The NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope has turned 31 years old, and for the occasion, the Hubble team just published a beautiful image of the luminous variable blue star AG Carinae.
Released on April 24, 1990, for more than three decades it has provided humanity with breathtaking views of the cosmos.
On this occasion, we contemplate the spectacular image of a star expelling a bubble of incandescent gases. Astronomers at the Space Telescope Institute pointed the powerful observatory at AG Carinae, one of the brightest stars in the Milky Way ; a very unstable, luminous blue variable. It has occasional big pops and wild pulsations. It is located approximately 20,000 light years distant from Earth in the constellation of Carinae.
The star AG Carinae is a few million years old and its expected lifespan is between 5 and 6 million years. It is up to 70 times the mass of our Sun and is about 1 million times more luminous. Major outbursts, like the one produced by the nebula shown in this image, occur several times during the life of a star like this LBV (Luminous Blue Variable).
They are quite rare to see , as fewer than 50 are known among the galaxies in our local group of neighboring galaxies. Some of them are expected to end their lives in explosions of titanic supernovae, which enrich the universe with the heaviest elements that exist.
