Space Swoon: NASA drops Lagoon Nebula fly-through live shots to celebrate its 28th Anniversary

I say, goddamn. To celebrate its 28th anniversary, NASA has dropped a “fly through” video of the Lagoon Nebula. It’s about as cosmically pornographic as you’d expect, too.

io9:

NASA has released incredible new images of the Lagoon Nebula taken by the Hubble space telescope, in honor of its 28th anniversary and presumably 4/20. Dude… have you ever like… thought about how small we are… and how big the universe is…?

These images show the Lagoon Nebula, just 4,000 light-years away, in intense detail. Hubble imaged the star-forming region both in visible light and infrared, with the latter allowing scientists to cut through the dust to peer at the stars forming inside. And the new views really show off Hubble’s abilities.

The Hubble spacecraft first launched in in 1990, and from its orbit around Earth it captures both visible and infrared light to study the night sky. It takes images in single wavelengths, which represent light emissions from different species of atoms. Scientists then process these images by mapping each light emission to a different color in order to create the image you’re seeing. More about that here.