Hubble Telescope
Hubble Telescope
in Space

Since the earliest days of astronomy, since the time of Galileo, astronomers have shared a single goal — to see more, see farther, see deeper. 

The Hubble Space Telescope's launch in 1990 sped humanity to one of its greatest advances in that journey. Hubble is a telescope that orbits Earth. Its position above the atmosphere, which distorts and blocks the light that reaches our planet, gives it a view of the universe that typically far surpasses that of ground-based telescopes. 

Hubble is one of NASA's most successful and long-lasting science missions. It has beamed hundreds of thousands of images back to Earth, shedding light on many of the great mysteries of astronomy. Its gaze has helped determine the age of the universe, the identity of quasars, and the existence of dark energy.

Edwin Hubble
Edwin Hubble

Click on any Hubble Telescope image below to see a larger version and purchase information!
A Rose Made of Galaxies
A Rose Made of Galaxies		 Barred Spiral Galaxy
Barred Spiral Galaxy		 Carina Nebula Details Great Clouds
Carina Nebula Details Great Clouds
Carina Nebula Star Birth
Carina Nebula Star Birth		 Cats Eye Nebula Dying Star
Cats Eye Nebula Dying Star		 Composite Image - Hubble Data
Composite Image - Hubble Data
Eagle Has Risen Stellar Spiral
Eagle Has Risen Stellar Spiral		 Eskimo Nebula
Eskimo Nebula		 Heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy
Heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy
Interacting Spiral Galaxies
Interacting Spiral Galaxies		 Light Echo Dust Around Super Giant
Light Echo Dust Around Super Giant		 Mars
Mars
Old Star Gives Up the Ghost
Old Star Gives Up the Ghost		 Saturn from 1996 to 2000
Saturn from 1996 to 2000		 Sombrero Galaxy Infrared
Sombrero Galaxy Infrared
Spitzer Colorful Masterpiece
Spitzer Colorful Masterpiece		 Splendid Planetary Nebula
Splendid Planetary Nebula		 Star-Forming Region of Carina Nebula
Star-Forming Region of Carina Nebula
Visible View of Pillars & Jets
Visible View of Pillars & Jets
The Legacy of Edwin Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope was named after astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble (1889–1953), who made some of the most important discoveries in modern astronomy. As an astronomer, Dr. Hubble was a late bloomer. Before discovering his passion for the stars, Dr. Hubble earned a law degree and served in World War I. However, after practicing law for one year, he decided to “chuck law for astronomy,” knowing that “even if [he] were second rate or third rate, it was astronomy that mattered.” 

In the 1920s, while working at the Mt. Wilson Observatory with the most advanced technology of the time, Dr. Hubble showed that some of the numerous distant, faint clouds of light in the universe were actually entire galaxies—much like our own Milky Way. The realization that the Milky Way is only one of many galaxies forever changed the way astronomers viewed our place in the universe.

But perhaps his greatest discovery came in 1929, when Dr. Hubble determined that the farther a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it appears to move away. This notion of an "expanding" universe formed the basis of the Big Bang theory, which states that the universe began with an intense burst of energy at a single moment in time — and has been expanding ever since.