100,000 Orbits for Hubble

I just watched the Hubble orbit counter on Hubblesite turn 100,000 — fireworks and all.  It happened at 11:42 UT (7:42 am EDT) while Hubble was over the Pacific.  Congrats Hubble!

We are the lucky ones; to mark the event this image of NGC 2074 taken yesterday was released.  By the way, there is also random drawing for a Hubble print on Hubblesite, hey, sign up you never know.

Image(s) Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and and G. Bacon (STScl)
From Hubblesite:

In commemoration of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

1 Comment so far

  1. Brian on March 28th, 2010

    I was one of the lucky ones who won! It is awesome to on the right side it has a time stamp and NASA’s and Hubbles logo’s. I couldn’t believe it out of 18 I got lucky.

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