Top 100 Images

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Date

1. Tempestuous Young Stars in Orion

The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has also captured a smaller companion star in the upper left of this image. Both stars lie in the Orion Nebula, a colossal region of star formation roughly 1450 light years from Earth.
V 372 Orionis is a particular type of variable star known as an Orion Variable. These young stars experience some tempestuous moods and growing pains, which are visible to astronomers as irregular variations in luminosity. Orion Variables are often associated with diffuse nebulae, and V 372 Orionis is …

2. Visitor to a Galaxy

A host of astronomical objects throng this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Background galaxies ranging from stately spirals to fuzzy ellipticals are strewn across the image, and bright foreground stars much closer to home are also present, surrounded by diffraction spikes. In the centre of the image, the vague shape of the small galaxy UGC 7983 appears as a hazy cloud of light. UGC 7983 is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, and is a dwarf irregular galaxy — a type thought to be similar to the very earliest galaxies in the Universe.
This image …

3. Hubble Finds Hungry Black Hole Twisting Captured Star Into Donut Shape

This sequence of artist illustrations shows how a black hole can devour a bypassing star:

A normal star passes near a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy.
The star’s outer gasses are pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field.
The star is shredded as tidal forces pull it apart.
The stellar remnants are pulled into a donut-shaped ring around the black hole, and will eventually fall into the black hole, unleashing a tremendous amount of light and high-energy radiation.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have recorded a star’s final moments in detail as it gets gobbled up by a black …

4. Calling on a Galactic Neighbour

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy LEDA 48062 in the constellation Canes Venatici. LEDA 48062 is the faint, sparse, amorphous galaxy on the right side of this image, and it is accompanied by a more sharply defined neighbour on the left, the large, disc-like lenticular galaxy UGC 8603. A smattering of more distant galaxies also litter the background, and a handful of foreground stars are also visible throughout the image.
Have you ever wondered why the stars in Hubble images are surrounded by four sharp points? These are called diffraction spikes, and are created when starlight …

5. Hubble Finds That Ghost Light Among Galaxies Stretches Far Back In Time

In giant clusters of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, innumerable stars wander among the galaxies like lost souls, emitting a ghostly haze of light. These stars are not gravitationally tied to any one galaxy in a cluster. How did the stars get so scattered throughout the cluster in the first place? Several competing theories include the possibility that the stars were stripped out of a cluster's galaxies, or they were tossed around after mergers of galaxies, or they were present early in a cluster's formative years many billions of years ago. A recent infrared survey from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space …

6. Stargazing in NGC 6355

The scattered stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355 are strewn across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This globular cluster lies less than 50,000 light-years from Earth in the Ophiuchus constellation. NGC 6355 is a galactic globular cluster that resides in our Milky Way galaxy's inner regions.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars, and can be found in all types of galaxies. Their dense populations of stars and mutual gravitational attraction give these clusters a roughly spherical shape, with a bright concentration of stars surrounded by an increasingly sparse …

7. Hubble Spies a Long-Armed Galaxy

The peculiar spiral galaxy ESO 415-19, which lies around 450 million light-years away, stretches lazily across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. While the centre of this object resembles a regular spiral galaxy, long streams of stars stretch out from the galactic core like bizarrely elongated spiral arms. These are tidal streams caused by some chance interaction in the galaxy’s past, and give ESO 415-19 a distinctly peculiar appearance.
ESO 415-19’s peculiarity made it a great target for Hubble. This observation comes from an ongoing campaign to explore the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a menagerie of some of …

8. Cover Page of the 2023 ESA/Hubble and ESA/Webb Calendar

This is the cover page for the 2023 ESA/Hubble and ESA/Webb Calendar, featuring images released in 2022.
The electronic version of the calendar is available in digital (low and high resolution) and print-ready versions for everyone to share and enjoy.

9. Festive and Free-Floating

Just in time for the festive season, this new Picture of the Week from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features a glistening scene in holiday red. This image shows a small region of the well-known nebula Westerhout 5, which lies about 7000 light-years from Earth. Suffused with bright red light, this luminous image hosts a variety of interesting features, including a free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globule (frEGG). The frEGG in this image is the small tadpole-shaped dark region in the upper centre-left. This buoyant-looking bubble is lumbered with two rather uninspiring names — [KAG2008] globule 13 and J025838.6+604259.
FrEGGs are a …

10. Artist’s Illustration Of Kepler 138 Planetary System

In this illustration the super-Earth, Kepler-138d is in the foreground. To the left, the planet Kepler-138c, and in the background the planet Kepler 138b, seen in silhouette transiting its central star. Kepler 138 is a red dwarf star located 218 light-years away. The low density of Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d — which are nearly identical in size — means that they must be composed largely of water. They are both twice Earth’s mass but have roughly half of Earth’s density, and therefore cannot be solid rock. This is based on measurements of their mass vs. physical diameter. They are considered a …

11. Cosmic Smokescreen

A portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 appears as a roiling wall of smoke studded with stars in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 6530 is a collection of several thousand stars lying around 4350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The cluster is set within the larger Lagoon Nebula, a gigantic interstellar cloud of gas and dust. It is the nebula that gives this image its distinctly smokey appearance; clouds of interstellar gas and dust stretch from one side of this image to the other.Astronomers investigated NGC 6530 using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys …

12. Hubble Detects Ghostly Glow Surrounding Our Solar System

A survey of the residual light in the night sky has uncovered an eerie, omnipresent glow spread throughout the Solar System, thought to be caused by sunlight reflected from cometary dust.
Over its thirty-plus years of operations, astronomers have become accustomed to subtracting the background light from the Solar System from Hubble’s images. They are interested in the faint, discrete objects that are other stars and galaxies. But the SKYSURF team realised that Hubble’s images would be an excellent set of survey data to measure the Solar System’s background light.
The SKYSURF programme used 200,000 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope …

13. Tiny, Hidden Galaxy Provides A Peek Into The Past

Tiny galaxy HIPASS J1131–31 peeks out from behind the glare of star TYC 7215-199-1, a Milky Way star positioned between Hubble and the galaxy. One hundred years ago, this fast-moving foreground star would have appeared directly in the line of sight, and the "Peekaboo" galaxy would not have been detectable at all.
With the resolution and sensitivity of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers resolved 60 stars in the galaxy and were struck by the fact that they all appear to be relatively young—a few billion years old or younger. This is very unusual in the nearby universe, which has had …

14. Head in the Clouds

A small portion of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is pictured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The SMC is a dwarf galaxy and one of the Milky Way’s nearest neighbours, lying only about 200 000 light-years from Earth. It makes a pair with the Large Magellanic Cloud, and both objects can be seen from the southern hemisphere, as well as from some northern latitudes.
The Small Magellanic Cloud contains hundreds of millions of stars, but this image focuses on just a small fraction of them. These stars comprise the open cluster NGC 376, which has a total …

15. eHST User Interface

This is a screenshot from eHST showing the integration of ESASky with Hubble data footprints and files for a target of interest; the subset panel is the image visualisation tool for one of the selected files.

16. eHST User Interface

This is a screenshot from eHST showing publications related to a target of interest, with links to the datafiles from a given programme (in subset panel).

17. eHST User Interface

This is a screenshot of the new eHST home user interface.

18. Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image)

By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, the Universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details.
Myriad stars are spread throughout the scene. The stars primarily show up in near-infrared light, marking a contribution of Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Near-infrared light also reveals thousands of newly formed stars – look for bright orange spheres that lie just outside the dusty pillars.
In mid-infrared light, the dust is on full display. The contributions from …

19. Galactic Get-Together

A merging galaxy pair cavort in this image captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This pair of galaxies, known to astronomers as II ZW 96, is roughly 500 million light-years from Earth and lies in the constellation Delphinus, close to the celestial equator. As well as the wild swirl of the merging galaxies, a menagerie of background galaxies are dotted throughout the image.The two galaxies are in the process of merging and as a result have a chaotic, disturbed shape. The bright cores of the two galaxies are connected by bright tendrils of star-forming regions, and the spiral …

20. Revisiting a Celestial Fireworks Display

Shreds of the luridly coloured supernova remnant DEM L 190 seem to billow across the screen in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The delicate sheets and intricate filaments are debris from the cataclysmic death of a massive star that once lived in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. DEM L 190 — also known as LMC N49 — is the brightest supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud and lies approximately 160 000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Dorado.This striking image was created with data from two different astronomical …

21. Hubble Hunts an Unusual Galaxy

The galaxy merger Arp-Madore 417-391 steals the spotlight in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp-Madore catalogue is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. Arp-Madore 417-391, which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision. The two galaxies have been distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving the cores of the two galaxies nestled side by side.
Hubble used its Advanced Camera for …

22. Clouded Vision

A small, dense cloud of gas and dust called CB 130-3 blots out the centre of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. CB 130-3 is an object known as a dense core, a compact agglomeration of gas and dust. This particular dense core is in the constellation Serpens, and seems to billow across a field of background stars.
Dense cores like CB 130-3 are the birthplaces of stars, and as such are of particular interest to astronomers. During the collapse of these cores enough mass can accumulate in one place to reach the temperatures and densities required to ignite …

23. Multiple Light Paths of Single, Lensed Supernova

Through the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured three different moments in the explosion of a very far-off supernova—all in one picture! In this case, the immense gravity of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 acted as a cosmic lens, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster. The warping also produced multiple images of the explosion over different time periods that all arrived at Hubble simultaneously.
The top box shows a portion of Abell 370. The box-within-the-box marks the area where the distant supernova was multiply lensed. The bottom image is …

24. Three Faces of Evolving Supernova (Clean)

As a result of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion were captured in a single snapshot by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The light from the supernova, which was located behind the galaxy cluster Abell 370, was multiply lensed by the cluster’s immense gravity. This light took three different paths through the cosmic lens of the massive cluster. The three paths were three different lengths, so when the light arrived at Hubble (on the same day in December 2010), the supernova appeared at three different stages of evolution.
The left panel shows the portion …

25. Investigating A Made-to-Measure Galaxy

The spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 7038 wind languidly across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 7038 lies around 220 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Indus. This image portrays an especially rich and detailed view of a spiral galaxy, and exposes a huge number of distant stars and galaxies around it. That’s because it’s made from a combined 15 hours worth of Hubble time focused on NGC 7038 and collecting light. So much data indicates that this is a valuable target, and indeed, NGC 7038 has been particularly helpful to astronomers measuring distances …

26. Three Faces of Evolving Supernova (Annotated)

As a result of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion were captured in a single snapshot by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The light from the supernova, which was located behind the galaxy cluster Abell 370, was multiply lensed by the cluster’s immense gravity. This light took three different paths through the cosmic lens of the massive cluster. The three paths were of three different lengths, so when the light arrived at Hubble (on the same day in December 2010), the supernova appeared at three different stages of evolution.
The left panel shows the …

27. Hubble Inspects A Pair of Space Oddities

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows two of the galaxies in the galactic triplet Arp 248 — also known as Wild's Triplet — which lies around 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The two large spiral galaxies visible in this image — which flank a smaller, unrelated background spiral galaxy — seem to be connected by a luminous bridge. This elongated stream of stars and interstellar dust is known as a tidal tail, and it was formed by the mutual gravitational attraction of the two foreground galaxies.
This observation comes from a project which delves …

28. Wide-Field View Abell 611

This image shows a wide-field view of the galaxy cluster Abell 611.

29. A Cosmic Cobweb

In celebration of Halloween, Hubble brings you this inky image of the galaxy cluster Abell 611, located roughly 3.2 billion light years from Earth.
This object is a popular target for investigating dark matter, in part because of the numerous examples of strong gravitational lensing visible amongst the cluster’s intricate web of galaxies.
[Image Description: Hundreds of small galaxies appear across this view. Their colours vary. Some are shades of orange, while others are white. Most appear as fuzzy ovals, but a few have distinct spiral arms. There are also many thin, long, orange arcs that curve around the centre of …

30. Cosmic Keyhole

This peculiar portrait from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases NGC 1999, a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. NGC 1999 is around 1350 light-years from Earth and lies near to the Orion Nebula, the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. NGC 1999 itself is a relic of recent star formation — it is composed of detritus left over from the formation of a newborn star.
Just like fog curling around a street lamp, reflection nebulae like NGC 1999 only shine because of the light from an embedded source. In the case of NGC 1999, this source is the …

31. Twin Tail Revealed in New Hubble Image of Didymos-Dimorphos System Following DART Impact

Two tails of dust ejected from the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system are seen in new images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, documenting the lingering aftermath of the NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact on 27 September 2022 at 01:14 CEST. Current data show that DART shortened Dimorphos’ original 11 hour and 55 minute orbit around Didymos by about 32 minutes.
Repeated observations from Hubble over the last several weeks have allowed scientists to present a more complete picture of how the system’s debris cloud has evolved over time. The observations show that the ejected material, or “ejecta,” has expanded and …

32. Multiwavelength View of a Turbulent Stellar Nursery

The lives of newborn stars are tempestuous, as this image of the Herbig–Haro objects HH 1 and HH 2 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts. Both objects are in the constellation Orion and lie around 1250 light-years from Earth. HH 1 is the luminous cloud above the bright star in the upper right of this image, and HH 2 is the cloud in the bottom left. While both Herbig–Haro objects are visible, the young star system responsible for their creation is lurking out of sight, swaddled in the thick clouds of dust at the centre of this image. However, …

33. Hubble Spots Ultra-Speedy Jet Blasting From Star Crash

This is an artist's impression of two neutron stars colliding. The smashup between two dense stellar remnants unleashes the energy of 1,000 standard stellar nova explosions. In the aftermath of the collision a blowtorch jet of radiation is ejected at nearly the speed of light. The jet is directed along a narrow beam confined by powerful magnetic fields. The roaring jet ploughed into and swept up material in the surrounding interstellar medium.
The explosive event, named GW170817, was observed in August 2017. The blast released the energy comparable to that of a supernova explosion. It was the first combined detection of …

34. Terzan 1, Take 2

Terzan 1 is a globular cluster that lies about 22,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It is one of 11 globular clusters that were discovered by the Turkish-Armenian astronomer Agop Terzan between 1966 and 1971 when he was working in France, based mostly at Lyon Observatory.
Somewhat confusingly, the 11 Terzan globular clusters are numbered from Terzan 1 to Terzan 12. This is due to an error made by Terzan in 1971, when he rediscovered Terzan 5 — a cluster he had already discovered and reported back in 1968 — and named it Terzan 11. He published its discovery …

35. First Results from JWST Conference

The First Results from JWST Conference will be held on 12–14 December 2022 at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

36. Example screenshot from eJWST and ESASky for the Cartwheel Galaxy

Example screenshot from eJWST and ESASky of the various JWST and HST instrument footprints for the observations of the Cartwheel Galaxy.

37. ESASky and ESA/Webb Collaboration

The ESA/Webb and ESASky teams have collaborated to feature the spectacular Webb images featured on the ESA/Webb website in the ESASky application.

38. ESA/Webb Image On the ESASky Platform

This is a screenshot of the ESASky portal, featuring the ESA/Webb image of the Tarantula Nebula.

39. Webb’s First Images

The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope’s first full-colour images and spectroscopic data, which uncover a spectacular collection of cosmic features that have remained elusive until now, were released on 12 July 2022. For a full array of Webb’s first images and spectra, including downloadable files, please visit: https://esawebb.org/initiatives/webbs-first-images/

40. A Snapshot of Interacting Galaxies

The two interacting galaxies making up the pair known as Arp-Madore 608-333 seem to float side by side in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Though they appear serene and unperturbed, the two are subtly warping one another through a mutual gravitational interaction that is disrupting and distorting both galaxies. This drawn-out galactic interaction was captured by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
The interacting galaxies in Arp-Madore 608-333 were captured as part of an effort to build up an archive of interesting targets for more detailed future study with Hubble, ground-based telescopes, and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. …

41. Webb and Hubble Capture Detailed Views of DART Debris (27 September 2022)

For the first time, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken simultaneous observations of the same target.
These images, Hubble on left and Webb on the right, show observations of Dimorphos several hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally impacted the moonlet asteroid. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid by modifying its orbit.
Both Webb and Hubble observed the asteroid before and after the collision took place.
Scientists will use the combined observations from Hubble and Webb to gain knowledge about the …

42. Webb Captures DART Debris (27 September 2022)

This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument shows Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos, about 4 hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) made impact. A tight, compact core and plumes of material appearing as wisps streaming away from the centre of where the impact took place, are visible in the image. Those sharp points are Webb’s distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artefact of the telescope’s structure.
These observations, when combined with data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, will allow scientists to gain knowledge about the nature of the …

43. Hubble Captures DART Debris (27 September 2022)

These images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, taken 22 minutes, 5 hours, and 8.2 hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally impacted Dimorphos, show expanding plumes of ejecta from the asteroid’s body. This event was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid by modifying its orbit.
The Hubble images show ejecta from the impact that appear as rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid. The bolder, fanned-out spike of ejecta to the left of the asteroid is in the general direction from which DART approached. In the …

44. Hubble Detects Protective Shield Defending a Pair of Dwarf Galaxies

Researchers have used spectroscopic observations of ultraviolet light from quasars to detect and map out the Magellanic Corona, a diffuse halo of hot, supercharged gas surrounding the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. Shown here in purple, the corona stretches more than 100,000 light-years from the main mass of stars, gas, and dust that make up the Magellanic Clouds, intermingling with the hotter and more extensive corona that surrounds the Milky Way.
The Magellanic Clouds, dwarf galaxies roughly 160,000 light-years from Earth, are the largest of the Milky Way’s satellites and are thought to be on their first in-falling passage around …

45. Hubble Spies a Stately Spiral Galaxy

The stately sweeping spiral arms of the spiral galaxy NGC 5495 are revealed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 in this image. NGC 5495, which lies around 300 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra, is a Seyfert galaxy, a type of galaxy with a particularly bright central region. These luminous cores — known to astronomers as active galactic nuclei — are dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas falling into a supermassive black hole.
This image is drawn from a series of observations captured by astronomers studying supermassive black holes lurking in the …

46. An Enigmatic Astronomical Explosion

A bright young star is surrounded by a shroud of thick gas and dust in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 inspected a young stellar object, over 9000 light years away in the constellation Taurus, to help astronomers understand the earliest stages in the lives of massive stars. This object — which is known to astronomers as IRAS 05506+2414 — is thought to be an example of an explosive event caused by the disruption of a massive young star system. If so, it would only be the second such example known.
Usually the swirling …

47. Starstruck in Terzan 4

A glittering multitude of stars in the globular cluster Terzan 4 fill this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are collections of stars bound together by their mutual gravitational attraction, and can contain millions of individual stars. As this image shows, the heart of a globular cluster such as Terzan 4 is a densely packed, crowded field of stars — which makes for spectacular images!
The launch of Hubble in 1990 revolutionised the study of globular clusters. The individual stars in these dense crowds are almost impossible to distinguish from one another with ground-based telescopes, but can be …

Astronomers have been bemused to find young stars spiralling into the centre of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery — called NGC 346 — may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars. This is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say.

49. Spiralling Stars in NGC 346

Astronomers have been bemused to find young stars spiralling into the centre of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery — called NGC 346 — may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars.
The red spiral superimposed on NGC 346 traces the movement of stars and gas toward the center. Scientists say this spiraling motion is the most efficient way to feed star formation from the outside toward the center of the cluster.

50. Galactic Overlap

Two overlapping spiral galaxies are pictured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The two galaxies, which have the uninspiring names SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461, lie more than a billion light-years from Earth. Despite appearing to collide in this image, the alignment of the two galaxies is likely just by chance — the two are not actually interacting. While these two galaxies might simply be ships that pass in the night, Hubble has captured a dazzling array of interacting galaxies in the past.
This image is one of many Hubble observations delving into highlights of the Galaxy Zoo …

51. Multi-Observatory Views of M74

New images of the Phantom Galaxy, M74, showcase the power of space observatories working together in multiple wavelengths. On the left, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s view of the galaxy ranges from the older, redder stars towards the centre, to younger and bluer stars in its spiral arms, to the most active stellar formation in the red bubbles of H II regions. On the right, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s image is strikingly different, instead highlighting the masses of gas and dust within the galaxy’s arms, and the dense cluster of stars at its core. The combined image in …

52. The Phantom Galaxy Across the Spectrum

M74 shines at its brightest in this combined optical/mid-infrared image, featuring data from both the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
With Hubble’s venerable Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Webb’s powerful Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) capturing a range of wavelengths, this new image has remarkable depth. The red colours mark dust threaded through the arms of the galaxy, lighter oranges being areas of hotter dust. The young stars throughout the arms and the nuclear core are picked out in blue. Heavier, older stars towards the galaxy’s centre are shown in cyan and green, projecting a spooky …

53. Hubble Gazes into M74

The arms of the spiral galaxy M74 are studded with rosy pink regions of fresh star formation in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. M74 — also known as the Phantom Galaxy — lies around 32 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces, and is a familiar sight for Hubble.The beautiful reddish blooms that spread throughout M74 are huge clouds of hydrogen gas which are made to glow by the ultraviolet radiation from hot, young stars embedded within them. These regions — which astronomers refer to as H II regions — mark the location of recent …

54. A Marvel of Galactic Morphology

The galaxy featured in this Picture of the Week has a shape unlike many of the galaxies familiar to Hubble. Its thousands of bright stars evoke a spiral galaxy, but it lacks the characteristic ‘winding’ structure. The shining red blossoms stand out as well, twisted by clouds of dust — these are the locations of intense star formation. Yet it also radiates a diffuse glow, much like an elliptical galaxy and its core of older, redder stars. This galactic marvel is known to astronomers as NGC 1156.
NGC 1156 is located around 25 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries. …

55. Hubble Spies a Scintillating Globular Cluster

This scintillating image showcases the globular cluster NGC 6540 in the constellation Sagittarius, which was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. These two instruments have slightly different fields of view — which determines how large an area of sky each instrument captures. This composite image shows the star-studded area of sky that was captured in both instruments’ field of view.
NGC 6540 is a globular cluster, a stable, tightly bound multitude of stars. The populations of these clusters can range from tens of thousands to millions of stars, all of …

56. Hubble Sees Red Supergiant Star Betelgeuse Slowly Recovering After Blowing Its Top

This illustration plots changes in the brightness of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, following the titanic mass ejection of a large piece of its visible surface. The escaping material cooled to form a cloud of dust that temporarily made the star look dimmer, as seen from Earth. This unprecedented stellar convulsion disrupted the monster star’s 400-day-long oscillation period that astronomers had measured for more than 200 years. The interior may now be jiggling like a plate of gelatin dessert.
The star Betelgeuse appears as a brilliant, ruby-red, twinkling spot of light in the upper right shoulder of the winter constellation Orion …

57. Celestial Cloudscape in the Orion Nebula

This celestial cloudscape from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the colourful region surrounding the Herbig-Haro object HH 505. Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. In the case of HH 505, these outflows originate from the star IX Ori, which lies on the outskirts of the Orion Nebula around 1000 light-years from Earth. The outflows themselves are visible as gracefully curving structures at the top and bottom of this image, and are …

58. Star-Studded Skyfield

This star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6638 in the constellation Sagittarius. The star-strewn observation highlights the density of stars at the heart of globular clusters, which are stable, tightly bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars. To capture the data in this image, Hubble used two of its cutting-edge astronomical instruments: Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Hubble revolutionised the study of globular clusters, as it is almost impossible to clearly distinguish the stars in globular clusters with ground-based telescopes. The blurring …

59. Follow the LEDA

This luminescent image features multiple galaxies, perhaps most noticeably LEDA 58109, the lone galaxy in the upper right. LEDA 58109 is flanked by two further galactic objects to its lower left — an active galactic nucleus (AGN) called SDSS J162558.14+435746.4 that partially obscures the galaxy SDSS J162557.25+435743.5, which appears to poke out to the right behind the AGN.
Galaxy classification is sometimes presented as something of a dichotomy: spiral and elliptical. However, the diversity of galaxies in this image alone highlights the complex web of galaxy classifications that exist, including galaxies that house extremely luminous AGNs at their cores, and …

This intriguing observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a gravitationally lensed galaxy with the long-winded identification SGAS J143845+145407. Gravitational lensing has resulted in a mirror image of the galaxy at the centre of this image, creating a captivating centrepiece.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body — such as a galaxy cluster — causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime for the path of light around it to be visibly bent, as if by a lens. Appropriately, the body causing the light to curve is called a gravitational lens, and the distorted background object is referred to as being …

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62. Portrait of a Globular Cluster

The globular cluster Terzan 2 in the constellation Scorpio features in this observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars found in a wide variety of galaxies. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters a regular, spherical shape. As a result, images of the hearts of globular clusters, such as this observation of Terzan 2, are crowded with a multitude of glittering stars.
Hubble used both its Advanced Camera for Surveys and its Wide Field Camera 3 in this observation, …

63. Hubble Spies a Galactic Gem

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observation has captured the galaxy CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger which lies around 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.
This observation is a gem from the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project in which hundreds of thousands of volunteers classified galaxies to help scientists solve a problem of astronomical proportions — how to sort through the vast amounts of data generated by robotic telescopes. Following a public vote, a selection of the most astronomically intriguing objects from the Galaxy Zoo were selected for follow-up observations with Hubble. CGCG 396-2 …

64. Delving into an Astronomical Treasure Trove

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the sparkling globular cluster NGC 6569 in the constellation Sagittarius. Hubble explored the heart of this cluster with both its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, revealing a glittering hoard of stars in this astronomical treasure trove.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound clusters containing tens of thousands to millions of stars, and are associated with all types of galaxies. The intense gravitational attraction of these closely packed clusters of stars means that globular clusters have a regular spherical shape with a densely populated centre — as can …

65. Snapshot of a Massive Cluster

The massive galaxy cluster Abell 1351 is captured in this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. This galaxy cluster lies in the constellation Ursa Major in the northern hemisphere.
This image is filled with streaks of light, which are actually the images of distant galaxies. The streaks are the result of gravitational lensing, an astrophysical phenomenon that occurs when a massive celestial body such as a galaxy cluster distorts spacetime sufficiently strongly to affect the path of light passing through it — almost as if the light were passing through a …

66. Hubble Reveals Surviving Companion Star In Aftermath Of Supernova

This illustration shows a white dwarf star syphoning off debris from shattered objects in a planetary system.
Archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope helped detect the spectral signature of the vaporised debris that revealed a combination of rocky-metallic and icy material, the ingredients of planets. The findings help describe the violent nature of evolved planetary systems and the composition of its disintegrating bodies.
The findings are based on analysing material captured by the atmosphere of the nearby white dwarf star G238-44. A white dwarf is what remains of a star like our Sun after it sheds its outer layers …

67. Cosmic Treasure Chest

This star-studded image shows the globular cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, towards the centre of the Milky Way. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this glittering scene using its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groupings of tens of thousands to millions of stars. As this image demonstrates, the hearts of globular clusters can be densely packed with stars; the night sky in this image is strewn with so many stars that it resembles a sea of sequins or a vast treasure chest crammed with gold.
This starry snapshot is …

68. Artist’s Impression of an Isolated Black Hole

This is an artist’s impression of a black hole drifting through our Milky Way galaxy. The black hole is the crushed remnant of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. The surviving core is several times the mass of our Sun. The black hole traps light because of its intense gravitational field. The black hole distorts the space around it, which warps images of background stars lined up almost directly behind it. This gravitational "lensing" effect offers the only telltale evidence for the existence of lone black holes wandering our galaxy, of which there may be a population of …

69. Microlensing Black Hole

The star-filled sky in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope photo lies in the direction of the Galactic centre. The light from stars is monitored to see if any change in their apparent brightness is caused by a foreground object drifting in front of them. The warping of space by the interloper would momentarily brighten the appearance of a background star, an effect called gravitational lensing. One such event is shown in the four close-up frames at the bottom. The arrow points to a star that momentarily brightened, as first captured by Hubble in August 2011. This was caused by a …

70. Hubble Investigates an Enigmatic Globular Cluster

Like Sherlock Holmes’s magnifying glass writ large, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been used to peer into an astronomical mystery in search of clues. The enigma in question concerns the globular cluster Ruprecht 106, which is pictured in this image. While the constituent stars of globular clusters all formed at approximately the same location and time, it turns out that almost all globular clusters contain groups of stars with distinct chemical compositions. These distinct chemical fingerprints are left by groups of stars with very slightly different ages or compositions from the rest of the cluster. A tiny handful of …

71. Diagram of the Atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune

This diagram shows three layers of aerosols in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, as modelled by a team of scientists. The height scale on the diagram represents the pressure above 10 bar.
The deepest layer (the Aerosol-1 layer) is thick and composed of a mixture of hydrogen sulphide ice and particles produced by the interaction of the planets’ atmospheres with sunlight.
The key layer that affects the colours is the middle layer, which is a layer of haze particles (referred to in the paper as the Aerosol-2 layer) that is thicker on Uranus than on Neptune. The team suspects that, …

72. Hubble’s Observations of Uranus and Neptune in 2021

Left: Hubble’s 25 October 2021 view of Uranus puts the planet’s bright northern polar hood in the spotlight.
Right: Hubble’s 7 September 2021 view of Neptune features the planet’s dark spot and darkened northern hemisphere.

73. Hubble Goes Galactic Birdwatching

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7496, which lies over 24 million light-years away in the constellation Grus. This constellation, whose name is Latin for crane, is one of four constellations collectively known as the Southern Birds. The others are Pavo, Phoenix and Tucana, which depict a peacock, phoenix, and toucan respectively. The rest of the night sky is also home to a flock of ornithological constellations, including an eagle (Aquilla), swan (Cygnus), crow (Corvus), and dove (Columba).
This image comes from a collection of observations delving into the relationship between young …

74. Hiding in Plain Sight

The muted red tones of the globular cluster Liller 1 are partially obscured in this image by a dense scattering of piercingly blue stars. In fact, it is thanks to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that we are able to see Liller 1 so clearly in this image, because the WFC3 is sensitive to wavelengths of light that the human eye cannot detect. Liller 1 is only 30 000 light-years from Earth — relatively neighbourly in astronomical terms — but it lies within the Milky Way’s ‘bulge’, the dense and dusty region at our galaxy’s centre. Because of that, …

75. ESA/Hubble Celebrates Telescope’s 31st Anniversary

In April 2021, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope will celebrate 31 years since its launch.
Each year, ESA/Hubble develops a series of anniversary engagement initiatives to involve the public in the celebrations of Hubble’s impact in engineering, science and culture. Project updates pertaining to Hubble’s 31st anniversary around April and May 2021 are posted here.

76. Image of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope from March 2020.

Image of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope from March 2020.

77. Chris Evans

78. A Dazzling Hubble Collection of Supernova Host Galaxies

Spanning from 2003 to 2021, this collection of images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features galaxies that are all hosts to both Cepheid variables and supernovae. These two celestial phenomena are both crucial tools used by astronomers to determine astronomical distance, and have been used to refine our measurement of Hubble’s constant, the expansion rate of the Universe.

79. Hubble Spies a Glittering Gathering of Stars

This glittering gathering of stars is the globular cluster NGC 6558, and it was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. NGC 6558 is closer to the centre of the Milky Way than Earth is, and lies about 23 000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius.
Globular clusters like NGC 6558 are tightly bound collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars, and they can be found in a wide range of galaxies. As this observation shows, the stars in globular clusters can be densely packed; this image is thronged with stars in a rich …

80. Aftermath of a Cosmic Cataclysm

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the tattered remnant of a supernova — a titanic explosion marking the end of the life of a dying star. This object — known as DEM L249 — is thought to have been created by a Type 1a supernova during the death throes of a white dwarf. While white dwarfs are usually stable, they can slowly accrue matter if they are part of a binary star system. This accretion of matter continues until the white dwarf reaches a critical mass and undergoes a catastrophic supernova explosion, ejecting a vast amount of …

81. Broken Asteroid Trail in NGC 4548

This is a broken asteroid trail crossing the outer regions of galaxy NGC 4548 in Coma Berenices. Five trail segments (shown in white) were extracted from individual exposures and added to a cleaned colour image of the galaxy.
The asteroid enters the image at top center and moves down toward the lower left. Large gaps in the trail occur because the telescope is orbiting the Earth and cannot continuously observe the galaxy.

82. Asteroid Trails Mosaic

This mosaic consists of 16 different data sets from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope that were studied as part of the Asteroid Hunter citizen science project. Each of these datasets was assigned a colour based on the time sequence of exposures, such that the blue tones represent the first exposure in which the asteroid was captured and the red tones represent the last.

83. Abell 370 Parallel Field with Asteroids

Some asteroids from within our Solar System have photobombed deep images of the Universe taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These asteroids reside, on average, only about 260 million kilometres from Earth — right around the corner in astronomical terms. Yet they've horned their way into this picture of thousands of galaxies scattered across space and time at inconceivably farther distances.
This Hubble photo of a random patch of sky is part of the Frontier Fields survey. The colourful image contains thousands of galaxies, including massive yellowish ellipticals and majestic blue spirals. Much smaller, fragmentary blue galaxies are sprinkled throughout …

84. Hubble Reveals Surviving Companion Star In Aftermath Of Supernova

Hubble has uncovered a witness at the scene of a star's explosive death: a companion star previously hidden in the glare of its partner's supernova. The discovery is a first for a particular type of supernova—one in which the star was stripped of its entire outer gas envelope before exploding. The finding provides crucial insight into the binary nature of massive stars, as well as the potential prequel to the ultimate merger of the companion stars that would rattle across the universe as gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself.
This visual presents Hubble images of galaxy NGC 3287 …

85. Hubble Sees Double in M99

The magnificent spiral galaxy M99 fills the frame in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. M99 — which lies roughly 42 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices — is a “grand design” spiral galaxy, so-called because of the well-defined, prominent spiral arms visible in this image. M99 was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on two separate occasions, helping astronomers study two entirely different astronomical phenomena.
The first set of observations aimed to explore a gap between two different varieties of cosmic explosions; novae and supernovae. Novae, which are caused by the interactions between …

86. Webb Alignment Evaluation Image

While the purpose of this image was to focus on the bright star at the centre (called 2MASS J17554042+6551277) for alignment evaluation, Webb's optics and NIRCam are so sensitive that galaxies and stars in the background also show up. This image uses a red filter to optimise visual contrast.

87. Artist’s Impression of 25 Hot Jupiters

Archival observations of 25 hot Jupiters by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have been analysed by an international team of astronomers, enabling them to answer five open questions important to our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres. Amongst other findings, the team found that the presence of metal oxides and hydrides in the hottest exoplanet atmospheres was clearly correlated with the atmospheres' being thermally inverted.

88. Hubble Spies a Tenuous Diffuse Galaxy

The ultra-diffuse galaxy GAMA 526784 appears as a tenuous patch of light in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This wispy object resides in the constellation Hydra, roughly four billion light-years from Earth. Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of peculiarities. For example, their dark matter content can be either extremely low or extremely high — ultra-diffuse galaxies have been observed with an almost complete lack of dark matter, whereas others consist of almost nothing but dark matter. Another oddity of this class of galaxies is their anomalous abundance of bright globular clusters, something not …

89. Artist's impression of the James Webb Space Telescope

90. The Hickson Compact Group 40 - Annotated

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called the Hickson Compact Group 40. This snapshot reflects a special moment in their lifetimes as they fall together before they merge.

91. Wide-Field View of the Hickson Compact Group 40

This image shows a wide-field view centred on the Hickson Compact Group 40.

92. The Hickson Compact Group 40

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called the Hickson Compact Group 40. This snapshot reflects a special moment in their lifetimes as they fall together before they merge.

93. Hubble Inspects a Set of Galactic Wings

Two merging galaxies in the VV689 system — nicknamed the Angel Wing —feature in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Unlike chance alignments of galaxies which only appear to overlap as seen from our vantage point on Earth, the two galaxies in VV689 are in the midst of a collision. The galactic interaction has left the VV689 system almost completely symmetrical, giving the impression of a vast set of galactic wings.
This angelic image comes from a set of Hubble observations inspecting the highlights of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. This crowdsourced astronomy project relied on hundreds of …

94. Hubble Inspects a Set of Galactic Wings

Two merging galaxies in the VV689 system — nicknamed the Angel Wing —feature in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In this view, the focus is placed on the system itself, allowing a closer look at it's unique morphology.

95. Crop of the GNz7q in the Hubble GOODS-North field

An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky.
The object, which is referred to as GNz7q, is shown here in the centre of the image of the Hubble GOODS-North field.

96. GNz7q in the Hubble GOODS-North field

An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky.
The object, which is referred to as GNz7q, is shown here in the centre of the cutout from the Hubble GOODS-North field.

97. Artist’s Impression of GNz7q

An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky.
Current theories predict that supermassive black holes begin their lives in the dust-shrouded cores of vigorously star-forming “starburst” galaxies before expelling the surrounding gas …

98. Hubble Confirms Largest Comet Nucleus Ever Seen

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers.
This image sequence shows how the nucleus of Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) was isolated from a vast shell of dust and gas surrounding the solid icy nucleus. On the left is a photo of the comet taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 on 8 January 2022. A model of the coma (middle panel) was obtained by means of fitting the surface brightness profile assembled from the observed image on the left. This allowed for the coma to …

99. Spiral Snapshot

The spiral galaxy M91 fills the frame of this Wide Field Camera 3 observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. M91 lies approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices and — as is evident in this image — is a barred spiral galaxy. While M91’s prominent bar makes for a spectacular galactic portrait, it also hides an astronomical monstrosity. Like our own galaxy, M91 contains a supermassive black hole at its centre. A 2009 study using archival Hubble data found that this central black hole weighs somewhere between 9.6 and 38 million times as much as …

100. Hubble Probes Extreme Weather On Ultra-Hot Jupiter

This is an artist's impression of the planet KELT-20b which orbits a blue-white star. The giant planet is so close to its star (8 million kilometres) the torrent of ultraviolet radiation from the star heats the planet's atmosphere to over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This creates a thermal layer where the atmosphere increases in temperature with altitude. This is the best evidence to date – gleaned from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope – for a host star affecting a planet's atmosphere directly. The seething planet is 456 light-years away.
This Hubble research provides dramatic new insights into the vast range of atmospheric …

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