TIMEScience & Space

Deep Space Photos: Hubble’s Greatest Hits

http://science.time.com/2013/02/21/deep-space-photos-hubbles-greatest-hits/#ixzz2LhGvSXQv

One of the most recently released Hubble photos shows a multi-wavelength view of radio galaxy Hercules A, Nov. 29. 2012.

Working with astronomical image processors at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., renowned astrophotographer Robert Gendler has taken science data from the Hubble Space Telescope archive and combined it with his own ground-based observations to assemble a photo illustration of the magnificent spiral galaxy M106.

A brilliant white core is encircled by thick dust lanes in this spiral galaxy, seen edge-on. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light years from Earth.

The Tarantula Nebula is a spectacular formation named for its spidery shape.

Star-forming region LH 95 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. LH 95 is just one of the hundreds of star-forming systems, called associations, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud some 160,000 light-years distant.

Jupiter

Jet in Carina

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217

Hubble Captures View of 'Mystic Mountain'.

"Light Echo" Illuminates Dust Around Supergiant Star V838 Monocerotis

The core of the spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri glitters with the combined light of 2 million stars. Omega Centauri lies 17,000 light-years from Earth

This giant spiral disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across, or nearly twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. About 100 billion of them could be similar to our Sun

Hubble Space Telescope photo of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet, Feb. 24, 2009

This colorful nebula, called NGC 604, is one of the largest known seething cauldrons of star birth in a nearby galaxy. NGC 604 lies in a spiral arm of the nearby galaxy M33, located about 2.7 million light-years away. NGC 604 was first noted by the English astronomer William Herschel in 1784.

Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A.

Hubble Space Telescope image of the nearby spiral galaxy M74, located roughly 32 million

light-years away in the direction of the constellation Pisces, the Fish.

The dwarf galaxy NGC 4214 is ablaze with young stars and gas clouds.

The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

Stephan's Quintet

Majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841.

This is a Hubble Space Telescope view of one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space, located 210,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. At the center of the region is a brilliant star cluster called NGC 346.

Hubble Space Telescope photo shows a rare view of a pair of overlapping galaxies, called NGC 3314.

Butterfly Nebula, also known as the Bug Nebula, the butterfly-shaped nebula consists of heated gas made up of oxygen and nitrogen, the whole of which tears through space at speeds in excess of 60,000 miles an hour.

Sheets of debris from a stellar explosion in a neighboring galaxy. Hubble's target was a supernova remnant within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby, small companion galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the southern hemisphere.

Bright, blue, newly formed stars are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. At the heart of the star-forming region, lies star cluster NGC 602.

This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms. NGC 3982 is located about 68 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

Super star clusters in the Antennae Galaxies.

Starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way Galaxy.