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
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
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
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
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
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
Messier 82 or Cigar Galaxy is a prototype nearby 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
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
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”
11. Southern Pinwheel
Messier 83 (also known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy) is an intermediate spiral galaxy approximately 15 million light-years away from home. It is one of the closest and brightest barred spiral galaxies in the sky, making it visible with binoculars.
12. Saturn Aurora
The magnetosphere of Saturn is the cavity created in the flow of the solar wind by the planet’s internally generated magnetic field. Discovered in 1979 by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, Saturn’s magnetosphere is the second largest of any planet in the Solar System after Jupiter.
13. Cone Nebula
The cone nebula is located about 2,600 light-years away from Earth. The Cone Nebula forms part of the nebulosity surrounding the Christmas Tree Cluster.
14. Horse Head Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 ) is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. It is approximately 1500 light years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of the shape of its swirling cloud of dark dust and gases, which is similar to that of a horse’s head.
15. Sombrero Galaxy
The Sombrero Galaxy is an unbarred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It has a bright nucleus, an unusually large central bulge. This galaxy’s most striking feature is the dust lane that crosses in front of the bulge of the galaxy. This dust lane is actually a symmetric ring that encloses the bulge of the galaxy.
16. Minkowski’s Butterfly
This bipolar nebula takes the peculiar form of twin lobes of material that emanate from a central star. Astronomers have dubbed this object as the Twin Jet Nebula because of the polar jets believed to cause the shape of the lobes. Its form also resembles the wings of a butterfly. The nebula was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s.
17. Trifid Nebula
Trifid Nebula is a bright and colorful object, and is thus a perennial favorite of astronomers. It looks like a young eagle with spread wings sitting on a twig.
18. Eta Carinae
The Eta Carinae is visible as the bright area in the centre of the large bi-polar Homunculus Nebula. The stellar system contains multiple stars most of which are very bright, due the this their life is relatively short, and are expected to explode as a supernova or hypernova in the next million years.
19. Glowing Heart
The Heart Nebula lies some 7500 light years away from Earth. It is located in the Perseus arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia.This is an emission nebula showing glowing gas and darker dust lanes.This nebula is formed by plasma of ionized hydrogen.
20. Cat’s Eye Nebula
The Cat’s Eye Nebula, one of the first planetary nebulae discovered, also has one of the most complex forms known to this kind of nebula. Eleven rings, or shells, of gas make up the Cat’s Eye. In the center of the Cat’s Eye there is a bright and hot star, which around 1000 years ago lost its outer envelope producing the nebula.
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