Top 100 Images

Ranking
Date

1. 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 …

2. 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 …

3. 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 …

4. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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 …

8. 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 …

9. 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 …

10. 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 …

11. 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. …

12. 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 …

13. 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 …

14. 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 …

15. 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 …

16. 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 …

18. DiegoMartinez

19. 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, …

20. 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 …

21. 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 …

22. 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 …

23. 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 …

24. 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 …

25. 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 …

26. 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 …

27. 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 …

28. 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, …

29. 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.

30. 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 …

31. 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, …

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. Chris Evans

35. 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.

36. 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 …

37. 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 …

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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 …

41. 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 …

42. 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 …

43. 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.

44. 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.

45. 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 …

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

47. 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.

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

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

49. 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.

50. 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 …

51. 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.

52. 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.

53. 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.

54. 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 …

55. 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 …

56. 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 …

57. 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 …

58. Hubble Finds a Planet Forming in an Unconventional Way

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an "intense and violent process." This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called "disk instability."
The new world under construction is embedded in a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas with distinct spiral structure swirling around surrounding a young star that’s estimated to be around 2 million years old. That's about the age of our solar system when planet formation was underway. (The solar system's age is currently 4.6 billion years.)
Researchers were able to directly image newly …

59. Hubble Spies a Serpentine Spiral Galaxy

The lazily winding spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 5921 snake across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies approximately 80 million light-years from Earth, and much like our own galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a prominent bar. Roughly half of all spiral galaxies are thought to contain bars, and these bars affect their parent galaxies by fuelling star formation and affecting the motion of stars and interstellar gas.
Appropriately, given NGC 5921’s serpentine spiral arms, this galaxy resides in the constellation Serpens in the northern celestial hemisphere. Serpens is the only one of the 88 …

60. The Sunrise Arc Galaxy with Lensed Star Earendel (Annotated)

The star nicknamed Earendel (indicated here with an arrow) is positioned along a ripple in spacetime that gives it extreme magnification, allowing it to emerge into view from its host galaxy, which appears as a red smear across the sky. The whole scene is viewed through the distorted lens created by a massive galaxy cluster in the intervening space, which allows the galaxy's features to be seen, but also warps their appearance—an effect astronomers call gravitational lensing. The red dots on either side of Earendel are one star cluster that is mirrored on either side of the ripple, a result …

61. Hubble Finds the Most Distant Star Ever Seen

With this observation, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the Universe’s birth in the Big Bang (at a redshift of 6.2) — the most distant individual star ever seen. This sets up a major target for the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope in its first year.

62. More Than Meets the Eye

Tendrils of dark dust can be seen threading across the heart of the spiral galaxy NGC 7172 in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy lies approximately 110 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. The lane of dust threading its way across NGC 7172 — which is viewed side-on in this image — is obscuring the luminous heart of the galaxy, making NGC 7172 appear to be nothing more than a normal edge-on spiral galaxy.
When astronomers inspected NGC 7172 across the electromagnetic spectrum they quickly discovered that there was more to it than …

63. James Webb Space Telescope Cycle 1 Results for Europe

The General Observer scientific observations for the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) first year of operation have been selected. Proposals from ESA member states comprise 33% of the total number of selected proposals and correspond to 30% of the available telescope time on Webb.
This map illustrates the accepted the geographical distribution of the Cycle 1 JWST accepted proposals in Europe.

64. Hubble Spies a Stunning Spiral

This cosmic portrait — captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 — shows a stunning view of the spiral galaxy NGC 4571, which lies approximately 60 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation — whose name translates as Bernice’s Hair — was named after an Egyptian queen who lived more than 2200 years ago.
As majestic as spiral galaxies like NGC 4571 are, they are far from the largest structures known to astronomers. NGC 4571 is part of the Virgo cluster, which contains more than a thousand galaxies. This cluster is in turn …

65. Eye of the Galaxy

This finely detailed image shows the heart of NGC 1097, a barred spiral galaxy that lies about 48 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Fornax. This picture reveals the intricacy of the web of stars and dust at NGC 1097’s centre, with the long tendrils of dust picked out in a dark red hue. The extent to which the galaxy’s structure is revealed is thanks to two instruments on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope: the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
The idea that a single image can be taken using two different cameras …

66. SM4: Grunsfeld and Feustel work on Hubble

Astronauts Andrew Feustel (left) and John Grunsfeld, both STS-125 mission specialists, participate in the mission's third session of extravehicular activity (EVA) as work continues to refurbish and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. During the six-hour, 36-minute spacewalk, Grunsfeld and Feustel removed the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement and installed in its place the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. They also completed the Advanced Camera for Surveys electronic card replacement work, and completed part 2 of the ACS repair, installing a new electronics box and cable.

67. Hubble Looks Through Cosmic Zoom Lens

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has used a natural 'zoom lens' in space to boost its view of the distant universe. Besides offering an unprecedented and dramatic new view of the cosmos, the results promise to shed light on galaxy evolution and dark matter in space. Hubble peered straight through the center of one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, called Abell 1689.
For this observation, Hubble had to gaze at the distant cluster, located 2.2 billion light-years away, for more than 13 hours. The gravity of the cluster's trillion stars " plus …

68. Hubble's full photomap of Pluto

This is the most detailed view to date of the entire surface of the dwarf planet Pluto, as constructed from multiple NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken from 2002 to 2003. NASA's New Horizons space probe, now halfway to Pluto, will get sharper images of Pluto when it is six months away from a close flyby in 2015.
Hubble's view isn't sharp enough to see craters or mountains, if they exist on the surface, but Hubble reveals a complex-looking and variegated world with white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain. The overall colour is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from …

69. Collection of Hubble ACS Images

This collection of images features those taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which is marking 20 years of operation in March of 2022.

70. Hubble Snaps a Jet Set

An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This stellar tantrum — produced by an extremely young star in the earliest phase of formation — consists of an incandescent jet of gas travelling at supersonic speeds. As the jet collides with material surrounding the still-forming star, the shock heats this material and causes it to glow. The result is the colourfully wispy structures, which astronomers refer to as Herbig–Haro objects, billowing across the lower left of this image.
Herbig–Haro objects are seen to evolve and change significantly over just a few …

71. Not-So-Close Encounter

The twin galaxies NGC 4496A and NGC 4496B dominate the frame in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Both galaxies lie in the constellation Virgo, but despite appearing side-by-side in this image they are at vastly different distances from both Earth and one another. NGC 4496A is 47 million light-years from Earth while NGC 4496B is 212 million light-years away. The enormous distances between the two galaxies mean that the two cannot interact, and they only appear to overlap owing to a chance alignment.
Chance galactic alignments such as this provide astronomers with the opportunity to delve into …

72. Hubble’s Observation of Arp 143

A spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy.
The interacting galaxy duo is collectively called Arp 143. The pair contains the distorted, star-forming spiral galaxy NGC 2445, at right, along with its less flashy companion, NGC 2444, at left. This frenzied action takes place against the tapestry of distant galaxies. Some of them can be seen through the interacting pair.

73. Wide-Field View of Arp 143

This image shows a wide-field view of Arp 143

74. Hubble Captures a Peculiar Galactic Pair

This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 298, a stunning pair of interacting galaxies. Arp 298 — which comprises the two galaxies NGC 7469 and IC 5283 — lies roughly 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The larger of the two galaxies pictured here is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7469, and IC 5283 is its diminutive companion. NGC 7469 is also host to an active, supermassive black hole and a bright ring of star clusters.
The “Arp” in this galaxy pair’s name signifies that they are listed in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies …

75. Tumultuous Galactic Trio

The mass of dust and bright swirls of stars in this image are the distant galaxy merger IC 2431, which lies 681 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured what appears to be a triple galaxy merger in progress, as well as a tumultuous mixture of star formation and tidal distortions caused by the gravitational interactions of this galactic trio. The centre of this image is obscured by a thick cloud of dust — though light from a background galaxy can be seen piercing its outer extremities.
This image is from a …

76. A Cosmic Draw

It is now widely accepted amongst astronomers that an important aspect of how galaxies evolve is the way they interact with one another. Galaxies can merge, collide, or brush past one another — each of which has a significant impact on their shapes and structures. As common as these interactions are thought to be in the Universe, it is rare to capture an image of two galaxies interacting in such a visibly dynamic way. This image, from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, feels incredibly three-dimensional for a piece of deep-space imagery.
The subject of this image is named Arp 282, …

77. Hubble Revisits a Galactic Oddball

The dwarf galaxy NGC 1705 is featured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This diminutive galaxy lies in the southern constellation Pictor, and is approximately 17 million light-years from Earth. NGC 1705 is a cosmic oddball — it is small, irregularly shaped, and has recently undergone a spate of star formation known as a starburst.
Despite these eccentricities, NGC 1705 and other dwarf irregular galaxies like it can provide valuable insights into the overall evolution of galaxies. Dwarf irregular galaxies tend to contain few elements other than hydrogen or helium, and are considered to be similar to …

The subject of this image is a group of three galaxies, collectively known as NGC 7764A. They were imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, using both its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The two galaxies in the upper right of the image appear to be interacting with one another — indeed, the long trails of stars and gas extending from them both give the impression that they have both just been struck at great speed, thrown into disarray by the bowling-ball-shaped galaxy to the lower left of the image. In reality, however, interactions …

79. Hubble Finds a Black Hole Igniting Star Formation in a Dwarf Galaxy

Black holes are often described as the monsters of the universe—tearing apart stars, consuming anything that comes too close, and holding light captive. Detailed evidence from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, however, shows a black hole in a new light: fostering, rather than suppressing, star formation. Hubble imaging and spectroscopy of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 clearly show a gas outflow stretching from the black hole to a bright star birth region like an umbilical cord, triggering the already dense cloud into forming clusters of stars. Astronomers have previously debated that a dwarf galaxy could have a black hole …

80. Sail of Stars

The spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 3318 are lazily draped across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This spiral galaxy lies in the constellation Vela and is roughly 115 million light-years away from Earth. Vela was originally part of a far larger constellation, known as Argo Navis after the fabled ship Argo from Greek mythology, but this unwieldy constellation proved to be impractically large. Argo Navis was split into three separate parts called Carina, Puppis, and Vela — each named after part of the Argo. As befits a galaxy in a nautically inspired constellation, the outer edges …

81. Galactic Tranquility

The lazily winding spiral arms of the spectacular galaxy NGC 976 fill the frame of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This spiral galaxy lies around 150 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Aries. Despite its tranquil appearance, NGC 976 has played host to one of the most violent astronomical phenomena known — a supernova explosion. These cataclysmicly violent events take place at the end of the lives of massive stars, and can outshine entire galaxies for a short period. While supernovae mark the deaths of massive stars, they are also responsible for the creation …

82. Owen Higgins

83. Galactic Conjunction

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the spiral galaxy NGC 105, which lies roughly 215 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. While it looks like NGC 105 is plunging edge-on into a collision with a neighbouring galaxy, this is just the result of the chance alignment of the two objects in the night sky. NGC 105’s elongated neighbour is actually far more distant and remains relatively unknown to astronomers. These misleading conjunctions occur frequently in astronomy — for example, the stars in constellations are at vastly different distances from Earth, and only appear to form patterns …

84. Webb Liftoff on Ariane 5

The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.

85. New ESA Hubble/Webb Project Scientist and Head of ESA Office at STScI

We are excited to announce the new ESA Hubble/Webb Project Scientist and Head of the ESA Office at STScI Chris Evans.

86. New ESA Hubble/Webb Mission Manager

87. Separation of Webb

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is separated from the Ariane 5 and flying on its own.

88. The ESA James Webb Space Telescope logo

89. Lonely Spiral

The lonely spiral galaxy UGC 9391 is shown in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. This galaxy resides 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco near the north celestial pole. The star-studded spiral arms stand in splendid isolation against a backdrop of distant galaxies, which are only visible as indistinct swirls or smudges thanks to their vast distances from Earth. The image also features some much brighter foreground stars closer to home. These bright nearby stars are ringed with diffraction spikes — prominent spikes caused by light interacting with the inner workings …

90. A Sprinkling of Stars

The open star cluster NGC 1755 resembles a pinch of salt strewn on a jet-black tablecloth in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This collection of stars resides in one the Milky Way’s near neighbours — the Large Magellanic Cloud — and measures 120 light-years from side to side. Despite this impressive breadth, NGC 1755 is a member of the smaller class of star clusters. Star clusters are gravitationally bound collections of stars, and come in two main varieties — smaller open clusters like NGC 1755, which are hosts to younger stars, and gargantuan globular clusters, which can …

91. Cover Page of the 2022 ESA/Hubble Calendar

This is the cover page for the 2022 ESA/Hubble Calendar, featuring images released in 2021.
The electronic version of the calendar is available in digital (low and high resolution) and print-ready versions for everyone to share and enjoy.

92. Hubble Gazes Sidelong at NGC 3568

In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a side-on view of NGC 3568, a barred spiral galaxy roughly 57 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Centaurus. In 2014 the light from a supernova explosion in NGC 3568 reached Earth — a sudden flare of light caused by the titanic explosion accompanying the death of a massive star. Whilst most astronomical discoveries are the work of teams of professional astronomers, this supernova was discovered by amateur astronomers from the Backyard Observatory Supernova Search in New Zealand. Dedicated amateur astronomers often make intriguing discoveries — particularly of …

93. Mini-Jet Found Near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Hubble has found circumstantial evidence that the black hole is still smoldering long after the earlier outburst. Hubble astronomers' evidence is like doing an archeological dig to try and peer through the interstellar pollution of dense sheets of dust and gas between Earth and the galactic center, 27,000 light-years away. Hubble photographed a bright knot of gas that has been impacted by an invisible jet from the black hole, that is merely 15 light-years from it. The black hole must have shown brilliantly billions of years ago as a quasar (quasi-stellar object), when our young galaxy was feeding on lots …

94. Four Filter Fusion

This stellar whirlpool is a spiral galaxy named NCG 7329, which has been imaged by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Creating a colourful image such as this one using a telescope such as Hubble is not as straightforward as pointing and clicking a camera. Commercial cameras will typically try to collect as much light of all visible wavelengths as they can, in order to create the most vibrant images possible. In contrast, raw images collected by Hubble are always monochromatic, because astronomers typically want to capture very specific ranges of wavelengths of light at any time, in order to …

95. One of a Pair

In this image the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope peers into the spiral galaxy NGC 1317 in the constellation Fornax, more than 50 million light-years from Earth. This galaxy is one of a pair, but NGC 1317’s rowdy larger neighbour NGC 1316 lies outside Hubble’s field of view. Despite the absence here of its neighbouring galaxy, NGC 1317 is accompanied in this image by two objects from very different parts of the Universe. The bright point ringed with a criss-cross pattern is a star from our own galaxy surrounded by diffraction spikes, whereas the redder elongated smudge is a distant galaxy …

96. One Galaxy, Three Times

This star- and galaxy-studded image was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), using data that were collected for scientific purposes. The object of interest was a galaxy that is visible in the bottom right corner of the image, named SGAS 0033+02. What makes this particular galaxy interesting is a little unusual — it appears not just once in this image, but three times. The thrice-visible galaxy is a little difficult to spot: it appears once as a curved arc and twice more as small round dots around the star.
SGAS 0033+02’s multiple appearances in the same image are not …

97. Hubble’s Observation of Uranus in 2021

Hubble’s 25 October view of Uranus puts the planet’s bright northern polar hood in the spotlight. It’s springtime in the northern hemisphere and the increase in ultraviolet radiation from the Sun seems to be causing the polar region to brighten. Researchers aren’t sure why. It could be a change in the opacity of atmospheric methane haze, or some variation in the aerosol particles. Curiously, even as the atmospheric hood gets brighter, the sharp southernmost boundary remains at the same latitude. This has been constant over the past several years of Hubble observations of the planet. Perhaps some sort of jetstream …

98. Hubble’s Observation of Jupiter in 2021

Hubble’s 2021 image of Jupiter tracks the ever-changing landscape of its turbulent atmosphere, where several new storms are making their mark and the planet’s equator has changed colour yet again.
Hubble’s 4 September photo puts the giant planet’s tumultuous atmosphere on full display. The planet’s equatorial zone is now a deep orange hue, which researchers are calling unusual. While the equator has departed from its traditional white or beige appearance for a few years now, scientists were surprised to find a deeper orange in Hubble’s recent imaging, where they were expecting the zone to cloud up again.
Just above the equator, researchers …

99. Hubble’s Observation of Saturn in 2021

Hubble’s new look at Saturn on 12 September 2021 shows rapid and extreme colour changes in the bands in the planet’s northern hemisphere, where it is now early autumn. The bands have varied throughout Hubble observations in both 2019 and 2020. Hubble’s Saturn image catches the planet following the southern hemisphere’s winter, evident in the lingering blue-ish hue of the south pole.

100. Hubble’s Observation of Neptune in 2021

In observations taken on 7 September 2021, researchers found that Neptune’s dark spot, which recently was found to have reversed course from moving toward the equator, is still visible in this image, along with a darkened northern hemisphere. There is also a notable dark, elongated circle encompassing Neptune’s south pole. The blue colour of both Neptune and Uranus is a result of the absorption of red light by the planets’ methane-rich atmospheres.

Usage of ESA/Hubble Images and Videos
Are you a journalist? Subscribe to the ESA/Hubble Media Newsletter.

Privacy policy Accelerated by CDN77