Overview
- NASA and ESA released a new Hubble image of the Trifid Nebula for the telescope’s 36th anniversary, revisiting a 1997 scene about 5,000 light-years away to reveal clear changes.
- The view highlights a protostellar jet called Herbig–Haro 399 that now appears longer, which lets researchers time its growth and calculate the speed and energy of the outflow.
- Massive stars outside the frame drive ultraviolet winds that carve a growing bubble, compress nearby gas, and trigger fresh star formation across a region shaped for about 300,000 years.
- Hubble captured the sharper, wider view with an upgraded wide‑field, higher‑sensitivity camera installed during the fourth servicing mission.
- Mission leaders point to Hubble’s continuing impact with more than 1.7 million observations and data used in tens of thousands of papers, with ongoing pairing to James Webb for deeper studies.