April 24, 1990 – The Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off from Cape Canaveral, carrying the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit.
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Hubble Space Telescope near Earth’s horizon, as seen from the Space Shuttle Columbia, March 9, 2002. (NASA)
May 11, 2009 — The Space Shuttle Atlantis blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, heading to orbit for an 11-day mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
(NASA)
Behold supernova remnant SN 1987A, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in January 2017. (ESA)
Sharpest View of the Andromeda Galaxy, Ever.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest and biggest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — a whopping 69,536 x 22,230 pixels. The enormous image is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40,000 light-years.
Use the ZOOM TOOL to view in full detail.
(WARNING: May cause existential crisis)
OH THAT’S NOT NOISE IT’S STARS …… YEESH
SO MANY STARS. SO MUCH POSSIBILITY FOR LIFE.
JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN’T READ, THAT’S 100 MILLION STARS. THIS IS A COMPILATION OF OVER 400 HUBBLE PHOTOGRAPHS. THIS IS MY FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH OF ALL TIME.
space is so cool
Now, this is neat. Make sure to zoom in.
Pew! Pew! Pew!
Imagine slow-motion fireworks that started exploding 170 years ago and are still continuing. This type of firework is not launched into Earth’s atmosphere, but rather into space by a doomed super-massive star, called Eta Carinae.
Enjoy the the latest view from our Hubble Space Telescope.
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Not all galaxies are lonely. Some have galaxy squads.
NGC 1706, captured in this image by our Hubble Space Telescope, belongs to something known as a galaxy group, which is just as the name suggests — a group of up to 50 galaxies which are gravitationally bound and relatively close to each other. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has its own squad — known as the Local Group, which also contains the Andromeda galaxy, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds and the Triangulum galaxy.
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Say hello to the Helix Nebula 👋
In 2001 and 2002, our Hubble Space Telescope looked at the Helix Nebula and it looked right back! This planetary nebula is right in our cosmic neighborhood, only about 650 light-years away. Gigantic for this type of cosmic object, the Helix Nebula stretches across 2 to 3 light-years.
With no actual connection to planets, planetary nebulas like this one are produced when a medium-mass star dies and sloughs off its outer layers. These gaseous layers are expelled into space at astonishing speeds where they light up like fireworks. The Helix Nebula is one of the closest planetary nebulas to Earth, giving scientists an up-close view of its strange affairs.
Through Hubble’s observations, scientists have learned that the Helix Nebula isn’t doughnut-shaped as it appears. Instead it consists of two disks that are nearly perpendicular to each other — the nebula looks like an eye and bulges out like one too!
Hubble has also imaged comet-like tendrils that form a pattern around the central star like the spokes on a wagon wheel, likely resulting from a collision between gases. The dying star spews hot gas from its surface, which crashes into the cooler gas that it ejected 10,000 years before. Eventually the knots will dissipate into the cold blackness of interstellar space.
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Say hello to the Carina Nebula 👋
One of the largest panoramic images ever taken with our Hubble Space Telescope’s cameras, this image features a stunning 50-light-year-wide view of the intense central region of the Carina Nebula - a strange stellar nursery. The nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. The Carina Nebula lies within our own galaxy, about 7,500 light-years away.
At the heart of the nebula is Eta Carinae — a system of two stars. The larger star, Eta Car A, is around 100 times as massive as the Sun and 5 million times as luminous! Stars of this size are extremely rare; our galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of stars, but only tens of them are as massive as Eta Car A.
This view of the Carina Nebula provided astronomers the opportunity to explore the process of star birth at a new level of detail. The hurricane-strength blast of stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation within the cavity are now compressing the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen. This is triggering a second stage of new star formation. Hubble has also enabled scientists to generate 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the interactions between the Eta Carinae star system.
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Behold the Omega Nebula, aka the Swan Nebula, Checkmark Nebula, Lobster Nebula, and the Horseshoe Nebula. It lies about 5,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. (Sources: Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), Hubble Space Telescope; processing by Robert Gendler & Roberto Colombari)
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