Hubble Gallery: 20 Years of Awe

Since its launch into space on April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been instrumental in improving human understanding of the vast universe around us. In new pictures released by NASA on the 20th anniversary of Hubble, scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from super-hot newborn stars in the Carina Nebula can be seen shaping and compressing a pillar of gas, causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of hot ionized gas can be seen flowing off the ridges of the structure, and wispy veils of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its towering peaks.

Wide View of 'Mystic Mountain'

Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed the pillar on Feb. 1-2, 2010. The colors in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red).

Carina Nebula Close-Ups

Close-up views of complex gas structures within a small portion of the Carina Nebula. Predominantly hydrogen gas, the nebula is laced with dust (making it opaque) and is being eroded by ultraviolet light from young stars in the region. In upper left, a 3.5-trillion-mile-long horizontal jet is being blasted into space by a young star hidden in the tip of the pillar-like structure.

"Landscape" in the Carina Nebula

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this billowing cloud of cold interstellar gas and dust rising from a tempestuous stellar nursery located in the Carina Nebula, 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. This pillar of dust and gas serves as an incubator for new stars and is teeming with new star-forming activity.

Infrared View of Pillar and Jets HH 901/902

Hickson Compact Group 31

In this composite image of four dwarf galaxies in the Hickson Compact Group 31 (only 166 million light-years away), the bright, distorted object at middle/left is actually two dwarf galaxies colliding head-on, producing a debris field of star clusters. The cigar-shaped object above the galaxy duo is another member of the group. At lower right, a long rope of bright star clusters points to the fourth member of the group. The image was composed from observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX).

Saturn

Saturn's rings are photographed in a rare opportunity to view them edge-on. The image taken in early 2009 also reveals a light show of aurorae at the planet's poles.

Pluto

NASA/ESA/M. Buie, Southwest Research Institute

The most detailed view to date of the surface of Pluto, released in February, was constructed from multiple NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken between 2002 and 2003. The white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black colors, not clear enough to reveal craters or terrain, is believed to result from ultraviolet radiation from the Sun breaking up methane on Pluto's surface. A closer view will be afforded by NASA's New Horizons probe, scheduled to fly by the planet in 2015.

A Tail to Tell

Comets typically orbit stars, whose solar flares produce the comets' brilliant tails. So what is this object doing within the asteroid belt? Discovered on January 6, 2010 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey, Hubble was used to take a close-up look, and its observations showed a bizarre X-pattern of filamentary structures near the nucleus of the object, suggesting it is not a comet but instead the product of two asteroids that collided head-on.

NGC 2976

Spiral galaxy NGC 2976 is not typical — there are no obvious spiral arms, no clear spiral structure, and neighboring galaxies have stripped away some gas, which means the system's outer regions stopped producing stars while star-birthing is concentrated in the core. The blue dots are fledgling blue giant stars residing in the remaining active star-birth regions. NGC 2976, located on the fringe of the M81 group of galaxies in the constellation Ursa Major, is about 12 million light-years away from Earth.

Panorama

This panoramic, full-color view of 7,500 galaxies, from mosaics taken by Hubble in 2004 and 2009 and released in January 2010, stretching back through most of the universe's history. The closest galaxies emitted their observed light about a billion years ago; the farthest (a few of the very faint red specks) are seen as they appeared more than 13 billion years ago, roughly 650 million years after the Big Bang. This panorama is equal to about a third of the diameter of the full Moon (or 10 arcminutes), a tiny portion of the southern field — part of a large galaxy census called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS).

30 Doradus Nebula

Brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds are seen in this young stellar grouping, R136, residing in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 170,000 light-years away. Many of the icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known — several over 100 times more massive than our Sun.

Side View

Galaxy NGC 4710 presents a nearly edge-on view to us, allowing astronomers to easily distinguish the central bulge of stars from its flat disk of stars, dust, and gas. The ghostly "X" pattern of stars is due to their inclined orbits in the galaxy's central bar-like structure. Located 65 million light-years away, NGC 4710 is a member of the giant Virgo Cluster of galaxies. This natural-color photo was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys on January 15, 2006, and released last December.

Hydra

This spectacular view of spiral galaxy M83, located 15 million light-years away in the Southern constellation Hydra, offers the most detailed view of star birth in its graceful, curving arms. Nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel, M83 is undergoing more rapid star formation than our own Milky Way galaxy, especially in its nucleus. Young stars, only a few million years old, burst out of their "cocoons," producing bubbles of reddish-glowing hydrogen gas. The remnants of about 60 supernova explosions can also be seen.