Hubble is spying on a colorful change of season on Saturn

The Orion Nebula is located 1,500 light-years from Earth and is located at Orion belt in the constellation Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and, on a dark, clear night, is visible to the naked eye. The nebula is the closest star-forming region to Earth.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched from the Discovery space shuttle on April 24, 1990.

Hubble has given us many pictures of our neighbor Mars. This image was taken in 2003, when Mars made its closest approach in nearly 60,000 years. On August 27, 2003, the two worlds were only 34.6 million miles away from center to center. By contrast, Mars is about 249 million kilometers from Earth.

Hubble made this image in 2007 of Ganymede that seemed to look from Jupiter. Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system and is even larger than Mercury.

Hubble captured this image of Saturn in 2004, a vision so sharp that some of the smallest rings on the planet can be seen.

Hubble tracked the clouds in Uranus in this image taken in 1997. The image is a composite of three near-infrared images. The rings of the planet are highlighted in the near infrared. In both images you can see eight of the 27 moons of Uranus. Uranus is about 1.75 million kilometers from Earth.

Hubble captured this image of the distant blue-green world of Neptune in 2005. Fourteen different color filters were used to help scientists learn more about Neptune’s atmosphere. Neptune is about 2.8 billion kilometers from Earth.

Hubble discovered four of Pluto’s five moons. In 2005: Nix and Hydra were found. Hubble discovered Kerberos in 2011 and Styx in 2012. The new discoveries were joined by Pluto’s large moon, Charon, which was discovered in 1978. Styx was found by scientists who used Hubble to look for possible dangers to the planet. New Horizons spacecraft that flew alongside Pluto in July 2015. Pluto is about 2.9 billion kilometers from Earth.

The iconic Headhead Nebula is one of the preferred targets for astronomers. Look closely and you will see what the head of a horse looks like rising to the stars. This Hubble image captures the nebula in infrared wavelengths. The nebula is 1,600 light-years from Earth.

The cat’s eye nebula is a pile of bright gases ejected into space by a dying star. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows details of structures that include high-speed gas jets and unusual gas nodes. This color image is a composite of three images taken at different wavelengths. The nebula is estimated to be 1,000 years old. It is located about 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Draco.

The Bug, or Butterfly Nebula, looks like a butterfly with wings spreading across the galaxy. It’s actually a gas cloud stretching off a dying star. Scientists say the gas exceeds 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit and expands into space at more than 600,000 miles per hour. This image was taken with Hubble’s wide-field camera 3, a camera installed at Hubble during its May 2009 upgrade by shuttle astronauts. The nebula is about 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

Astronomers combined several Hubble images taken in 2014 to create an updated view of Hubble’s 1995 iconic “Pillars of Creation” image. The new image shows a broader view of the pillars, which extend about 5 light-years in height. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, which is about 6,500 light-years from Earth.

This huge nebula is located 7,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Carina. It is one of the largest and brightest nebulae and is a hotbed of new stars. It also has several stars estimated at least 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun, including Eta Carinae, one of the brightest stars known and one of the most massive stars in the Milky Way.

One of the closest neighbors to our Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, can be seen with the naked eye if you know where to look on a dark, clear night. In 2012, scientists using Hubble data predicted that Andromeda would collide with the Milky Way in about four billion years. Andromeda is 2.5 million light-years from Earth.

The cigar galaxy is 12 million light-years away. It gets its name from its shape: From Earth it looks like an elongated elliptical disk.

It is called one of the most photogenic galaxies: the Sombrero galaxy looks like the wide giant of a Mexican hat sitting among the stars. It can be seen with a small telescope. It is located about 28 million light-years from Earth.

This group of galaxies is about 290 million light-years from Earth. It is named after its discoverer, the French astronomer Edouard Stephan, who first saw it in 1877.

Hubble captured this image of an interacting galaxy group called Arp 273. The largest galaxy has a central disk that is distorted into a rose shape thanks to its partner’s pull.

In 2004, astronomers unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever made. Called the ultra-deep Hubble Field, the one-million-second-long exposure shows the first galaxies to emerge shortly after the Big Bang. The image shows approximately 10,000 galaxies. In 2012, astronomers assembled an updated image called the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field. He combined 10 years of photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope taken from a piece of sky in the center of the original Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. The new image contains about 5,500 galaxies.

This 2018 Hubble image shows the Lagoon Nebula, a chaotic nursery full of childhood stars. At the center of this image, a young star 200,000 times brighter than our sun explodes ultraviolet radiation.

Even the stars like to blow bubbles. This 2016 image shares Hubble’s vision of the bubble nebula, where a super photographic massive star blows up a giant bubble in space. The nebula is 7 light-years in diameter.

The Cone Nebula is a turbulent pillar of gas and dust star formation. It lasts 7 light-years, but this image taken by Hubble in 2002 shows the first 2.5 light-years (equivalent to 23 million trips to and from the Moon). Ultraviolet radiation causes hydrogen gas to emit a mysterious red glow.

This is a detailed view of the section of a slowly expanding supernova, or the remains of an exploded star. Hubble took this image in 2015 of the veil nebula 2,100 light-years away. The star was 20 times more massive than our sun, but only gases remain.

In 2009, NASA’s major observatories, including Hubble along with the Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, combined their observational power to create this unprecedented composite image of the center of our galaxy. the Milky Way. Here you can see the infrared and X-ray light captured by the telescopes. Hubble’s contributions are in yellow, Spitzer’s observations are in red, and Chandra’s are blue and purple.

Hubble also partnered with Spitzer to create this stunning image of the Orion Nebula in 2006. The image combines visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light. A community of massive stars is represented by yellow in the center of the image.

Hubble captured this vision of a halo of light expanding around the star V838 Monocerotis in 2004.

M83 is a nearby spiral galaxy, and this 2014 Hubble image shows its thousands of star clusters and supernova remnants. Young stars can be seen in pink bubbles of hydrogen gas.

This image of infrared light made by Hubble in 2014 shows the Monkey Head Nebula, where the stellar birth occurs 6,400 light-years from us. Clouds of dust and bright gas swirl here that represent the ingredients to form stars.

This observation of ultraviolet light from giant star Eta Carinae was taken by Hubble in 2019. The star is the larger of the two orbiting each other. It is known to have violent explosions, as the bubbles show here.

Fireworks are even more beautiful in space. Hubble captured this image of a giant 3,000-star cluster in 2015. It’s called Westerlund 2, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth.