Exploring the Cosmos

From our solar system neighbors to the far outer reaches of the early cosmos, Hubble's three decades of scientific discoveries have unraveled the sublime elegance and complexity that is our universe.

Quick Facts

Hubble took the first direct images of protoplanetary disks, planetary “building blocks” within dusty disks around young stars.

The view is filled with wisps of clouds in colors of white, grey, brown, and black. Protoplanetary disks appear as dark or bright points surrounded by denser white clouds. Center of the image holds a bright protoplanetary disk that is larger than the others.

Hubble was the first to directly measure an exoplanet’s atmosphere, detecting sodium in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star 150 light-years away.

Illustration of icy world orbiting distant star.

Hubble helped find the first evidence that the universe's expansion is not slowing down, as expected, but speeding up by an unknown force - dark energy.

Hubble Deep Field

Hubble took the first ultraviolet image of an exoplanet, observing a still-forming, Jupiter-sized planet coalescing from material around a young star.

Blue background. Center of image is a disk blocking the light of a star. Below and just to the left of the disk, at about seven o'clock, is a bright white point. This is PDS 70b.

Hubble took the first direct image of the surface of a star other than the Sun when it observed the nearby red supergiant star Betelgeuse.

This image has three panels: one on the right, taking up about half the image, and two stacked on the left. In the upper left is a Hubble image of Betelgeuse. The star looks like a glowing ball of yellow light with a bright yellow circle in the center that fades outward to a dark orange. The outer edges appear hazy. Below the image of Betelgeuse are three scale bars. The first shows the size of the star as seen in the Hubble image above. Below that is a scale bar showing the size of Earth’s orbit, which is about a 15% the length of the star’s size. Finally, the last scale bar shows the orbit of Jupiter, which is about 70% as long as the star’s size. The panel on the right shows a black background with many stars of different sizes dotted around the image. The stars of Orion are called out with light white lines drawn between the major stars. An arrow points to one star at the upper left, the location of Betelgeuse.

The furthest object observed by Hubble is galaxy GN-z11, whose light took 13.4 billion years to reach us.

An image of space with thousands of galaxies with an insert that is blown up of the farthest galaxy ever detected.
Clouds of gas cover the entire view, in a variety of bold colors. in the center the gas is brighter and very textured, resembling dense smoke. around the edges it is sparser and fainter. several small, bright blue stars are scattered over the nebula.
A portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 appears as a roiling wall of smoke studded with stars in this image from the NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 6530 is a collection of several thousand stars lying around 4,350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The cluster is set within the larger Lagoon Nebula, a gigantic interstellar cloud of gas and dust. It is the nebula that gives this image its distinctly smoky appearance; clouds of interstellar gas and dust stretch from one side of this image to the other.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, and O. De Marco; Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

Science Themes

Five science themes guide Hubble's observations of the universe.

Hubble charts changes in the atmospheres of the outer planets in our solar system and inspects worlds around other stars. It studies the realms of star birth and death, galaxy evolution, and the very origins and evolution of our universe. There is no aspect of astronomy that Hubble’s discoveries haven’t touched.

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galaxies with lensing and scratch marks
Galaxy cluster Abell 370 contains several hundred galaxies tied together by the mutual pull of gravity. The thin, white trails that look like curved or S-shaped streaks are from asteroids that reside, on average, only about 160 million miles from Earth. The trails appear in multiple Hubble exposures that were combined into one image. Of the 22 total asteroid sightings for this field, five are unique objects that are so faint, they were unknown before this Hubble image.
NASA, ESA, and STScI

Science Highlights

Explore observations that highlight the breadth of Hubble's three decades in space.

The stories you find here represent a small sample of Hubble’s thought-provoking discoveries and images. They serve to highlight some of Hubble’s greatest scientific achievements to date.

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Hubble view of an expanding halo of light around star v838 monocerotis
Hubble captured this view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) with its Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004. The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years before this image was taken.
NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA
Astronomers explain the history and high-level science behind some of Hubble's most beautiful, groundbreaking, and iconic images.

Science Behind the Discoveries

Ever wonder how Hubble makes its discoveries?

Explore the fundamental science behind Hubble’s observations. Learn what different wavelengths of light can tell us about astronomical objects and how that light becomes the celebrated images we love.

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Three pillars of gas and dust rise from the bottom of the image. They are rusty-brown and black with golden highlights. A bright, hazy background of varying shades of blue and turquoise helps silhouette the darker pillars. Bright stars dot the background.
Hubble revisited its iconic Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image. Astronomers combined several Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 exposures to assemble the wider view. The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green.
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hubble's Partners in Science

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has a long history of working with other observatories to explore our universe.

Hubble's unique capability to see in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light along with its high resolution make it a highly sought after collaborator in our quest to better understand the cosmos.

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Illustration of various space-based and ground-based telescopes.
Hubble works with many different types of telescopes, both ground and space based, to explore the cosmos.
NASA

Universe Uncovered

Take a sightseeing trip through the cosmos with Hubble.

Tour Hubble galaxy, nebula, and star cluster images then delve into the vastness of space with Hubble’s Deep Fields.

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An undulating cloudscape of orange, yellow, green, red, pink, and purple gas clouds fill the bottom three-quarters of the image. A bright-white star sits withing the clouds just below image center. Above that star, the gas cloud thins out and a cluster of bright blue-white stars is visible through the mist. Top quarter of the image is black with scattered stars and a rusty-orange-band of clouds at upper right.
This view of the Orion Nebula is from a movie sequence that looks down the “valley” leading to the star cluster at the far end. The left side of the image shows the visible-light visualization, which fades to the infrared visualization on the right. These two contrasting models derive from observations by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.
NASA, ESA, F. Summers, G. Bacon, Z. Levay, J. DePasquale, L. Frattare, M. Robberto and M. Gennaro (STScI), and R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC)

Explore the Night Sky

Compare your views to those of Hubble.

Hubble observes many different types of objects across the night sky. With the aid of a pair of binoculars or telescope, some of those objects are also visible to backyard astronomers.

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Faint band of stars, gas, and dust stretches from left to right across the frame. This band is a representation of our galaxy as seen from space, edge-on. Colorful icons representing the types of objects Hubble has observed litter the frame: blue stars, orange spiral for galaxies, pink clouds for nebulae, yellow swirling top for exotic objects, and a green circle for exoplanets.
Hubble's Skymap puts the night sky at your fingertips any time of day. Roam the Milky Way to find a selection of galaxies, stars, nebulae, and more! Each icon represents a Hubble image.
Background Image: ESA, Gaia, DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; Acknowledgement: A. Moitinho

Hubble’s Universe

121 Images
A combintation of yellow, brown, red, and blue/violet colored gas intermixed with blue and yellow stars.
Arms swirl of new blue stars around a central region of older yellow stars in this galaxy image.
Bright blue aurora circle the top of Jupiter's north pole.
Thousands of galaxies float in a small section of space.
A colorful red, orange, and brown and dust cloud with a bright blue star cluster on the right side.
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.
A cluster of yellow galaxies with hundreds of background galaxies. The image include arcs that are distorted images of background galaxies.
Two galaxies interacting that look like mice with tails.
A massive cluster of blue, red, yellow, and white stars.
Go To Gallery

Explore Hubble's Servicing Missions, Interactive Activities, and More

  • Two medical workers in white coats work at an imaging machine. A patient in a hospital gown lies on a platform on top of the machine.

    Impact & Benefits

    Hubble's mission is to capture observations of the universe, but its technology would alter life on the ground in unique and unexpected ways.

  • Astronaut in a white space suit tethered to the Hubble Space Telescope floating in space.

    Hubble Servicing Missions

    Hubble’s serviceable design and modular components enabled upgrades that took advantage of advancements in technology.

  • An astronaut stands in front of a background of a nebula against a deep field of galaxies. The words "Name That Nebula" hovers above.

    Hubble Online Activities

    Find your Hubble birthday image, take interactive tours, play games, and more.

Explore More

An oval-shaped spiral galaxy. Its core is a compact, glowing blue spot. A bright bar of light, lined with dark reddish dust, extends horizontally to the edge of the disk. A spiral arm emerges from each end of the bar and follows the edge of the disk, lined with blue and red glowing patches of stars, to the opposite end and a little off the galaxy. A scattering of blue stars are between us and the galaxy.
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Hubble Spies a Cosmic Eye

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NASA Finds ‘Sideways’ Black Hole Using Legacy Data, New Techniques

Lee esta historia en español aquí. NASA researchers have discovered a perplexing case of a black hole that appears to be “tipped over,” rotating in an unexpected direction relative to the galaxy surrounding it. That galaxy, called NGC 5084, has been known for years, but the sideways secret of its central black hole lay hidden in […]

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A close-up of a spiral galaxy, seen face-on. Its center is a bright white point, surrounded by a large yellowish oval with thin lines of dust swirling in it. From the sides of the oval emerge two bright spiral arms which wind through the round disk of the galaxy, filled with shining pink spots where stars are forming and more dark reddish dust. Many stars are visible in the foreground, over and around the galaxy.
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Hubble Images a Grand Spiral

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Discover More NASA Science Missions

James Webb Space Telescope

The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.

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