Fantastic Hubble

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.