Iconic Images
Since the Hubble Space Telescope opened its eye to the universe 30 years ago, it has uncovered some of the most breathtaking astronomical wonders ever seen. Seeing in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared, the telescope uses imaging and spectroscopy to deliver its wide-ranging discoveries. These capabilities are represented in the 30 iconic images below, which are just a tiny sampling of Hubble’s vast catalog.
Hubble reveals a colorful landscape of iridescent gases, streamers of dust, and brilliant, newborn stars in the giant red nebula NGC 2014. The blue ring of glowing oxygen at left is the neighboring nebula NGC 2020, formed by a torrential gaseous outflow from a lone, massive, super-hot star at its center.
The Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 4,000 light-years away, provides an extraordinary tapestry of star birth.
The newborn star in Herbig-Haro 24 (HH 24) is hidden from direct view, but jets blasting out along its rotation axis create a series of glowing shock fronts, revealing the new star’s presence.
Stars are being born deep inside the so-called Pillars of Creation, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust.
Hubble captured exquisite views of Saturn’s ring system and atmospheric details that once could only be provided by spacecraft visiting the distant world.
The Milky Way’s bulge is a crowded and dynamic region of variously aged stars zipping around at different speeds at the heart of our galaxy.
Hubble captured an enormous bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star.
This image of the Whirlpool Galaxy illustrates a spiral galaxy’s grand design, from its curving spiral arms to its yellowish central core.
Among Jupiter’s most striking features is the Great Red Spot, a storm rolling counterclockwise between two bands of clouds moving in opposite directions.
This immense galaxy cluster contains an astounding assortment of several hundred galaxies of various shapes tied together by the mutual pull of gravity. The enormous gravity of this massive cluster acts as a gravitational lens that magnifies and distorts the light of distant background galaxies.
The Crab Nebula is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion, which Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded nearly 1,000 years ago.
Hubble took spectral observations used to study the chemical makeup of the Southern Crab Nebula.
Westerlund 2, a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars, resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina.
The Orion Nebula is a crowded, nearby stellar nursery with a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape carved by the powerful ultraviolet light of hot, young, massive stars.
The giant, petulant star Eta Carinae has been prone to violent outbursts, including one that ejected material to form the bipolar bubbles seen here. Hubble’s unique ability to see ultraviolet light allowed astronomers to uncover the glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas (shown in blue) in places they had not seen it before.
Also known as M104, this galaxy has a dark dust lane, which we see almost edge on, along with a bright nucleus and an unusually large central bulge.
Hubble unveiled stunning details of the expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago.
In the Small Magellanic Cloud, newly formed stars are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region called NGC 602.
Hubble captured the tiny moon Phobos during its orbital trek around Mars in this time-lapse photo. The telescope has observed the solar system for 30 years, providing long-term information on the planets’ weather and satellites.
The Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion is a small, dark, dusty region that is part of a dense dust cloud along the edge of the much larger, active stellar nursery.
NGC 3603 is cluster of huge, hot stars located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina.
Hubble revealed the surprisingly intricate structures created by a dying star, including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas, and unusual shock-induced knots of gas.
This composite Hubble image features a deep and comprehensive view of nearly 10,000 galaxies taken in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths. The Webb telescope, with even more sensitive infrared detectors, will see further back in time to the earliest galaxies.
A dying star is at the center of these ‘dainty’ butterfly wings, which are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hubble’s resolution revealed never-before-seen details of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300’s arms, disk, bulge, and nucleus.
This Hubble mosaic unveils a roiling region of star birth in a small portion of the Monkey Head Nebula.
This merging pair of galaxies is one of the nearest and youngest examples of colliding galaxies.
Hubble viewed an expanding halo of light, called a light echo, around the distant star V838 Monocerotis. The telescope’s longevity allowed observations over many years, showing how the light echo traveled through space and time.
The interacting galaxy pair called Arp 273 features the rose-shaped disk of the larger galaxy, which is distorted by the gravitational pull of the companion galaxy below it.
This is a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula, where a maelstrom of star birth and death is occurring. The mosaic is stitched together from 48 individual Hubble images. The future WFIRST mission could cover twice this area in one pointing, giving a more complete understanding of what is happening in and around the nebula.
All of our iconic pictures—including the 30th Anniversary image—are also available as full-resolution posters on the Resources Page.
