Hubble Space Telescope - Highlights Over The Years

April 24, 2020
Credit: Image credit: NASA
The shuttle Discovery's seven astronauts, commanding Canada's robot arm, deployed the 43-foot-long Hubble Space Telescope one day after an April 24, 1990 launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Credit: Image credit: NASA
Observing with Hubble requires a strategy led by a control center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) to lead science operations. Both are in the Baltimore area. The imagery gathered by Hubble, in an orbit well above 300 miles altitude, is transmitted to NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, then to a ground station in White Sands, N. M., and forwarded on to the GSFC and the STSI.
Credit: Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)
Imaged in 2010 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, the Carina Nebula's Mystic Mountain is a three-light-year tall cosmic pinnacle comprised of colorful dust and gas that real signs of intense star forming activity.
Credit: Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko
NGC 2906 is a colorful galaxy imaged with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed during NASA's final space shuttle servicing mission to the space telescope in May 2009. The brilliant blue speckles depict clusters of massive, young stars burning through their fuel at an aggressive rate. The swaths of orange are a mix of aging stars that have swollen and cooled.
Credit: Image credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team
The Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation is considered one of Hubble's most iconic images. As seen in visible light, the pillars are comprised of dust and gas seared by radiation emitted by stars and eroded by strong stellar winds from nearby stars.
Credit: Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Evans
Galactic interation is part of the universe's often violent evolution. Galaxy UGC 2369 is actuall two galaxies being pulled together by gravity and distorting their spiral shapes initially with a tenous bridge of gas, dust and stars. Typically, large galaxies like the Milky Way merge with smaller star systems. Every few billion years large galaxies meet the same fate.
Credit: Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley).
This image by Hubble on June 27, 2019 reveals not only giant Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot but also a more intense array of colors swirling in the planet's turbulent atmosphere than seen in recent years. The Earth and Jupiter were in opposition, or about 400 million miles apart when this image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
Credit: Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Caltech/P.Ogle et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA.
Well known in its own right, the Hubble Space Telescope is also a team player. This image of NGC 4258 reveals a galaxy 23 million light years away sporting a giant black hole, shock waves and massive amounts of glowing gas. The composite image includes detail from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue, radio data from the National Science Foundation's Karl Jansky Very Large Array in purple, visible data from Hubble in yellow and data in infrared from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shown in red.
Credit: Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Wade.
NGC 2022, is a planetary nebula that resides in the constellation Orion. While its designation comes from its rounded planet-like appearance, NGC 2022 is a star that has grown old, a red giant casting off its outer layers into space, while its core shrinks, emitting ultraviolet light that causes the gases to glow.
Credit: Image credit:NASA, ESA, and STScI.
The Southern Crab Nebula, officially known as Hen 2-104, resides several thousand light years away in the constellation Centaurus. This 2019 image from the Hubble Space Telescope, a composite of different colored images taken with the observatory's Wide Field Camera 3, reveals an aging red giant star and a burned out white dwarf star both embedded in a flat disk of gas.

The Hubble Space Telescope marked its 30th year in orbit on April 24, 2020. Here's a sampling from Hubble's photo album, including the April 25, 1990, day after launch deployment; an illustration depicting how Hubble transmits its images and a selection of colorful observations over the years. 

 

Image credit: NASA