ann1107 — Announcement

Greetings from Space to All Our Facebook Friends!

The ESA/Hubble Space Telescope Facebook page reaches 50 000 friends

1 April 2011

The ESA Hubble Space Telescope Facebook page has just welcomed its 50 000th Facebook friend. This page brings Hubble Space Telescope fans the latest news from ESA, as NASA’s partner in this international project.

As a thank-you message for their friendship, the image above, showing NGC 5882 in the constellation of Lupus (The Wolf), was produced specially for all ESA/Hubble Facebook fans.

NGC 5882 is a planetary nebula with unconventional good looks — quite bright, but small, with two distinct, but non-uniform regions: an elongated inner shell of gas and a fainter asphericshell that surrounds it. However, the dying star at the heart of the planetary nebula dominates the image, shining brightly with an incredible surface temperature of almost 70 000 degrees Celsius. (By comparison, the surface temperature of the Sun is about 5500 degrees Celsius.)

This picture comes from images taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

If you want to be fascinated every week by such awe-inspiring photos of the Universe, stay in touch with the most recent discoveries made with Hubble, find out about our competitions and events or simply get in touch with other people who are curious about the Universe, join us on Facebook.