NASA Releases New Images of Monkey Head Nebula for Hubble's 24th Anniversary

To celebrate the upcoming 24th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA has released a new set of out-of-this-world images of a distant sector of space known to be a birthplace of stars.

The images are of the so-called Monkey Head Nebula, an emission nebula in the constellation Orion also known as NGC 2174. The Monkey Head Nebula, a colorful region filled with young stars and bright plumes of cosmic gas and dust, lies about 6,400 light years away from Earth. The Hubble last visited the region in 2011.

According to NASA, the image demonstrates the power of the Hubble's infrared vision, revealing a "shadowy, dense knot of gas and dust sharply contrasted against a backdrop of brilliant glowing gas."

The massive newborn stars (toward the right in the images) are blasting away dust within the nebula, and ultraviolet light emitted by the new stars is shaping the dust into giant pillars.

"This carving action occurs because the nebula is mostly composed of hydrogen gas, which becomes ionized by the ultraviolet radiation," NASA said in a statement. "As the dust particles are warmed by the ultraviolet light of the stars, they heat up and begin to glow at infrared wavelengths."

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched April 24, 1990, is one of the largest and most versatile space telescopes. After one final servicing mission in 2009, the Hubble is expected to be in operation until the end of this year, and perhaps even longer.

"Can we get to 2020 with the current suite of instruments and detectors? The answer, I would say, is yes," James Jeletic, deputy project manager of Hubble operations at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told CBS news last year.

"Hubble is performing exceptionally well, especially for a 23-year-old spacecraft," Jeletic said. "There's lots of things on there that were built before it was launched, obviously, so you're talking 25, 30 years old. ... But as of right now, everything seems to be operating well."

Hubble will be succeeded by the James Webb Space Telescope, an $8.8 billion project expected to launch in 2018.

"Our requirements were to be able to survive for five years, to do great science for five years following the servicing mission in 2009," Jeletic said. "There's no reason we can't meet that five years. We don't think there's any reason why we're not going to get to do at least a one-year overlap with James Webb."