The Hubble Space Telescope has been silently hovering above Earth for over 25 years, but it's still returning spectacular images of the cosmos. That's an amazing technological achievement. But it wasn't always a smooth ride.
By now, the story is well known: Despite a Herculean effort to test Hubble before launch, an imperfection in the main mirror caused the resulting images to come out blurry. A NASA service mission was sent in 1993 to fit Hubble with a new camera. And it's been sending back beautiful images ever since. This was only the first of five manned service missions to Hubble, which have delivered new equipment and instruments, and taken care of less-urgent issues, over the years.
Most of the famous Hubble images were taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). WFPC2 was the replacement installed on that service's first mission. The WFPC2 was replaced with the WFC3 during the final Hubble service mission in 2009, and it has an even greater optical resolution. Some images were also taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which replaced the original Faint Object Camera in 2002.
Since it's outside Earth's murky atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope can see farther and more clearly than any astronomical instrument before. While it's reaching the end of its mission, we can never forget the wondrous sights it brought us. To celebrate Hubble's quarter-century in space, we've assembled our 25 favorite images. Here they are in no particular order.1. Super-Detailed Crab Nebula
Hubble captured this mosaic image of the Crab Nebula (6,500 light years away) using the WFPC2 in 2000. The 24 individual images were assembled and released as the most detailed look at this nebula ever in 2005.
2. Hubble Revisits Pillars of Creation
One of Hubble’s most famous images is of a structure in the Eagle Nebula called the Pillars of Creation. The original was amazing, but the telescope revisited this feature in 2014 using the improved WFC3 instrument. The above image shows both versions side-by-side.
3. Hubble Deep Field
In 1995, Hubble pointed its WFPC2 camera at an empty patch of sky for 10 days. The resulting image revealed hundreds of galaxies from the distant past. Every smudge, pixel, and light in this image is an entire galaxy. Makes you feel small, doesn’t it?
4. The Sombrero Galaxy
Hubble took this mosaic image of the stunning Sombrero galaxy (M104) in 2004. It’s 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth. The distinctive shape is caused by thick rings of dust toward the perimeter of the disc.
5. The Orion Nebula Revisited
Hubble took a closer look at the Orion Nebula in 2006 to get this picture. This is the closest star-forming region to Earth at 1,500 light years away.
6. The Whirlpool Galaxy
Hubble took this spectacular image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and its smaller companion galaxy in 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The angle gives us a great view of the amazing spiral arms of this galaxy, which is 25 million light-years away.
7. Supergiant Star V838 Monocerotis
The massive star V838 (20,000 light years away) became the brightest star in the galaxy for a brief time in 2002. This phenomenon is still not completely understood, but Hubble’s ACS captured this image of gas blasted out from the star on February 8, 2004.
8. Quadruple Saturn Moon Transit
Hubble snapped this pic of four of Saturn’s moons (Titan, Mimas, Dione, and Enceladus) transiting the planetary disk in 2009.
9. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impact Zones
One of the earliest tests of the WFPC2 upgrade came in the summer of 1994 when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter. This true-color image of the planet shows an Earth-sized bruise where two of the largest fragments hit.
10. Hercules A Galaxy
Hubble used the WFC3 to capture this image of radio galaxy Hercules A in 2012. The purple jets are radio waves being blasted out by the supermassive black hole in the center of this galaxy.
11. Carina Nebula Close-Up
The Carina Nebula is 8000 light years away and is one of the prettiest balls of gas in the neighborhood. This image was taken with Hubble’s WFPC2 instrument in 1999 and reveals the detail of a region known as the Keyhole Nebula.
12. Tight Spirals in NGC 2841
Most spiral galaxies have a few wide arms, but so-called flocculent galaxies have many densely packed slender arms. Such is the case with NGC 2841, which is seen in this 2011 image in fantastic detail thanks to the WFC3 instrument on Hubble.
13. Backlit Galaxy
Captured by Hubble’s ACS instrument in 2009, this image shows galaxy NGC 7049 backlit by a halo of stars near its core. This makes the rings of dust at the edge stand out dramatically, even from 100 million light years away.
14. Wide view of Carina Nebula
In case the close-ups above left you wanting more, here’s a wider view of the Carina Nebula. This stellar nursery is 7,500 light years away and is quite lovely. You can see Mystic Mountain toward the upper right. The color information in this picture is based on data acquired separately by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
15. Stephan’s Quintet
These four galaxies were imaged in 2009 using the WFC3. This compact group of galaxies is distorted because of their gravitational effects on each other.
16. Warped Galaxy
This image of ESO 510-G13 from 2001 was taken with the WFPC2 and depicts the aftermath of a galactic collision.
17. Hubble Extreme Deep Field
This new version of the deep field image was released in 2012. It contains data from a decade of observations with the WFC3 and ACS instruments on Hubble. This one patch of the sky shows more than 5,500 galaxies, some of them stretching back to the dawn of the universe.
18. Jupiter High-Resolution
Hubble’s WFC3 allows scientists to snap photos of distant objects with unprecedented detail, but things in our own backyard look nicer, too. This full-disc image of Jupiter was captured in 2014, showing the Great Red Spot.
19. The Dust Lanes of Centaurus A
The Centaurus A galaxy is only 11 million light-years away, but parts of it are so dusty that older images couldn’t resolve all the details. Using the WFC3 in 2011, Hubble took this awesome picture of Centaurus A. This multi-wavelength image really brings out the detail of the dusty bits.
20. Infrared view of the Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula some 1,300 light years away is one of the most recognizable astronomical objects, but it looks completely different in infrared. Hubble snapped this pic in 2013 using the WFC3.
21. Mars From Hubble
Astronomers took advantage of a rare close approach by Mars in 2001. When the Red Planet was just 43 million miles away, Hubble snapped this picture with the WFPC2. It has a surface resolution of just 10 miles. This is the best image we’ve gotten of Mars that didn’t involve sending a robot there.
22. The Antennae Galaxies
In 1997, Hubble used its WFPC2 system to capture this 1,500-light year-wide image of two galaxies in a head-on collision. This event, some 75 million light-years away, could be a preview of what will happen when and if Andromeda collides with the Milky Way.
23. Eagle Nebula Spire
The Pillars of Creation are more famous, but this spire of gas in the Eagle Nebula is also quite impressive. Captured in 2005 with the ACS instrument, this 9.5-light year-tall structure has been compared to a winged fairytale creature.
24. The Mystic Mountain in Carina
In another close-up of the beautiful Carina Nebula from 2010, Hubble used the WFC3 to examine a structure dubbed “Mystic Mountain.” This is an area of intense star formation.
25. Butterfly Nebula
Sitting 4,000 light years away from where you are is the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302. Hubble captured this amazing high-resolution image of the supernova remnant in 2009 with the WFC3.
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