Over the last 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has brought us one stunning view of the universe after another.
To date, this school bus–sized telescope has observed more than 100 million objects. Its targets have ranged from comets in our solar system to galaxies that formed shortly after the Big Bang. In the last few years alone, Hubble has confirmed the first lone black hole and revealed new rocks created by a spacecraft-asteroid smashup.
Clearly, there’s still plenty of science for Hubble to do. And some data can’t be gathered with any other telescope — even Hubble’s younger sibling, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Simply put, Hubble has “been a huge asset,” says Peter Senchyna. He’s an astronomer at Carnegie Science Observatories in Pasadena, Calif.
Hubble launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. Astronauts shepherded it into low Earth orbit, and it’s been there ever since. The observatory wheels around Earth roughly 515 kilometers (320 miles) off the ground. From there, Hubble doesn’t have to peer through Earth’s blurry atmosphere. That offers it an almost completely clear view of the cosmos.
One thing Hubble can do that many telescopes can’t is collect ultraviolet, or UV, light. Celestial objects hotter than tens of thousands of degrees Celsius throw off a lot of this type of energy. So UV light is “telling us something about the hottest objects,” Senchyna says. Among them are massive stars and the chaotic regions near black holes.
Hubble also collects visible light — and near-infrared light that can’t be seen by the human eye. So experts must translate the telescope’s raw data into colorful images.
Those images tend to stick with people. Senchyna remembers seeing Hubble’s 1994 pictures of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter. At the time, he was just a few years old. “That was the sort of thing that got me hooked on astronomy,” he recalls.
Here are some other Hubble images that have captivated scientists and space fans alike.
A cosmic mash-up
NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt/UCLA
Astronomers discovered this puzzling asteroid in 2010. It appeared to have a cometlike tail of dust. Hubble revealed that the object, P/2010 A2, likely formed after two asteroids collided. It was the first time scientists had seen the aftermath of such a crash.
A light show on Jupiter
NASA, ESA and J. Nichols/Univ. of Leicester; Acknowledgment: A. Simon/GSFC/NASA and the OPAL team
An aurora near Jupiter’s north pole glows brightly in UV light. Hubble has revealed that Jupiter’s strong magnetic field makes its auroras especially intense and long-lasting, unlike those on Earth.
A solar system collision
NASA, R. Evans, J. Trauger, H. Hammel and the HST Comet Science Team
In July 1994, more than 20 fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 pelted Jupiter. The comet had been torn apart by Jupiter’s gravity. Over several days, Hubble captured the evolution of this titanic collision. (The bottom image was captured first, the top last).
In the throes of death
NASA, ESA and J. Kastner/RIT
This dying star in our Milky Way is nicknamed the Jewel Bug nebula. It earned that label for its resemblance to the vivid insect. As it dies, the star is shedding layers of gas and dust. Scientists think the intricate shapes seen here may be due to another star merging with the dying one.
Cosmic sculptor
NASA, ESA and STScI
The Lagoon nebula is a stellar nursery some 4,000 light-years from Earth. This image shows dust and gas being sculpted by a star roughly 30 times as massive as the sun. Different colors in the image represent four different wavelengths of light Hubble observed.
The image is one of Joe DePasquale’s favorites. He works on a team that processes Hubble data at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. “It’s a beautiful composition,” he says of the Lagoon nebula view. “The colors are amazing.”
A group of stellar youngsters
NASA, ESA and N. Bastian/Donostia International Physics Center, Gladys Kober/NASA
This star cluster is known as NGC 1850. Held together by the stars’ gravity, it lies in a galaxy near the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Unlike other clusters of its kind, this bunch contains fairly young stars. Hubble observed NGC 1850 in many wavelengths of light. But the UV wavelengths were especially useful in detecting the youngest, hottest stars.
Turbulent times
Hubble/ESA and NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
This spiral galaxy is officially known as NGC 4826. It’s also dubbed the Black Eye galaxy due to the dark band of dust covering part of it. Turbulent motions of gas within this galaxy are responsible for the birth of new stars. In this image, the newborn stars appear blue.
Filling in the blanks
R. Williams/STScI, the Hubble Deep Field Team, NASA, ESA
In 1995, Hubble took this picture of what, to the naked eye, looks like a speck of empty space. Scientists were astounded to discover that in fact it held thousands of yet-unseen galaxies in different stages of evolution.
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