, light and cosmic matter -- is the best way to peer back in time and observe the type of environment that birthed our own sun.

In addition to sharing them online, the new images will also be formally presented at this week's American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.