Everyone is familiar with the Hubble Space Telescope. Even
those who aren’t astronomy inclined have at least once or twice heard its name.
The Hubble Space Telescope is famous due to a number of reasons. First, Hubble
revolutionizes our view of the universe. With the breathtaking images captured
by the telescope to the numerous astronomical breakthroughs that it have
discovered. It is undeniable that Hubble is one of the leading astronomical
telescopes that many scientists have relied upon. Together with the Kepler
Space Telescope, Chandra X Ray Space Telescope, and the Spitzer Space
Telescope, Hubble is considered as NASA’s 4 major space telescopes, which is
observing the universe at its visible wavelength.
Hubble
Discoveries
·
Discovered dark matter and dark
energy hence creating a 3-D map of mysterious dark matter.
·
Discovering Nix and Hydra, two moons
of Pluto.
·
Using Cepheid variable as its
standard candle, it helped determine the rate of the universe’s expansion.
·
Discovering that nearly every major
galaxy is anchored by a black hole. It likewise discovered that at the center
of our galaxy lies a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* (Sagittarius
because the Sagittarius constellation is seen passing at the center of the Milky Way and there’s a * because some
scientists are not yet convinced with the existence of black holes.)
·
Helping refine the age of the
universe which is approximately 13.7 billion years old.
·
Hubble Deep Field, which contains numerous
galaxies, squeezed into a single image. Also provided evidence for
gravitational lensing.
Images of Hubble
*Description of each image is provided by NASA
1. Orion Nebula
Thousands
of stars are forming in the cloud of gas and dust known as the Orion nebula.
More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have
never been seen in visible light.
2. Messier 101 or the Pinwheel Galaxy
This
giant spiral disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across, or
nearly twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. M101 is estimated to contain
at least one trillion stars. About 100 billion of them could be similar to our
Sun.
3. Sombrero Galaxy
A
brilliant white core is encircled by thick dust lanes in this spiral galaxy,
seen edge-on. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light
years from Earth.
4. 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.
5. Carina Nebula
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. Messier 81 or Grand Design Spiral Galaxy
M81, a
spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, is one of the brightest galaxies
that can be seen from Earth. The spiral arms wind all the way down into the
nucleus and are made up of young, bluish, hot stars formed in the past few
million years, while the central bulge contains older, redder stars.
7. Whirlpool Galaxy
The
large Whirlpool Galaxy (left) is known for its sharply defined spiral arms.
Their prominence could be the result of the Whirlpool's gravitational
tug-of-war with its smaller companion galaxy (right).
8. The Hubble Deep Field
About
1,500 galaxies are visible in this deep view of the universe, taken by allowing
the Hubble Space Telescope to stare at the same tiny patch of sky for 10
consecutive days in 1995. The image covers an area of sky only about width of a
dime viewed from 75 feet away.
9. 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.
10. Messier 74
Bright
knots of glowing gas light up the arms of spiral galaxy M74, indicating a rich
environment of star formation. Messier 74, also called NGC 628, is slightly
smaller than our Milky Way.
11. Eagle Nebula
A
billowing tower of gas and dust rises from the stellar nursery known as the
Eagle Nebula. This small piece of the Eagle Nebula is 57 trillion miles long
(91.7 trillion km).
12. Arp 273
This rose shaped deep sky object is consisted of a pair of interacting spiral galaxies. Gravity from both galaxies have caused this object to be turned into a look alike of a rose.
13. Abell 1689
Abell
1689 is one of the most massive galaxy clusters known. The gravity of its
trillion stars, plus dark matter, acts like a 2-million-light-year-wide
"lens" in space. The gravitational lens bends and magnifies the light
of galaxies far behind it.
14. The "Caterpillar"
The "Caterpillar" is a Bok Globule within the Carina Nebula.
15. Starburst Galaxy or the Messier 82
Plumes
of glowing hydrogen blast from the central nucleus of M82. The pale, star-like
objects are clusters of tens to hundreds of thousands of stars.
16. The Horsehead Nebula
The
Horsehead Nebula is a cold, dark cloud of gas and dust, silhouetted against the
bright nebula IC 434. The bright area at the top left edge is a young star
still embedded in its nursery of gas and dust.
17. The Helix Nebula
This
detailed picture of the Helix Nebula shows a fine web of filaments, like the
spokes of a bicycle, embedded in the colorful red and blue gas ring around this
dying star. The Helix Nebula is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth,
only 650 light years away.
18. The Tarantula Nebula
In the
Tarantula Nebula lies a bright cluster of brilliant, massive stars, Hodge 301.
The cluster, in the lower right-hand corner, is blasting material from
supernovae into the surrounding nebula.
19. Galaxy Cluster SDSS J1004+4112
The
gravity of a galaxy cluster called SDSS J1004+4112 warps and magnifies the
light from a distant quasar. Light from the quasar, the bright core of a galaxy
fed by a black hole, appears in the center of this image and four other
locations around it. Other distant galaxies appear as arcs.
20. Supernova Renmant Cassiopeia A
This
youngest-known supernova remnant in our galaxy lies 10,000 light years away in
the constellation Cassiopeia. The light from this exploding star first reached
Earth in the 1600s.
21. Butterfly 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.
22. The Southern Ring Planetary Nebula
This
planetary nebula, also known as the "Eight-Burst" Nebula because of
its figure-8 appearance through amateur astronomer telescopes, is visible in
the southern hemisphere. NGC 3132 is nearly half a light year in diameter and
2,000 light years away. Gases are moving away from the dying star at its center
at a speed of nine miles per second (14.4 km/s).
23. Star Forming Pillar in the Cone Nebula
Radiation
from hot stars off the top of the picture illuminates and erodes this giant,
gaseous pillar. Additional ultraviolet radiation causes the gas to glow, giving
the pillar its red halo of light.
24. Crater Copernicus on the Moon Luna
This
image shows the ray pattern of dust that was ejected from the crater over a
billion years ago, when an asteroid larger than a mile (1.6 km) across slammed
into the Moon.
25. Scattered Light from the Boomerang Nebula
Two
cones of matter are being ejected from the central star of the Boomerang
Nebula. Measurements made in 1995 show the deep interior of the nebula to have
a temperature of just one degree Kelvin above absolute zero, making it one of
the coldest known places in the universe.
26. Views of Saturn Over the Years
As
Saturn takes its 29-year journey around the Sun, its tilt allows us to see its
rings from different perspectives. Saturn's tilt also gives it seasons. The
lowest image on the left shows the northern hemisphere's autumn, while the uppermost
right image shows the winter.
27. Cat's Eye Nebula
Intricate
structures of concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas and shock-induced
knots of gas make up this complicated planetary nebula. The Cat's Eye Nebula is
about 1,000 years old, and could have resulted from a double-star system.
28. The Tadpole Galaxy
The
small, blue galaxy visible in the upper left corner of the Tadpole ripped
through the larger spiral galaxy, distorting it and pulling out a long tail of
stars, gas and dust. Young blue star clusters, spawned by the collision, are
evident in the tail and spiral arms.
29. Supernova
Remnant N 63A Menagerie
When a
massive star exploded, spewing out its gaseous layers into a turbulent,
star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, it left behind this chaotic
cloud of gas and dust. The star that produced this supernova remnant was
probably 50 times the mass of our Sun.
30. Stephan's Quintet
Three
of the galaxies in this famous grouping, Stephan's Quintet, are distorted from
their gravitational interactions with one another. One member of the group, NGC
7320 (upper right), is actually seven times closer to Earth than the rest.
31. Mars
This
image was taken within minutes of Mars' closest approach to Earth in 60,000
years, on Aug. 27, 2003. In this picture, the red planet is 34,647,420 miles
(55,757,930 km) from Earth.
32. Globular Cluster Omega Centauri
A
colorful collection of 100,000 stars are displayed in this small region inside
the Omega Centauri globular cluster, a dense group of nearly 10 million stars.
Omega Centauri is one of the biggest star clusters in the Milky Way.
33. The Monkey Head Nebula
The
Monkey Head Nebula (also known as NGC 2174) is a star-forming region in which
bright, newborn stars near the center of the nebula illuminate the surrounding
gas with energetic radiation. The cloud is sculpted by ultraviolet light eating
into the cool hydrogen gas.
34. Westerlund 2
Hubble's
25th anniversary image features a giant, sparkling cluster of about 3,000 stars
called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground
known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation
Carina.
