1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,952 "Inside the Image // Hubble  Space Telescope" "Carina Nebula" 2 00:00:05,952 --> 00:00:07,920 People ask me sometimes,   3 00:00:07,920 --> 00:00:13,860 "what is my favorite Hubble image?" It's  actually the mosaic that Hubble took of the   4 00:00:13,860 --> 00:00:21,180 Carina nebula. It's in the constellation  Carina in the southern hemisphere.   5 00:00:21,180 --> 00:00:27,840 It's just an area of the galaxy where material has  collected together. Our galaxy is what's called a   6 00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:33,060 spiral galaxy, it has a bright center with a lot  of material in it, and then these spiral arms   7 00:00:33,060 --> 00:00:39,060 coming out of it. If you look in areas around the  spiral arms, where material is collected together   8 00:00:39,060 --> 00:00:45,960 over many many millions of years, and this is one  of the areas where the conditions were just right,   9 00:00:45,960 --> 00:00:51,840 where the magnetic fields, where the pressure  from surrounding stars conspired to push it   10 00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:58,140 all together and create this massive cloud of  dust and gas. The Hubble Space Telescope has   11 00:00:58,140 --> 00:01:02,760 a relatively narrow field of view it's built to  zoom in and look at individual objects so when we   12 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:07,620 want to appreciate an object of the size we have  to create what's called a mosaic, where we take   13 00:01:07,620 --> 00:01:14,160 multiple images and very carefully align them and  stack them together. It's so large you can't see   14 00:01:14,160 --> 00:01:21,420 it in a single image you have to piece together  hundreds of images to cover the entire area. 15 00:01:21,420 --> 00:01:26,700 Lots of variations in temperature of the gas and  dust so the bright material that you see in here   16 00:01:26,700 --> 00:01:32,640 is hot material that has been heated up by the  embedded stars. The really dark clouds are cool,   17 00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:38,400 very dense clouds of dust and gas they tend to  be dustier than these bright areas which are   18 00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:45,540 dominated by gas. You see here Mystic Mountain  which is an example of a star formation area.   19 00:01:45,540 --> 00:01:52,020 The top of Mystic Mountain is down to the left and  then the base of it is out this way, so as you see   20 00:01:52,020 --> 00:01:59,700 Mystic Mountain is only a tiny fraction  of the complex beauty of this nebula. 21 00:01:59,700 --> 00:02:05,760 You see way over here this bright spot  which if you zoom is like a dumbbell shape,   22 00:02:05,760 --> 00:02:10,680 Eta Carinae which is a red giant that's a  star in the process of dying in the last   23 00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:19,860 stages of stellar evolution and it's blowing  material off. So you span the entire range   24 00:02:19,860 --> 00:02:27,000 of the evolution of a single star from its  birth to its death and everything in between.   25 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:34,440 All through this nebula so collectively it's  an immense factory of forming star systems and   26 00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:40,200 we hope planets around those star systems.  So this is an image you can download from   27 00:02:40,200 --> 00:02:44,820 the Hubble site and it's it's got enough data  and depth in it you can print it out to go on   28 00:02:44,820 --> 00:02:49,080 your wall. That's How many pixels it's got it  and you can download it on a computer and just   29 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:54,120 zoom in and see the kind of detail you saw in  Mystic Mountain anywhere else in this mosaic. 30 00:02:54,120 --> 00:02:59,637 "Follow us on social media @NASAHubble"