The Trifid Nebula (also known as Messier 20) is one of the most famous objects in the night sky, attracting amateur astronomers to its location in the constellation of Sagittarius the Archer, set against myriad stars of the Milky Way. Hubble's new view of the Trifid is somewhat different from what skywatchers can see from Earth: the space telescope's 2.4-meter (8-foot) mirror is able to see much closer and in far more detail than any telescope on the ground is capable of achieving.
Hubble's anniversary image presents what is just a small section of the Trifid, at the end of one of the four large dust lanes that extend from the central region of the nebula. Towering columns and sweeping walls of gas and dust dominate the scene. The center point is perhaps what looks like a gigantic mountain with two 'spikes' protruding from its peak, like the antennae on an insect. Yet despite their appearances, these spikes are two completely different phenomena, space.com reported.
Between Hubble's first image of the Trifid taken in 1997 and this new image, astronomers have been able to measure the speed of the jet and see how its size and structure have changed during the intervening 29 years. From this information, they aim to learn in greater detail how young stars interact with their environment, which potentially can impact upon how those young stars mature.
The name of the Trifid, which is over 4,000 light-years away, refers to an object that has three lobes. The nebula was given this name by the nineteenth century British astronomer John Herschel, who saw three lobes divided by dust lanes through his telescope. In actuality, the nebula has four lobes — Herschel's telescope was unable to resolve the fourth dust lane.
This latest image from Hubble forms just one of more than 1.7 million observations that the space telescope has made over the past 36 years since it launched on April 24, 1990. Those observations have spawned about 23,000 research papers written by nearly 29,000 astronomers in total worldwide, and about 1,100 of those papers were written in 2025 alone.
Hubble may be getting old, but it is far too soon to be talking about its legacy — it is still accomplishing an extraordinary amount of work in the here and now.