It is launched in April 1990. NASA’s Hubble Telescope has revolutionized astronomy and inspired a generation with its magnificent views of the universe. Today Hubble Space Telescope is 20 years old so i decided to post those images which are taken by Hubble.
Pillars in the Carina Nebula
Hubble’s 20th anniversary image of a three-light-year-tall mountain of gas and dust shows gas jets, fired by infant stars within the pillar.
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This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” or a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your imagination. The NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is even more dramatic than fiction, captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks.Globular Star Clusters
Globular Star Clusters , home to hundreds of thousands of stars held together by gravity, is one of the densest clusters in the Milky Way.
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The globular clusters , one of the brightest Milky Way globular star clusters. This cluster, seen near the Small Magellanic Cloud in the sky, and at a distance of 4.6 kpc (15000 light years) from us and 7.3 kpc (23800 light years) from the Galactic Center, likely contains about 1 million stars. Its optical half-light radius is 2.79´, or only 3.7 pc; the stars in globular clusters, such as 47 Tuc, are clearly densely packed. This cluster is known to be typically metal-rich, relative to many other globular clusters. Globular clusters formed early in the Galaxy’s history and, therefore, must have been chemically enriched by massive short-lived stars.
Star Cluster NGC 602
Newly formed stars carve a cavity in the center of a star-forming region of the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA)
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Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies the young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is featured in this Hubble image of the region. Fantastic ridges and undulating shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602′s massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from the cluster’s center. At the estimated distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud, the picture spans about 200 light-years, but a tantalizing assortment of background galaxies are also visible in the sharp Hubble view. The background galaxies are hundreds of millions of light-years or more beyond NGC 602.
Gas Pillars in the Eagle Nebula
Pillars of gas in the Eagle Nebula are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation. Embryonic stars form inside the pillars.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)
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The pillars are in some ways akin to buttes in the desert, where basalt and other dense rock have protected a region from erosion, while the surrounding landscape has been worn away over millennia. In this celestial case, it is especially dense clouds of molecular hydrogen gas (two atoms of hydrogen in each molecule) and dust that have survived longer than their surroundings in the face of a flood of ultraviolet light from hot, massive newborn stars (off the top edge of the picture). This process is called “photoevaporation. “This ultraviolet light is also responsible for illuminating the convoluted surfaces of the columns and the ghostly streamers of gas boiling away from their surfaces, producing the dramatic visual effects that highlight the three-dimensional nature of the clouds. The tallest pillar (left) is about about 4 light-years long from base to tip.The Butterfly Nebula NGC 6302
Gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit tears across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour to form the butterfly-shaped nebula.
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Ordinary stars like our Sun live undistinguished lives. They steadily churn out heat and light for billions of years. Oddly enough, their lives become more exciting when they run out of hydrogen fuel and reach retirement age. This is when these stars begin to stand out. As the fuel is exhausted, they first expand to enormous sizes, becoming what are called “red giants.” Then they shed their outer layers into space, producing the beautiful shapes of planetary nebulae. Finally, the remnant star at the center settles down into an object about the size of the Earth, called a “white dwarf.”
The Butterfly Nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, was ejected from a dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun. After about 100 million years, it exhausted its nuclear fuel, and has recently ejected its outer layers. Now the remnant star at the center is unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the ejected material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.
The Butterfly Nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, was ejected from a dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun. After about 100 million years, it exhausted its nuclear fuel, and has recently ejected its outer layers. Now the remnant star at the center is unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the ejected material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.
Sombrero Galaxy
The Sombrero Galaxy, home to a supermassive black hole and a rich system of nearly 2,000 globular clusters, is seen nearly edge-on from Earth’s perspective.
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Hubble Space Telescope has trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the universe’s most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy’s hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat.
Interacting Galaxies “The Mice”
Streamers of stars and gas emanate from two colliding galaxies known as “The Mice,” which will merge into one galaxy in about 500 million years.
Image Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA
Hubble Ultra Deep Field
This view of nearly 100,000 galaxies captures the faintest visible-light details of the universe ever seen. It reveals billions of light years of galactic history.
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Galaxies, galaxies everywhere – as far as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope can see. This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, this galaxy-studded view represents a “deep” core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years.The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies – the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals – thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion years old.
Hubble Ultra Deep Field 3D
What happens when you point the Hubble Space Telescope to a seemingly blank patch of sky? A view that takes you to the edge of the universe!
Carina Nebula
A 50-light-year-wide view of the Carina Nebula shows a maelstrom of star birth and death.
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