NASA shares sights captured by Hubble in 30 years from Caldwell Catalog for the first time

To commemorate NASA Hubble Space Telescope’s 30 years in space, its official Twitter account on December 12 shared 30 stunning sights captured by Hubble from the Caldwell Catalog. The Caldwell Catalog is basically an astronomical catalogue of  109 star clusters, nebulae and galaxies for amateur astronomers to observe and the entire list was compiled by science communicator Sir Patrick Caldwell-Moore back in December 11995. 

Newly released, the collection of more than 50 Hubble images feature nearly 30 objects in the Caldwell Catalog that was inspired by the Messier Catalog. Some of the objects included in Caldwell also appear in more than one new Hubble image that was taken by the telescope throughout its career and were further used by the scientists for either research or engineering tests. However, it was for the first time that NASA processed the images for public release.

NASA also elaborated why Hubble images failed to capture any Caldwell object entirely. It is because of the telescope’s “detailed field of view”. NASA said, “Because of Hubble’s detailed field of view, some of its pictures do not capture the entirety of a Caldwell object, sometimes instead zooming in on clusters of young stars in the arms of a spiral galaxy, stars on the outskirts of a cluster, or the zombie star at the heart of a nebula. But in other cases, a mosaic of Hubble observations assemble to create a complete or nearly complete portrait of the celestial marvel.”

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Hubble galaxy of Caldwell objects

The images released on December 12 have joined the Hubble’s existing gallery of Caldwell objects that was first published last year in this month. Therefore, as of now, Hubble’s collection now includes 87 of the 109 Caldwell objects. For each listed object, the basic star chart also shows the observers when and where they can find that object in the night sky along with a description that suggests what type of observing equipment is required to view the same. 

NASA’s Hubble telescope was launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in April 1990 and has been upgraded nearly five times by the crews of spacewalking astronauts before it turned 30. According to NASA, it is now “even better” than what it was launched and it has continued to capture groundbreaking images leading to discoverings that challenge as well as advance researchers’ fundamental understanding of the cosmos.

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