This week sees a very special day for one of the most beloved science instruments on the planet, as the Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 35th birthday. Launched on April 24, 1990, the telescope revolutionized our understanding of cosmology through its measurements of the expansion of the universe, and continues to collect invaluable science data and beautiful images to this day.
In celebration of 35 years spent in orbit around Earth, the Hubble team has released a set of four new images showing the many types of objects that Hubble can investigate, from planets to nebulae to galaxies. Thanks to a bunch of servicing missions over the years which upgraded the telescope’s instruments, it has continued to provide cutting edge data even as technology has advanced.
According to the European Space Agency, over the years Hubble has made an incredible 1.7 million observations of 55,000 targets, and all of those observations have resulted in 22,000 scientific papers and over 400 terabytes of data. Even now, time on Hubble remains precious and highly in demand, with six times as many science projects requesting time on the telescope than can be provided.
The first image shows our planetary neighbor Mars, as observed in December last year. You get a great view of the icy cap which covers the northern pole of the planet, as well as the clouds which are gathering in the east on the right hand image.
This stunning object is a planetary nebula, created by strong stellar winds from an epic white dwarf right in its center. With a temperature of nearly 22,000 degree Celsius, this core of a dying star still gives off enough radiation to sculpt the dust and gas around it into the beautiful shapes.
This is another nebula, though a different type as it is composed of gas that has been ionized by many newly born stars. As these stars give off radiation they ionize the hydrogen around them, causing the gas to glow. This star-forming region sees the birth of many new massive stars, some of which give out jets of plasma in impressive displays.
This striking galaxy has a similar structure to our Milky Way, with its spiral arms and bright bar of stars along the center. Though the spiral arms of our galaxy are clear and well defined, in NGC 5335 the arms are more diffuse, as they are patchy with some areas brightly lit by new star formation which other regions are more empty. Much of the star formation in this galaxy is happening within the bar, which is particularly bright and clear.