Top 10 Images Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope
As the famous telescope turns 25, scientists who have worked on the project chose their favorite pictures
Top 10 Images Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope
- THE BUTTERFLY NEBULA Chosen by: Jason Kalirai, project scientist, James Webb Space Telescope, Space Telescope Science Institute
“The Butterfly Nebula shows what happens to a star at the end of its life, when it loses all of its gas and dust to its surroundings... Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO Team - THE TADPOLE GALAXY Chosen by: John Grunsfeld, former astronaut, NASA associate administrator for science
“The Tadpole galaxy has been disrupted by collisions and has bursts of star formation out through its tail... Credit: NASA/H. Ford(JHU)/G. Illingworth(UCSC/LO)/M.Clampin(STScI)/G. Hartig(STScI)/ACS Science Team/ESA - STAR CLUSTER NGC 602 Chosen by: Antonella Nota, astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute
“Stellar clusters like this one are absolutely beautiful. You see the transition from the original gas and dust cloud, the place where stars are being born, into this assembly of very young stars that are just starting in on their powerful winds.” ...Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team(STScI/AURA) - THE MICE GALAXIES Chosen by: Jennifer Lotz, astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute
“I was a graduate student when they installed the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and one of the first pictures it took was of two interacting galaxies called the Mice... Credit: NASA/H. Ford(JHU)/G. Illingworth(UCSC/LO)/M.Clampin (STScI)G. Hartig(STScI)/ACS Science Team/ESA - THE HELIX NEBULA Chosen by: Robert O’Dell, astronomer, Vanderbilt University
“These shells expelled by dying stars are fragmenting in tight knots of condensed gas. To me that’s fascinating because it means this material going out into the interstellar medium, the material from which new generations of stars form, already has this condensation, this tantalizing possibility of being seeds for planetary formation.”...Credit: NASA/ESA/C.R. O'Dell(Vanderbilt Univ.)/M. Meixner, P. McCullough(STScI) - THE EAGLE NEBULA—PILLARS OF CREATION Chosen by: Jennifer Wiseman, senior project scientist, Hubble, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
“This is one of the iconic images. You see the columns of gas that signify a region where stars have recently formed and are still forming...Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team(STScI/AURA) - THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD Chosen by: David Leckrone, former Hubble project scientist, Goddard Space Flight Center
“This image is of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, updated in 2014 to encompass the full range of wavelengths that Hubble's cameras can image, from the ultraviolet to the infrared...Credit: NASA/ESA/H. Teplitz, M. Rafelski(IPAC/Caltech)/A. Koekemoer (STScI)/R. Windhorst(ASU)/Z. Levay (STScI)
