Aug 19, 2010 10:00 GMT  ·  By

Experts operating the Hubble Space Telescope have recently snapped a series of new images of the impressive nebula IRAS 05437+2502, which looks more like a cosmic ghost than a stellar nursery.

The object is very faint, and also very distant, all while covering an area of the sky equal to roughly one eighteenth of the full Moon.

It features an impressive “nest” of bright stars and dark dust at its center, although astrophysicists are now having a hard time discovering the source of the brightness the nebula exhibits.

“Particularly enigmatic is the bright upside-down V that defines the upper edge of this floating mountain of interstellar dust, visible near the image center,” experts at NASA say.

“In general, this ghost-like nebula involves a small star forming region filled with dark dust that was first noted in images taken by the IRAS satellite in infrared light in 1983,” they add.

The new image was taken with the refurbished Hubble telescope, one of the most renowned icons of human space exploration, Space reports.

The instrument got a major overhaul last May, when astronauts flying aboard the space shuttle Atlantis conducted five spacewalks to repair or replace its instruments and other components.

Almost all scientific payloads were either repaired or upgraded, in a mission that lasted for nearly two weeks, and which cost about $1.3 billion.

Now, with its new eyes, gyroscopes and thermal blankets in places, it is estimated that Hubble will continue providing us with impressive new images for years to come.

It was launched on April 24, 1990 from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in California, aboard the space shuttle Discovery. The observatory has been in orbit for more than 7,400 days.

NASA experts say that it's only due to the new cameras on Hubble that the machine became capable of observing the faint IRAS 05437+2502, which is located in the constellation Taurus (the Bull).

But even Hubble could not pierce the formation's mystery, or why it is so bright.

“One hypothesis holds that the glowing arc was created by a massive star that somehow attained a high velocity and has now left the nebula,” the NASA team concludes.