Full Trifid Nebula (Rubin Image with Hubble Close-up)

At left is a complete view of the Trifid Nebula ( Messier 20 or M20 ) captured by the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. A white box in the lower-left portion of the pink region shows the area NASA's Hubble Space Telescope targeted, and Hubble’s new image is featured at right.

Rubin’s field of view is approximately 56 light-years across, while Hubble’s is about four light-years across.

The color assignments in the images vary based on the filters in the telescopes’ cameras. Rubin takes broadband images, which capture the full visible spectrum to show natural colors in red, green, and blue. For this image, Hubble captured narrowband images of specific chemical elements. Sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen were mapped to red, green, and blue, respectively, to make this composite image.

About the colours

The image on the right was acquired by the WFC3/UVIS instrument on Hubble. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to a monochromatic (grayscale) image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F502N, Green: F656N, Red: F673N

About the data

These images were created with Hubble data from proposal: 18209 (C. Britt).