This brilliant image of stars, glowing gas, and interstellar dust shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. Released in 2005, this image is so big that two adjacent pointings of Hubble were necessary to capture the whole thing. Barred spirals differ from normal spiral galaxies in that the arms of the galaxy do not curve all the way into the core, but are connected to the two ends of a straight bar of stars containing the nucleus at its center. We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio! Image description: A galaxy spreads across the image, with a wide central bar of stars shining in hazy beige. Spiral arms glowing with white-blue stars and dark brown dust surround it. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: P. Knezek (WIYN) #Hubble35 #NASA #Hubble #galaxy #space #stars #science #astronomy #universe #cosmos

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1 days ago

Welcome to the Helix Nebula! This gorgeous nebula image, captured during Hubble's 14th year, is a composite with data from the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The portrait offers a dizzying look down what is actually a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases. The fluorescing tube is pointed nearly directly at Earth, so it looks more like a bubble than a cylinder. Thousands of comet-like filaments, embedded along the inner rim of the nebula, point back toward the central star, which is a small, super-hot white dwarf. We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio! Image description: Almost resembling an eye, a circular region of glowing blue gas is ringed in yellow gas, surrounded by a football-shaped red region. The nebula shines against black space dotted with stars. Image credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO) #Hubble35 #NASA #Hubble #nebula #space #astronomy #universe #cosmos #telescope #astrophotography

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2 days ago

A group of galaxies is locked in a dance of destruction. Called Seyfert's Sextet, this galactic vista was captured by Hubble in its 13th year. The galaxies are so tightly packed together that gravitational forces are beginning to rip stars from them and distort their shapes. Those same gravitational forces eventually could bring the galaxies together to form one large galaxy. Seyfert's Sextet isn't a super accurate nickname, though. Rather than six, only four galaxies are actually on the dance card. The small face-on spiral with the prominent arms (at center) is a background galaxy almost five times farther away than the other four. The sixth member of the sextet isn't a galaxy at all but a long "tidal tail" of stars (lower right) torn from one of the galaxies. The group resides 190 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens. We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio! Image description: A group of galaxies shines against black space. The lower galaxies are hazy yellow, with a spiral galaxy above them. To that spiral's upper left are another hazy yellow galaxy and an edge-on spiral galaxy. Against the black background of space, more distant galaxies shine, along with some foreground stars. Image credit: Image: NASA, J. English (U. Manitoba), S. Hunsberger, S. Zonak, J. Charlton, S. Gallagher (PSU), and L. Frattare (STScI); Science: NASA, C. Palma, S. Zonak, S. Hunsberger, J. Charlton, S. Gallagher, P. Durrell (The Pennsylvania State University) and J. English (University of Manitoba) #Hubble35 #NASA #Hubble #space #science #galaxy #universe #cosmos #telescope #astronomy

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3 days ago

The ice-giant planet Uranus, which travels around the Sun tipped on its side, is a weird and mysterious world. Now, in an unprecedented study spanning two decades, researchers using Hubble have uncovered new insights into the planet's atmospheric composition and dynamics. This was possible only because of Hubble’s sharp resolution, spectral capabilities, and longevity. The team’s results will help astronomers to better understand how the atmosphere of Uranus works and responds to changing sunlight. These long-term observations provide valuable data for understanding the atmospheric dynamics of this distant ice giant, which can serve as a proxy for studying exoplanets of similar size and composition. Find out more at the link in our bio! Image description: Graphic titled “Hubble Space Telescope – Observations of Uranus,” with 16 images of Uranus, arranged in a 4 by 4 grid showing changes in appearance of Uranus as observed by Hubble between 2002 and 2022. Columns are labeled with observation year, from left to right: 2002; 2012; 2015; and 2022. Rows are labeled from top to bottom: visible light; visible and near infrared; aerosols/haze; and methane depletion. In the visible light images in the top row, Uranus appears blue-green with faint vertical bends of slightly lighter or darker color. In the visible and near infrared images in the second row, Uranus is very colorful, with deep neon blue to neon green bands within an orange-red glow that outlines the edge of the planet. In the two bottom rows of images, Uranus appears in grayscale, with vertical bands ranging from dark gray to almost white. All four rows of images show changes from observation to observation (left to right). For a given year, all four images in the column show similar banding patterns. Image credit: NASA, ESA, Erich Karkoschka (LPL) #NASA #Hubble #news #Uranus #planets #space #science #astronomy #universe #cosmos

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3 days ago

Hi, Mars! 👋 In Hubble's 12th year, the telescope got a great look of the Red Planet when it was 43 million miles from Earth – the closest it'd been since 1988. This view shows frosty, white water-ice clouds and a large amount of swirling orange dust storms. A large storm rages high above the northern polar cap (top of the image), with a smaller one nearby. Another large dust storm can be seen in the giant Hellas impact basin, in the lower right of the image. We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio! Image description: The planet Mars appears with icy, white polar caps and a large swathe of rusty red desert. Dark brown dust is seen throughout the planet's surface. Image credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: J. Bell (Cornell U.), P. James (U. Toledo), M. Wolff (SSI), A. Lubenow (STScI), J. Neubert (MIT/Cornell) #Hubble35 #NASA #Hubble #Mars #planet #space #science #exploration #astronomy #universe

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3 days ago

The Spirograph Nebula is a stunning planetary nebula about 2,000 light-years from Earth. Seen in this image from Hubble's 11th year, a nebula of this type shows the final stages of a star’s life – a fate our Sun will face in about 5 billion years. The star at the center of the Spirograph Nebula was a red giant a few thousand years ago, but then it shed its outer layers into space to form this nebula, which now has a diameter of about 0.1 light-year. Over the next several thousand years, the nebula will disperse and the star will cool and fade away as a white dwarf. We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio! Image description: A pink star is surrounded by a purple, elliptical ring of glowing gas, which is in turn surrounded by mauve and orange rings of gas, all against black space. Image credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: Dr. Raghvendra Sahai (JPL) and Dr. Arsen R. Hajian (USNO) #Hubble35 #NASA #Hubble #nebula #space #science #astronomy #stars #astronomy #cosmos

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5 days ago

Messier 35 doesn’t look a day over 150,000,000! This (relatively!) young star cluster contains about 400 members. These two Hubble views capture portions of M35, which belongs to the constellation Gemini. Open star clusters like this one are loosely gravitationally bound together. They tend to form from the same cloud of gas and dust, so their stars share characteristics like age and chemical composition, which helps astronomers study how stars form and evolve. With M35, Hubble’s 2025 #MessierMarathon comes to a close! While some stargazers look up tonight to observe objects from the Messier catalog, you can also take a journey through Hubble’s Messier views at the link in our bio. Image description: A loosely concentrated group of stars shines against black space. Most of the stars have diffraction spikes, and range in shades of white and orange. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Nelan (Space Telescope Science Institute), A. Riess (The Johns Hopkins University), J. Rhodes (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) ; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) #NASA #Hubble #stars #space #science #astronomy #universe #cosmos #stargazing

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5 days ago

Galaxies galore! Released in 2000, this Hubble image shows a whole cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2218. Located about two billion light-years away, Abell 2218 works as a sort of giant, cosmic magnifying glass. This galaxy cluster's gravitational field is so immense that it literally bends and magnifies the path of light from cosmic objects located behind it. This effect is seen as the warped lines of light throughout the image. We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio! Image description: Several yellow galaxies shine against black space. Warped lines of light seen throughout are examples of gravitational lensing. Image credit: NASA, Andrew Fruchter and the ERO Team [Sylvia Baggett (STScI), Richard Hook (ST-ECF), Zoltan Levay (STScI)] (STScI) #Hubble35 #NASA #Hubble #space #galaxy #science #astronomy #universe #cosmos #telescope

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6 days ago

This expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star, is known as the Southern Ring Nebula. Imaged by Hubble in its ninth year, this nebula stretches about half a light-year across, and resides about 2000 light-years away. The gases are expanding away from the central star at a speed of 9 miles per second! We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio! Image description: A bright white star at center is surrounded by a glowing ring of green gas, which is surrounded by yellow and brown gas. Image credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA) #Hubble35 #NASA #Hubble #space #nebula #science #astronomy #telescope #universe #cosmos

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6 days ago