Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well-known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. Hubble has sent us such pictures from this macrocosm that we believe our universe is not only intensely far-out, but also almost impossibly dazzling. We have collected here the finest picture collection from 20 years of Hubble telescoping.
1. Crab Nebula
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The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant, all that remains of a tremendous stellar explosion. Observers in China and Japan recorded the supernova nearly 1,000 years ago, in 1054.
2. Antennae Galaxies
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These two spiral galaxies, drawn together by gravity, started to interact a few hundred million years ago. The Antennae Galaxies are the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies.
3. Supergiant Star V838
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V838 Monocerotis is a red variable star in the constellation Monoceros about 20,000 light years from the Sun. Also known as Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the Vincent van Gogh canvas. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way.
4. Bug Nebula
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Gas released by a dying star races across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour, forming the delicate shape of a celestial butterfly. This nebula is also known as NGC 6302 or the Bug Nebula.
5. Mystic Moutain
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Hubble’s 20th anniversary image shows a mountain of dust and gas rising in the Carina Nebula . The top of a three-light-year tall pillar of cool hydrogen is being worn away by the radiation of nearby stars, while stars within the pillar unleash jets of gas that stream from the peaks.
6. Cigar Galaxy
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Messier 82 or Cigar Galaxy is a prototypenearby starburst galaxy about 12 million light-years away which is five times as bright as the whole Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy’s center.
7. Ant Nebula
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Technical name Mz 3 , is a young bipolar planetary nebula made of gaseous dusty clouds that are composed of a bright core and four distinct high-velocity outflows that have been named lobes and seems to resemble an ant. The nebula lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth.
8. Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme
This image, released for Hubble’s 17th anniversary, shows a region of star birth and death in the Carina Nebula. The nebula contains at least a dozen brilliant stars that are 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun.
9. Firestorm of Star Birth In Galaxy NGC 604
10. Helix Nebula
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Discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding , probably before 1824, this object is one of the closest to the Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae. The estimated distance is about 700 light-years. It is very famous being similar to the “The Sauron’s Great Eye from Lord of the Rings”
