Hubble Turns 36 With Stunning New Star Birth Photos

For the first time in space telescope history, scientists can actually watch stars being born in fast forward.

The Hubble Space Telescope marked 36 years of operation by revisiting the Trifid Nebula, a star nursery 5,000 light-years away. When astronomers compared the new images to ones Hubble captured in 1997, they spotted jets of plasma expanding, dust clouds shifting, and baby stars clearing space around themselves.

The images reveal what scientists playfully call the "Cosmic Sea Lemon," a rusty-colored cloud of gas and dust that looks remarkably like a marine slug gliding through space. Inside this cloud, newborn stars are actively forming, shooting out jets of material and carving bubbles in the surrounding gas.

One of the most exciting discoveries is Herbig-Haro 399, a jet periodically ejected by a young protostar buried in the nebula. By measuring how fast these jets expand between the 1997 and 2024 images, researchers can calculate exactly how much energy baby stars pump into their surroundings as they form.

Massive stars outside the frame have been sculpting this region for 300,000 years, their powerful ultraviolet winds pushing and compressing gas and dust to trigger new waves of star formation. The clearer blue areas show where this stellar wind has swept away dust, while darker regions mark the densest pockets where future stars are still hidden.

The Ripple Effect

Hubble's 36 years of service have revolutionized our understanding of the universe. In the past year alone, the telescope discovered asteroids colliding in another star system for the first time, caught a comet breaking apart in our own Solar System, and spotted galaxies so faint they're nearly invisible.

The telescope's ability to observe the same cosmic regions decades apart gives scientists something previously impossible: time-lapse videos of the universe. These observations help researchers understand not just what star formation looks like, but exactly how fast it happens and what forces drive it.

Hubble also teamed up with newer telescopes like ESA's Euclid and the Vera Rubin Observatory, proving that even after 36 years, it remains an essential tool for discovery. The telescope captures light from ultraviolet to near-infrared, filling gaps that other observatories can't see.

The Trifid Nebula's gas and dust will eventually disappear over millions of years, leaving only a cluster of fully formed stars behind.