Over the past 30 years the Hubble Space Telescope has completely transformed our view of the Universe, providing astronomers with an incredible tool to make groundbreaking discoveries and unlock the mysteries of the cosmos.
For those of us who are not professional astronomers or astrophysicists, Hubble has brought home the beauty of the Universe, capturing amazing images of nebulae, galaxies, planets, star clusters and comets.
Here we present 21 of the most mind-blowing Hubble images released over the past 10 years.
P/2010 A2 2 February 2010. Newly discovered comet-like asteroid P/2010 A2 (now 354P/LINEAR). Analysis of Hubble’s images suggested that its tail was generated by dust and gravel resulting from a recent head-on collision between asteroids. Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA)
IRAS 19475 3119 12 July 2010. Hubble captures a brief but beautiful phase late in the life of a star as it starts to shed its atmosphere into space. Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA
Planetary nebula LL Pegasi 6 September 2010. This remarkable picture shows a regular spiral pattern around star LL Pegasi in the constellation of Pegasus. Credit: ESA/NASA & R. Sahai
Arp 273 20 April 2011. A pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 form the shape of a rose. It's thought the smaller galaxy has passed through the larger one. Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Sh 2-106 15 December 2011. A compact star-forming region in the constellation Cygnus. Newly-formed star S106 IR is shrouded in dust at the centre. Credit: NASA & ESA
Carina Nebula 23 April 2010. Hubble captures the turbulent cosmic pinnacle within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula. Stacks of gas and dust, ‘Pillars of Creation’, are three lightyears tall. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)
U Camelopardalis 2 July 2012. Star U Camelopardalis is surrounded by a faint bubble of gas. Nearing the end of its life, every few thousand years the star coughs out a spherical shell of gas as a layer of helium around its core begins to fuse. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and H. Olofsson
NGC 3314 14 June 2012. A pair of ‘overlapping’ galaxies called NGC 3314. While they appear to be colliding, they are only in alignment from our vantage point. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and W. Keel (University of Alabama)
Ring Nebula 23 May 2013. This image shows the turbulent region around the nebula. Credit: Hubble data: NASA, ESA, C. Robert O’Dell (Vanderbilt University), and David Thompson (LBTO)
Horsehead in infrared 19 April 2013. Released to celebrate the telescope’s 23rd year, this image shows the Horsehead Nebula in infrared light. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)
IRAS 20324 4057 30 August 2013. Found 4,500 lightyears away in Cygnus, this lightyear-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a caterpillar crawling across space. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and IPHAS
Hubble Ultra-Deep Field 3, June 2014. Virtually every point of light in this image is a galaxy, each composed of billions of stars. Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), Z. Levay (STScI)
Jupiter 13 October 2015. The distinct bands that characterise the turbulent atmosphere of the largest planet in our Solar System. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M. Wong (UC Berkeley), and G. Orton (JPL-Caltech)
Veil Nebula 24 September 2015. A small section of the outer shell of the Veil Nebula, the remnant of a star’s violent death 8,000 years ago. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team
Bubble Nebula 21 April 2016. An expanding shell of gas 10 lightyears across and expanding at the rate of 100,000km an hour. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team
Galactic pairing 20 April 2017. Galaxies NGC 4302, seen edge-on, and NGC 4298, both located 55 million lightyears away.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Mutchler (STScI)
Saturn and northern aurorae 30 August 2018. Aurorae on Saturn are mainly visible in ultraviolet. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, A. Simon (GSFC) and the OPAL Team, J. DePasquale (STScI), L. Lamy (Observatoire de Paris)
Lagoon Nebula 19 April 2018. This image shows only a small part of this turbulent star-formation region, about four lightyears across. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI
Asteroid in the Crab Nebula (M1) 24 September 2019
Citizen scientist Melina Thévenot from Germany discovered an asteroid trail in the foreground of a 2005 Hubble image of the Crab Nebula. Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Thévenot (@AstroMelina)
NGC 3432 29 July 2019. The outer reaches of galaxy NGC 3432, viewed directly edge-on. Credit:
ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko, R. Jansen
NGC 3147 11 July 2019. This galaxy is roughly 130 million lightyears away in the constellation of Draco the Dragon. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
Jess Wilder is BBC Sky at Night Magazine's Production Editor.
Veil Nebula 24 September 2015. A small section of the outer shell of the Veil Nebula, the remnant of a star’s violent death 8,000 years ago. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team
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