Hubble Space Telescope Shared a New Festive Season Photo

The European Space Agency (ESA) has published an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Traditionally, a festive image was chosen in time for Christmas.

The image shows a small region of the Westerhout 5 nebula, which is 7,000 light years away from Earth. The luminous image hosts a variety of interesting features, including a free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globule (frEGG), from which a star will be born one day.

The frEGG in this image is the small tadpole-shaped dark spot in the upper center-left.

Evaporating Gaseous Globules have been discovered relatively recently. They were first conclusively identified via photographs of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.