*Description*: Hubble's variable nebula is named (like the Hubble telescope itself) after the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who carried out some of the early studies of this object. It is a fan-shaped cloud of gas and dust which is illuminated by R Monocerotis (R Mon), the bright star at the bottom end of the nebula. Dense condensations of dust near the star cast shadows out into the nebula, and as they move the illumination changes, giving rise to the variations first noted by Hubble. The star itself, lying about 2,500 light-years from Earth, cannot be seen directly, but only through light scattered off of dust particles in the surrounding nebula. R Mon is believed to have a mass of about 10 times that of the Sun, and to have an age of only 300,000 years. There is probably a symmetrical counterpart of the fan-shaped nebula on the southern side of the star, but it is heavily obscured from view by dust lying between this lobe and our line of sight. The Hubble Heritage team made this image from observations of R Mon acquired by William Sparks (STScI), Sylvia Baggett (STScI) and collaborators. Technical facts about this news release: About the Object Object Name: Herbig-Haro 32 HH 32 Object Description: Herbig-Haro Object Position (J2000): R.A. 19h 20m 33.13s Dec. +11° 01' 20.09" Constellation: Aquila Distance: 300 pc (960 light-years) from Earth Dimensions: The image is 1.6 arcminutes on the vertical side. The end of the optical jet is 40" (~12,000 AU) from the central star. The total length of the bipolar outflow is about 0.17 parsecs or 0.54 light-years. About the Data Instrument: WFPC2 Exposure Date: August 25, 1994 Exposure Time: 3.8 hours Filters: Red: F675W (R), Green: F656N (H-alpha), Blue: F673N ([S II]) Principal Astronomers: S. Curiel, Jorge Cantó, Alejandro Raga (Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Alberto Noriega-Crespo (IPAC), and collaborators. About this Image Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Release Date: October 7, 1999 12:00 pm EDT Orientation: North is toward the left of the image. What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. To mark the first anniversary of the Hubble Heritage Project, we present four Hubble telescope images of nebulae surrounding stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Two of these visible-light pictures show interstellar gas and dust around young stars at the beginning of their lives, and two more show gas ejected from old stars that are nearing the end of theirs. Remarkably, in spite of the completely different evolutionary stages, the nebulae have more striking features in common, including evidence of diametrically opposed gas ejections from both the young and old stars. *News Release Number:*: STScI-1999-35c
