The NASA ESA Hubble Space Telescope celebrates its 17th birthday with one of the largest panoramic images ever taken. The violent stellar fireworks of the Karina Nebula. This is the Hubblecast, news and images from the NASA ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Traveling through time and space with our host Dr. J, aka Dr. Joe Liska. Welcome to the Hubblecast. On the 24th of April, we celebrated Hubble's 17th anniversary in space. In these 17 years of exploring the universe, Hubble has made nearly 800,000 observations of more than 25,000 different celestial objects. It takes pictures of the universe as it hurdles through space, orbiting Earth at a breakneck speed of 28,000 km an hour. In 17 years, that makes nearly 100,000 trips around our planet. Or a total of 4 billion km. That's one round trip to Saturn. Today, we are celebrating Hubble's 17th birthday by releasing a stunning 50 light year-wide image of the tumultrall central region of the Karina Nebula, where a maelstrom of star birth and death is taking place. In the southern sky, not far from the southern cross, we find the constellation Karina, the Keel. Here, 8,000 light years away, the immense Karina Nebula is located. Hubble's new view of the Karina Nebula shows the process of star birth at a new level of detail. The bizarre landscape of the Nebula is sculpted by the action of outflying winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the center of the Nebula, we find Eta Karina, which is estimated to be 100 times more massive than our Sun. It is in the final stages of its brief eruptive lifespan, as shown by two billowing lobes of gas and dust that presage its forthcoming explosion as a Titanic supernova. Eta Karina was the site of a giant outburst about 150 years ago when it temporarily became one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. The star remains one of the great mysteries of stellar astronomy. Looking closer at the Nebula, we find a number of very interesting features. Pillars of gas and dust reveal unequivocal evidence that stars are being born inside the columns. Streamers of gas shoot out from the pillars and plow into the surrounding gas like a fire hose hitting a wall of sand. The jets are being launched from newly forming stars hidden inside the columns. Everywhere we find small nuggets of cold molecular hydrogen and dust called Boc globules that are silhouetted against the Nebula. Now the edges are glowing, which indicates that they are being irradiated by the hotter stars around. It has been hypothesized that stars may be forming inside these dusty cocoons. Since February 2007, Hubble has been operating with a reduced capability after one of its main cameras suffered a short circuit. A fifth servicing mission is however planned for September 2008 using NASA's Space Shuttle. Two new instruments will be installed and several other upgrades will be made. The Karina Nebula is just one example of what Hubble can do. Every day, Hubble generates 10 gigabytes of data that makes 30 terabytes over the 17 years of its lifetime. The Hubble archive is a real gold mine to astronomers in Europe and in the US. Every day, 66 gigabytes of data are being downloaded and absolutely everyone can get access to these riches via the internet. More than 7,000 scientific papers have been published based on Hubble observations. That makes Hubble one of the most productive scientific instruments ever. This is Dr. J signing off for the Hubblecast. Once again, nature is surprised us beyond our wildest imagination.