Hubble captures a corner of M20

In its 36th year of operation, the Hubble Space Telescope is still going strong, evidenced by this newly released image of the Trifid Nebula. | Published: August 17, 2026 Credit: NASA, ESA, STSCI Life in space is hard. Most orbiting observatories retire well before their 20th birthday. Yet the Hubble Space Telescope has survived and continues to thrive well into its 30s. Astronomers celebrated the observatory’s 36th birthday in April by releasing a new image of the Trifid Nebula (M20). This stellar nursery lies about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The photo captures a small area southeast of the Trifid’s center. Several massive stars located off the top of the image have been sculpting the nebula for at least 300,000 years. High-energy ultraviolet radiation from these behemoths ionizes and erodes the gaseous pillar that dominates the view’s left side. The bright streak shooting from the pillar’s head is a high-powered jet ejected by a hidden protostar. Richard Talcott is a contributing editor for Astronomy. He brings to the magazine a lifelong interest in the science of astronomy as well as in observing the night sky.