14 DAY TRIAL // This impressive view of the Veil Nebula was pieced together from observations carried out with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, in November 1994 and August 1997. For an image captured between 18 and 15 years ago, the quality is impressive.
The view was snapped using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFC2), an instrument that has since been removed from Hubble, and replaced with the more advanced Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
The switch was performed by NASA astronauts during the STS-125 mission, which featured shuttle Atlantis. Over the course of its life, the telescope was serviced five times total. The idea NASA had, of building a telescope that could receive visits from its orbiters, apparently paid off.
These repair missions are partially what allowed Hubble to endure for all these years, and to continue amazing us with its images more than 22 years after it was deployed to space by shuttle Discovery, during the STS-31 mission.