Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in April 1990 and serviced in orbit by five shuttle crews. The Pillars of Creation, the Deep Field, and the astronauts who kept it working.

26 photographs · 1990 to 2020 · Mission 9 of 14
26 photographs
The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, Hubble, 2 November 1995
Hubble · 2 November 1995OPO9544A

The Pillars of Creation

Paul Scowen laid the separate frames out on a table, saw what they made, and telephoned Jeff Hester to come at once.
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A gas and dust tower in the Eagle Nebula, Hubble Space Telescope, 25 April 2005
Hubble Space Telescope · 25 April 2005HEIC0506B

Nine Light Years Tall

A spire of cold gas standing out of the Eagle Nebula, about twice as long as the gap between the Sun and its nearest neighbouring star.
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Star cluster Westerlund 2 in the nebula Gum 29, Hubble, 23 April 2015
Hubble · 23 April 2015HEIC1509A

Two Million Years Old

Which, for a cluster of three thousand stars, counts as newborn.
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The Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, in Scorpius, Hubble Space Telescope, 9 September 2009
Hubble Space Telescope · 9 September 2009HEIC0910H

The Star You Cannot See

NGC 6302 in Scorpius. A ring of dust around the dying star hides it completely and pinches its outflow into two lobes.
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Edge on galaxy NGC 5866 with its dust lane, Hubble Space Telescope, 8 June 2006
Hubble Space Telescope · 8 June 2006OPO0624A

Split by Its Own Dust

NGC 5866 in Draco, seen so exactly along the plane of its disc that the dust in that disc reads as a single line.
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Newborn star cluster in NGC 346, Hubble, 10 November 2005
Hubble · 10 November 2005HEIC0514A

Not Yet Burning

Stars so young they have not begun to fuse hydrogen.
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Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, seen face on, Hubble Space Telescope, 28 February 2006
Hubble Space Telescope · 28 February 2006HEIC0602A

A Trillion Stars

Messier 101, nearly twice the width of the Milky Way. The portrait was assembled from 51 Hubble exposures originally made for four unrelated studies.
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Sharp core of galaxy M100 after the repair, Endeavour, 13 January 1994
Endeavour · 13 January 1994OPO9401C

The Repair That Worked

The same galaxy, the same telescope, thirty-four days later.
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A wider, sharper view of the Pillars of Creation, Hubble Space Telescope, 5 January 2015
Hubble Space Telescope · 5 January 2015HEIC1501A

Back for Another Look

Hubble returned to the same three columns nineteen years later. In the gap, a jet from a newborn star had grown sixty billion miles longer.
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Star forming regions NGC 2014 and NGC 2020, Hubble Space Telescope, 24 April 2020
Hubble Space Telescope · 24 April 2020HEIC2007A

The Cosmic Reef

The small blue nebula at lower left is the work of a single star, fifteen times the mass of the Sun, that threw off its own outer layers.
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Close to 10,000 galaxies in the Ultra Deep Field, Hubble Space Telescope, 9 March 2004
Hubble Space Telescope · 9 March 2004HEIC0406A

Ten Thousand Galaxies

Almost every point of light in this frame is a galaxy, not a star.
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Gravitational lensing arcs in galaxy cluster Abell 2218, Hubble Space Telescope, 24 July 2008
Hubble Space Telescope · 24 July 2008HEIC0814A

Space Bends Here

The thin blue curves are whole galaxies lying far behind the cluster, stretched by the mass in front of them. Several appear more than once.
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Spiral galaxy NGC 3717 seen almost edge on, Hubble Space Telescope, 7 October 2019
Hubble Space Telescope · 7 October 2019POTW1940A

Sixty Million Light Years

NGC 3717, a spiral galaxy in Hydra, tilted just far enough off edge on that its disc and its central bulge appear together.
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Blurred core of galaxy M100 before the repair, Hubble Space Telescope, 13 January 1994
Hubble Space Telescope · 13 January 1994OPO9401B

Out of Focus

The galaxy M100, photographed by Hubble five days before the crew that would fix the telescope left the ground.
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Light echo around the star V838 Monocerotis, Hubble Space Telescope, 4 March 2004
Hubble Space Telescope · 4 March 2004HEIC0405A

Nothing Here Is Expanding

The star flared once in early 2002 and went quiet within weeks. What appears to spread is only that flash, reaching dust further and further out.
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Around 3,000 galaxies in a tiny patch of sky, Hubble Space Telescope, 15 January 1996
Hubble Space Telescope · 15 January 1996OPO9601A

He Risked His Job

Robert Williams spent his own director's observing time on a patch of sky his colleagues told him was a waste.
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Mystic Mountain pillar and jets in the Carina Nebula, Hubble Space Telescope, 23 April 2010
Hubble Space Telescope · 23 April 2010HEIC1007A

Mystic Mountain

Two jets leave the peaks sideways. They are fired by stars still forming inside the column, and they are catalogued as HH 901 and HH 902.
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Four interacting galaxies in Stephan's Quintet, Hubble Space Telescope, 9 September 2009
Hubble Space Telescope · 9 September 2009HEIC0910I

Four Galaxies Colliding

A fifth galaxy sits in the same frame and takes no part in it. It is about seven times closer to us, lined up by chance.
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The Bubble Nebula, NGC 7635, in Cassiopeia, Hubble Space Telescope, 21 April 2016
Hubble Space Telescope · 21 April 2016HEIC1608A

Blown From the Inside

One star, forty-five times the mass of the Sun, has inflated a shell seven light years across. It sits at ten o'clock on the rim, not at the middle.
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The dust lane of galaxy Centaurus A, Hubble Space Telescope, 16 June 2011
Hubble Space Telescope · 16 June 2011HEIC1110A

A Swallowed Spiral

The dark band crossing this galaxy is another galaxy, taken in and pulled apart.
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The top of the Cone Nebula, Columbia, 30 April 2002
Columbia · 30 April 2002HEIC0206F

A Pillar Wearing Away

The Cone Nebula in Monoceros. Ultraviolet light from a hot young star just above the top of the frame has been eroding it for millions of years.
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Story Musgrave holding a handrail on the telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, 5 December 1993
Hubble Space Telescope · 5 December 1993STS061-104-007

Built to Be Held

Hubble was covered in handrails. The people who built it knew somebody would one day have to grip it.
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Reflection nebula NGC 1999 with its dark keyhole, Hubble Space Telescope, 2 March 2000
Hubble Space Telescope · 2 March 2000OPO0010A

A Hole in Orion

The dark keyhole was read as a dense cloud for decades. In 2010 the Herschel telescope looked through it and found nothing there.
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Hubble berthed in the payload bay of Endeavour, Hubble Space Telescope, 4 December 1993
Hubble Space Telescope · 4 December 1993STS061-86-030

With Inches to Spare

A telescope 14 feet across, brought into a bay 15 feet wide on the end of a robot arm.
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The space telescope on Discovery's robotic arm before release, Discovery, 25 April 1990
Discovery · 25 April 1990STS031-76-026

Letting Go of Hubble

Steve Hawley lifted it out of the payload bay 380 miles up, higher than a shuttle had ever flown.
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Asteroid trails across galaxy cluster Abell 370, Hubble Space Telescope
Hubble Space Telescope · 2 November 2017OPO1733B

Asteroids in the Frame

The pale curved streaks are rocks in our own solar system, crossing in front of a galaxy cluster four billion light years away.
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The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in April 1990 and serviced in orbit by five shuttle crews. The Pillars of Creation, the Deep Field, and the astronauts who kept it working.

26 photographs · 1990 to 2020 · Mission 9 of 14
About Hubble

Hubble was carried to orbit by Discovery and released on 25 April 1990. Its first images were blurred by a flaw in the main mirror, and the first servicing crew corrected it in December 1993: this collection holds the galaxy M100 before and after. It also holds the Pillars of Creation of 1995 and Hubble's return to them in 2014, the Hubble Deep Field, Mystic Mountain, the Cosmic Reef and Messier 101. The shuttle crews are here too, with the telescope in their hands.