Hubble’s Universe

Year after year, Hubble provides stunning images of the cosmos. This album provides just a taste of the most famous and intriguing images taken.

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Westerlund 2, a giant cluster of 3,000 stars, resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29. The...
A combintation of yellow, brown, red, and blue/violet colored gas intermixed with blue and yellow stars.
Located in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), around 50 million light-years from Earth, the galaxy NGC 4535 is truly...
Arms swirl of new blue stars around a central region of older yellow stars in this galaxy image.
Astronomers are using the Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras — stunning light shows in a planet's atmosphere — on...
Bright blue aurora circle the top of Jupiter's north pole.
In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope spent 10 straight days in a unique experiment, staring at a dark, seemingly empty...
Thousands of galaxies float in a small section of space.
Merging Star Clusters in 30 Doradus This Hubble Space Telescope image captures two clusters full of massive stars that may...
A colorful red, orange, and brown and dust cloud with a bright blue star cluster on the right side.
Eye in the Sky This image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope features NGC 4826 — a spiral galaxy located...
A swirling dense galaxy with thick dust clouds surrounds a central region of older yellow stars whose front half appears darker, resembling a black eye.
This image of Caldwell 69 includes ultraviolet, visible, and infrared observations taken in 2019 and 2020 by Hubble’s Wide Field...
This image of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 was part of the Hubble Space Telescope's Frontier Fields project, which combined...
A cluster of yellow galaxies with hundreds of background galaxies. The image include arcs that are distorted images of background galaxies.
The Mice This colliding pair of spiral galaxies is known as "The Mice" because of the long tails of stars...
Two galaxies interacting that look like mice with tails.
The scattered stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355 are strewn across this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC...
A massive cluster of blue, red, yellow, and white stars.
This 100 million-year-old globular cluster is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and...
Thousands of red, white, yellow, and blue stars in a star cluster that is in front of a reddish orange cloud of gas and dust.
NGC 2146 is classified as a barred spiral because of its shape, but the most distinctive feature is the dusty...
A Galaxy is center in image with thick black dust and some redish star regionsCredit: popping through.
Looming like a giant flying saucer in our outer solar system, Saturn puts on a show as the planet and...
Five images of Saturn from lower left to upper right with each image showing Saturn and its rings tilted at different amounts.
The composite picture is a seamless blend of ultra-sharp Hubble Space Telescope images combined with the wide view of the...
This 100 million-year-old globular cluster is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and...
Yellow and white stars in a star cluster float in front of a cloud of bue wispy dust and gas.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the central region of Messier 96 (M96), a spiral galaxy of about the same...
A spiral galaxy with dark dust on the front side and star formation on the back side.
This galaxy, called NGC 1569, sparkles with the light from millions of newly formed young stars. NGC 1569 is pumping...
A bright red galaxy shines near the top of the image in shades of pink and white.
Ring galaxies arise from a collision in which one galaxy plunges directly through the disk of another one. Seen here...
The hallmark of the Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104 (M104), is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by thick dust lanes...
Like a fireworks display, a young, glittering collection of stars looks like an aerial burst. The cluster of huge, hot...
To the surprise of astronomers, galaxy NGC 4622 appears to be rotating in the opposite direction from what they expected....
A large, face-on galaxy. It has a bright-white center with yellowish spiral arms. The spiral arm form concentric circles near the galaxy's core and curve outward further away from the galaxy.
A jet of electrons and other sub-atomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light streams from galaxy Messier 87...
Eta Carinae may be about to explode. But no one knows when - it may be next year, it may...
Elliptical galaxy NGC 4660 is one of a hundred galaxies imaged by Hubble that are members of the nearest large...
A bright-white elliptical galaxy extends from the lower-left to the upper-right of the image. Its core is at image center and shines bright-white.
The orange-red "cobwebs" in this Hubble image are dusty clouds of sooty carbon engulfing the dying star CW Leonis. They...
Shreds of the colorful supernova remnant DEM L 190 seem to billow across the screen in this Hubble Space Telescope...
The Hubble Space Telescope was used to observe Saturn on June 6, 2018, when Saturn was only approximately 1.36 billion...
This peculiar Hubble Space Telescope portrait showcases NGC 1999, a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. NGC 1999 is around...
This Hubble Space Telescope composite image shows a ghostly "ring" of dark matter in the galaxy cluster ZwCl0024+1652. The ring-like...
In July 1994, 21 chunks of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which had broken apart a year earlier, slammed into Jupiter. The...
Mounded, luminous clouds of gas and dust glow in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a Herbig-Haro object known as...
N44 is a complex nebula filled with glowing hydrogen gas, dark lanes of dust, massive stars, and many populations of...
Nebula image of bright blue, purple dust surrounded by stars of all sorts of colors. At the top of the image, a large nebula with swirls and clouds of dust and gas is present, at the bottom of the image, a smaller nebula with bright white stars.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows how young, energetic, massive stars illuminate and sculpt their birthplace with powerful winds and...
A large, red, nebula of dust and gas at the top right portion of the image with a small blue bubble at the bottom left.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the interacting galaxy pair Arp 273, popularly called the “Rose.” The larger...
Spiral galaxy at the top of the image with a smaller galaxy being pulled in from the bottom.
Thousands of sparkling young stars are nestled within the giant nebula NGC 3603. This stellar "jewel box" is one of...
Large cluster of stars in the center of the image, surrounded by red dust and gas.
By using certain types of color filters, as in this Hubble Space Telescope image of Uranus, astronomers can extract more...
Image of blue Uranus, with three purple marks in it. Surrounding Uranus is a ring.
A nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia has flowing veils of gas and dust that have earned it the nickname...
Large purple cloud of dust and gas. Within it there are many orange stars. The image almost appears like a man standing in profile.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 in visible and near-infrared light. Abell 370...
Large grouping of galaxies warped around what appears to be a giant lens. Each galaxy appears as a glob of light.
As nuclear fusion engines, most stars live placid lives for hundreds of millions to billions of years. But near the...
Bright blue cloud of dust and gas with bits of purple gas surrounding it the large glob of gas in the center.
Astronomers used the Hubble Space telescope to revisit one of its most iconic subjects, the so-called "Pillars of Creation" in...
Three giant pillars of rusty colored dust and gas with a blueish green background.
Observing in infrared light, Hubble pierced through the obscuring gas and dust of M16’s Pillars of Creation. This ethereal image...
This image shows the pillars as seen in infrared light, allowing it to pierce through obscuring dust and gas and unveil a more unfamiliar — but just as amazing — view of the pillars. In this ethereal view the entire frame is peppered with bright stars and baby stars are revealed being formed within the pillars themselves. The ghostly outlines of the pillars seem much more delicate, and are silhouetted against an eerie blue haze. Hubble also captured the pillars in visible light.
M2-9 is a striking example of a "butterfly" or a bipolar planetary nebula. Another more revealing name might be the...
Bright white star in the center of the image, with two bright blueish green plumes of dust and gas on either side moving away from the center star.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope caught the eerie, wispy tendrils of a dark interstellar cloud being destroyed by the passage of...
Wisps of dark green dust at the bottom left of the image as a bright star is shining its light from the top right of the image.
Two dramatically different faces of the Red Planet appear in these comparison images showing how a global dust storm engulfed...
Two different shots of rusty Mars next to each other. On the left you can see Mars and lots of defining surface features. Dark mountains, large blank plains, white caps on the North and South poles. On the right image, Mars is totally covered in dust and you can barely make out any of those features.
Glowing like a multi-faceted jewel, the planetary nebula IC 418 lies about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of...
Colorful oval shaped nebula with orange gas on the outside as the color gets more and more purple the more you move to the inside. A bright white/purple star sits at the center.
Looking like a glittering swarm of buzzing bees, the stars of globular cluster NGC 6440 shine brightly in this Hubble...
Large grouping of stars, uncountable stars forming together in a giant cluster.
"Starry Night," Vincent van Gogh's famous painting, is renowned for its bold whorls of light sweeping across a raging night...
Large red star in the center of the image surrounded by brown dust and gas swirling around it unevenly.
A photogenic and favorite target for amateur astronomers, the full beauty of nearby spiral galaxy M83, also known as the...
Galaxy with soft purple arms and blue stars spiraling around its bright white center.
The Crab Nebula is an expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event...
Bright green, orange, and yellow tendrils intertwined within this egg shaped nebula.
Peering deep into M1, this spectacular Hubble image captures the nebula’s beating heart: the rapidly spinning pulsar at its core....
While many other images of the famous Crab Nebula nebula have focused on the filaments in the outer part of the nebula, this image shows the very heart of the Crab Nebula including the central neutron star — it is the rightmost of the two bright stars near the centre of this image. The rapid motion of the material nearest to the central star is revealed by the subtle rainbow of colours in this time-lapse image, the rainbow effect being due to the movement of material over the time between one image and another.
This Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet image of Saturn was taken when the planet's rings were at a maximum tilt of...
Saturn, seen in purples, greens and blues, is surrounded by its bright yellow rings.
Not only is the Cat's Eye Nebula, formally cataloged NGC 6543, one of the first planetary nebulae to be discovered,...
Purple and soft yellow dust and gas surrounding bright white star in the center of the image. Lots of bubbles of dust interweave each other.
This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming....
Large clouds of dust and gas in pinks, purples, on the outside with brighter yellows and whites nearer to the center. Bright white stars in the center of the image.
This Hubble Space Telescope image, taken in 1994, shows several blue, loop-shaped objects that actually are multiple images of the...
Spots of light that are galaxies in this image. Some of the galaxies appear to be stretched due to gravitational lensing. Three very bright orange spots of light near the center in a row.
This Hubble Space Telescope image captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being...
Large orange, yellow, and red clouds of dust and gas. Called Mystic Mountain because they appear as if they're giant mountainous pillars of gas with a blue background.
Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since...
Large, dark red cloud of dust and gas surrounded by grey wisps of smoke and gas. Many stars in the black background of space.
This spectacular image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures the spiral galaxy NGC 105, which lies roughly 215 million light-years...
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 thanks to the chance alignment of their component stars. The Wide Field Camera 3 observations in this image are from a vast collection of Hubble measurements examining nearby galaxies which contain two fascinating astronomical phenomena — Cepheid variables and cataclysmic supernova explosions. Whilst these two phenomena may appear to be unrelated — one is a peculiar class of pulsating stars and the other is the explosion caused by the catastrophic final throes of a massive star’s life — they are both used by astronomers for a very particular purpose: measuring the vast distances to astronomical objects. Both Cepheids and supernovae have very predictable luminosities, meaning that astronomers can tell precisely how bright they are. By measuring how bright they appear when observed from Earth, these “standard candles” can provide reliable distance measurements. NGC 105 contains both supernovae and Cepheid variables, giving astronomers a valuable opportunity to calibrate the two distance measurement techniques against one another. Astronomers recently carefully analysed the distances to a sample of galaxies including NGC 105 to measure how fast the Universe is expanding — a value known as the Hubble constant. Their results don’t agree with the predictions of the most widely-accepted cosmological model, and their analysis shows that there is only a 1-in-a-million chance that this discrepancy was caused by measurement errors. This discrepancy between galaxy measurements and cosmological predictions has been a long-standing source of consternation for astronomers, and these recent findings provide persuasive new evidence that something is either wrong or lacking in our standard model of cosmology.
Like lifting a giant veil, the near-infrared vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovers this dazzling view deep inside the...
Intertwined wisps of light purple clouds of dust and gas envelope the entire image. Countless orange stars pepper the image.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows rich detail in a pair of star clusters 166,000 light-years away in the Large...
Large cluster of stars globbing together. The image itself has an orange hue to the point that every star is either orange, white orange, or deep red. Brighter in the center of the image.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of an enormous bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star....
Large blue bubble in the center of the image with tufts of yellow/orange clouds of dust and gas in the top left of the image, and a bit at the top of the blue bubble. Random purple stars are seen speckled at random throughout the image.
This image of the central region of spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is not out of focus. Instead, the galaxy itself...
Large spiral of dust and gas orbiting bright white center of this galaxy image. The spiral is dusty and dark brown with dark blue interspersed.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the expanding remains of a massive star...
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field consists of a rich tapestry of around 10,000 galaxies of all sizes, shapes, and ages....
The muted red tones of the globular cluster Liller 1 are partially obscured in this Hubble Space Telescope image by...
The star AG Carinae is surrounded by an expanding shell of gas and dust. The nebula is about five light-years...
Soon after Hubble first began sending images from space, scientists discovered that the telescope's primary mirror had a flaw called...
a side by side comparison of galaxy m100 before and after the fix for Hubble's spherical aberation was installed.
The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) combines 10 years of Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a small patch of...
The spiral pattern shown by the galaxy in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope is striking because of its...
Resembling the fury of a raging sea, this image actually shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen gas and small...
The Hubble Space Telescope provided astronomers with extraordinary views of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, a fragile comet that was rapidly disintegrating...
This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. This image, taken...
Renowned astrophotographer Robert Gendler took science data from the Hubble Space Telescope archive and combined it with his own ground-based...
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this close-up view of an electric-blue aurora eerily glowing one-half billion miles away on the...
Blue glowing lines encircle one of the poles of Jupiter.
Galaxy NGC 6861 features a prominent disk of dark bands circling its center. These bands are a result of large...
Galaxies come in a range of shapes and sizes, and astronomers use this fact to classify them based on their...
This close-up, visible-light view by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals previously unseen details of the Ring Nebula. The object is...
NGC 1300 is considered by many as a prototypical barred spiral galaxy. Barred spirals differ from normal spiral galaxies in...
A colorful assortment of 100,000 stars resides in the crowded core of Omega Centauri, a giant globular cluster. This is...
M82 or the Cigar galaxy, shines brightly at infrared wavelengths and is remarkable for its star formation activity. The Cigar...
Cigar Galaxy M82
In celebration of the 29th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers used Hubble to capture this...
A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as Hoag's...
In this unusual image, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the celestial equivalent of a geode —...
The star cluster Pismis 24 lies within the much larger emission nebula called NGC 6357, located about 8,000 light-years from...
This is an image of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, taken with the Wide Field...
Two sets of rings in orange and gold stacked one above the other form the shape of a hourglass. At image center, where the two sets of rings overlap, is an area of white, green and black dust in a shape that is similar to the human eye.
Asteroid P/2010 A2 puzzled astronomers in 2010 with its comet-like tail. The object appeared so unusual in ground-based telescope images...
In the center of this image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, are two faint galaxies that seem to be...
A head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy, as captured this Hubble Space Telescope image. The...
Two galaxies one right one on the left. right galaxy has a blue-white triangular star forming region surrounding it.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the iridescent interior of one of the most active galaxies in our local...
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope snapshot reveals what looks like an uncanny pair of glowing eyes staring in our direction....
Two galaxies, each has a bright-white core. Their cores are very close together. They are surrounded by light blue gas, dust, and stars that form a ring around the cores.
The Hubble Legacy Field represents the largest, most comprehensive "history book" of galaxies in the universe. The image, a combination...
This Hubble Space Telescope portrait of Stephan's Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, seems to show a group...
The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this picture of Mars on October 28, 2005, within a day of its closest approach...
Full shot of Mars. Rusty red, you can see many of the ground features of the planet, with dust coming from the north.
The Hubble Space Telescope photographed this peculiar system of galaxies known as Arp 194. This interacting group contains several galaxies,...
Large galaxy at the top of the image, spiraling in, at the bottom a smaller galaxy is there, the two galaxies are almost linked by a bright blue line of stars and gas.
Galaxy Messier 51 (M51, also designated NGC 5194) is nicknamed the Whirlpool because of its prominent swirling structure. Its two...
Large spiral galaxy as seen from the top. On the left, the large galaxy with its purple and blue arms spiraling around. To the right, a smaller whiter galaxy is connected to one of the arms of the larger galaxy.
This beautiful image features the globular star cluster M75. Discovered in 1780 by Pierre Méchain, M75 was also observed by...
Large globular cluster of countless stars. The center is extremely bright and white due to the amount of stars.
This Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of the dynamic blue-green planet Neptune reveals a monstrous dark storm (top center) and the...
Sphere of Neptune seen. Dark blue circle with two small dark spots on the Northern portion.
This image shows the central section of galaxy Messier 94 (M94), which lies in the small northern constellation of Canes...
Large spiral galaxy with bright spot in the center; large arms spiraling around the center, the inner arms are dark brown gas while the outer arms are bluish stars and gas.
This odd-looking galaxy with the long streamer of stars appears to be racing through space like a runaway pinwheel firework,...
At the top left of the image, a white spiral galaxy is seen with a long blue tail going diagonal down to the bottom right. In the background there are many distant galaxies.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured a grouping of galaxies engaged in a slow dance of destruction that will last for...
Group of galaxies bunching together with distant galaxies far away in the background.
The Hubble image on the left shows the bright core of M84 surrounded by a dark band of gas and...
Two images next to each other. On the left is a bright light in black and white, and on the right is a wavelength of light, blue green, yellow, orange, and red, representing the spectrographic view.
Two spiral galaxies are seen passing by each other like majestic ships in the night in this Hubble Space Telescope...
Garden-variety stars like the Sun live fairly placid lives in their galactic neighborhoods, steadily churning out heat and light for...
On January 24, 2015, the Hubble Space Telescope captured a rare look at three of Jupiter's largest moons, Europa, Callisto,...
Jupiter
Hubble captured this close-up of stars in Caldwell 86 using the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2005. These observations helped...
This Hubble image, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, shows both the spindly, spidery filaments of gas...
Assembled from a total of 7,398 exposures taken over 411 individual pointings of the telescope, this image of our nearest...
This sweeping bird's-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) shows stars, lanes of dark dust and bright core. The central region is on the left.
Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this monstrous object is actually an innocuous pillar of...
Resembling an interstellar Frisbee, the dark feature in these two Hubble images is a protoplanetary disk of dust seen edge-on...
From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of a garden-variety...
Saturn's comparatively paper-thin rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Because the orbits of Saturn's major satellites...
This Hubble Space Telescope image offers a close-up look at a nearby example of galactic cannibalism: a massive black hole...
These delicate wisps of gas make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short. The thin,...
Terzan 1 is not a new target for Hubble — an image of the cluster was released back in 2015,...
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this infrared-light portrait of a roiling region of star birth located 6,400 light-years away. The...
Lower -left quadrant is filled with rusty-brown dust cloud dotted with a few bright stars. Hazy pillars of gas and dust rise up toward the right. A bluish-white glow fills the lower-right quadrant. The haze is more transparent as you move toward the upper right corner. Background is dotted with stars.
The Antennae galaxies, a merging pair of galaxies located about 62 million light-years from Earth, are shown in this image...
Now you see them, now you don't. Three views of the same supernova appear in the 2016 image on the...
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the...
Galaxies dot a black sky. a faint red arc holds three dots. the two outer dots are a lensed star cluster, the center dot is the farthest known star, dubbed Earendel.
NGC 2336 is the quintessential galaxy — big, beautiful, and blue — and it is captured here by the NASA/ESA...
Astronomers celebrated NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's 33rd launch anniversary with an ethereal photo of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333....
Vertical image: blue at top, golden at middle, red at bottom. Bright blue star at top illuminates clouds of gas. Below bright star, fainter stars shine yellow. Image center, brighter yellow star illuminates gas. Image bottom is darker, with splash of red.
This image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. Released...
The planet Jupiter with its familiar cloud bands seen in shades of pink, rusty red, blue, and purple. The Great Red Spot is a deep navy blue, surrounded by bands and swirls of pink, and light blue.
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of...
Taking up most of the image, is a multi-colored nebula in shades of blue, pink, yellow, orange, purple, and white. It appears as two translucent orbs attached by a white band.