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"Hubble Science"

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"Starbirth Nebulae: Cosmic Cradles"

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These beautiful colorful images that 
everyone loves from Hubble, the nebulae.

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I love them, they're colorful, they're beautiful, 
but they're signposts of star formation.

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The reason these gas clouds are so colorful is that 
there are massive stars, bigger than our sun, that  

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have recently formed, recently in a cosmic sense. 
But perhaps within the last million years or so  

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these stars have coalesced, and their radiation 
is so powerful that it goes out and ionizes the  

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surrounding gas which creates these beautiful 
colors. So astronomers see these colorful nebulae,  

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such that Hubble reveals in great detail, and 
we say oh that's beautiful, but we also say,  

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Aha! That's a sign that star formation is still 
active in this region. We can hone in with Hubble  

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and other telescopes and see exactly what's going 
on in the continuation of star formation in these  

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regions. We didn't really realize, when Hubble 
was launched, that we could see such details  

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about the dynamics of continuing star formation; 
and that's something that now people love Hubble  

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for are these beautiful images of activity 
in our galaxy and in other galaxies as well.

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