As the Hubble Space Telescope turns 36, see 36 of its most breathtaking photos of space
NASA, ESA
- The Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 and marks 36 years in space later this month.
- Each year, NASA shares a photo taken by Hubble to celebrate the space telescope's anniversary.
- The photos show dying stars, galaxies, and nebulae that are thousands of light-years away.
Since it launched into space on April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been an invaluable instrument to astronomers in unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
As it orbits the Earth from 340 miles above, the telescope has imaged distant galaxies, black holes, and planets, making over 1.7 million observations in its lifetime so far, according to NASA.
Scientists have published more than 22,000 studies using its data.
And (almost) every year, the Hubble team chooses a celestial object for the telescope to spend considerable time imaging that year, and releases a special photo to celebrate its birthday.
Here are 36 breathtaking images from Hubble's 36 years in space.
NASA, ESA, STScI
The top left image is a photo of Mars. The top right shows the planetary nebula NGC 2899. The Rosette Nebula is pictured at the bottom left, and the spiral galaxy NGC 5335 is on the bottom right.
NASA, ESA, STScI
Located 3,400 light-years away in the Perseus constellation, the Little Dumbbell Nebula features a red giant star that is collapsing into a white dwarf.
NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Varun Bajaj (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Jennifer Mack (STScI)
NGC 1333 is located in the Perseus molecular cloud about 960 light-years away.
NASA, ESA, and STScI
The five galaxies will eventually merge together in about 1 billion years.
Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach/NASA, ESA and STScI
Clouds of gas and dust surrounded the star.
NASA, ESA, and STScI
Located 163,000 light-years away, the Large Magellanic Cloud is one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies.
NASA, ESA, and STScI
The Southern Crab Nebula features a double star in its center made of a red giant and a white dwarf.
NASA, ESA, STScI
The Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna was the first to catalog the Lagoon Nebula in 1654. Hubble's photo only shows a snippet of the enormous nebula, which measures 55 light-years wide and 20 light-years tall.
NASA, ESA, and M. Mutchler (STScI)
The galaxies, NGC 4302 and NGC 4298, were photographed with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team
Bubble nebulae are formed by the solar wind of a nearby star crashing into a molecular cloud of dust and gas.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
Westerlund 2 is located 20,000 light-years away,
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
Located within the Orion constellation, the Monkey Head Nebula is 6,400 light-years away.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
The photo was taken with infrared imaging.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
The nebula is named for its glowing filaments that resemble spider legs.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
The bigger galaxy's mass is five times larger than the smaller one, so it's pulling the smaller one into a spiral shape. The pair of galaxies is called Arp 273.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
The photo showed pillars of gas where stars are born.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The image showed a cluster of galaxies where stars, gas, and dust shoot up in a stream that stretches over 100,000 light-years.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
At the time, it marked the largest simultaneous release of Hubble images to the public.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
The image captures a 50 light-year-wide swath of the Carina Nebula, where stars are being born and dying.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
In this starburst galaxy, stars are born 10 times faster than in the Milky Way.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The plume is 9.5 light-years long.
NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team
The galaxy is 300 million light-years away, and the ring alone is 150,000 light-years across — making it 50% wider than our own Milky Way galaxy.
J. Hester (ASU), NASA, ESA
The Swan Nebula is part of the Sagittarius constellation.
H. Richer/NASA
Scientists estimated that the universe is more than 13 billion years old based on the ages of these white dwarf stars.
NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team
The Horsehead Nebula is a cold, dark cloud of gas and dust in the middle of a glowing nebula.
NASA/ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA
The nebula, which resembles an eye with a star at its center, is located in the constellation Aquila.
John Spencer/NASA
The image showed Io's sulfur dioxide "snow" as it passed in front of the planet.
Erich Karkoschka/NASA
The infrared camera that produced it helps scientists figure out what the planet's atmosphere and rings are made of.
Erich Karkoschka/David Crisp/WFPC2 Science Team/NASA
Hubble was refurbished again in 1997, making clearer images of the Red Planet possible.
W.N. Colley and E. Turner/Princeton University, J.A. Tyson/Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, NASA
The image of the blue galaxy appears duplicated because of the intense gravitational lens of the group of yellow galaxies (near the center of the picture), which "bends light to magnify, brighten and distort the image of a more distant object," NASA explained.
Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen/Arizona State University, NASA/ESA
Inside this hydrogen gas and dust, stars are born.
C.R. O'Dell/Rice University/NASA/ESA
The image already appeared sharper than in previous years after astronauts first serviced the telescope in 1993.
STScI/NASA/ESA
One of the main objectives of the telescope was to help refine the Hubble Constant, the rate at which Edwin Hubble calculated the universe is expanding.
S. Heap/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA/ESA
A reading from the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite found that the central star's temperature measures over 360,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
J. Westphal/Caltech/NASA/ESA
The photograph captured cloud formations in Jupiter's atmosphere.
STScI/NASA/ESA
Happy birthday, Hubble!