Stunning Hubble Bubble Nebula image marks telescope's 26th birthday

The space telescope celebrates its anniversary on 24 April; this spectacular image of a cloud of gas and dust 8,000 light years away celebrates the occasion

It looks like a giant, glistening, soap bubble blown into the night sky. In reality, it's a cloud of gas and dust 10 light-years across that exists around 8,000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy.

Known as the Bubble Nebula, the wispy-looking shell surrounds an off-centred star whose mass is more than ten times that of our sun. The plasma thrown out by this star, its so-called stellar wind, is responsible for forming the "bubble", while its intense radiation causes the gas to glow.