best hubble images

Pillars of Creation
Undersea corral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? On April 1, 1995, Hubble snapped this image of pillar-like structures in the Eagle nebula. These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are columns of cool, interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that serve as incubators for new stars.

Space Phenomenon Imitates Art
This image resembling Vincent van Gogh's painting, "Starry Night," is an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon). This Hubble Telescope image was obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004.

Heart of the Galaxy
The Whirlpool galaxy, M51, has been one of the most photogenic galaxies in amateur and professional astronomy. This Hubble composite image shows visible starlight as well as light from the emission of glowing hydrogen, which is associated with the most luminous young stars in the spiral arms.

Cosmic Dust Bunnies
Surprisingly complex loops and blobs of cosmic dust lie hidden in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. This image was created on March 31, 2005, from data gathered by NASA�s Hubble Space Telescope and shows dust lanes and star clusters in this giant galaxy. Astronomers say these characteristics give a clue as to how this galaxy was formed. This image was featured as our Image of the Day

Hubble�s Ultra Deep Field
Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute, on March 9, 2004, unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages," the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. The new image should offer new insights into what types of objects reheated the universe long ago.

Crowning Jewel: The Cone Nebula
Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this celestial object is actually just a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264) - so named because in ground-based images it has a conical shape - this monstrous pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, on May 11, 2002, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon. The entire pillar is seven light-years long.

Colorful �Easter Egg�
Resembling a rippling pool illuminated by underwater lights, the artificial "Easter-Egg" colors in this image are used to dissect how the light reflects off the smoke-sized dust particles and then heads toward Earth. The Egg Nebula is located 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. This image was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in September and October 2002.

Light and Shadow in the Carina Nebula
Previously unseen details of a mysterious, complex structure within the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) are revealed by this image of the 'Keyhole Nebula, ' obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture is a montage assembled from four different April 1999 telescope pointings. The picture is dominated by a large, approximately circular feature, which is part of the Keyhole Nebula, named in the 19th century by Sir John Herschel. This region is about 8000 light-years from Earth.

Edge-On Galaxy
One of the universe's most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104) is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat. The Hubble Heritage Team took these observations in May-June 2003 with the space telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Mars Up-Close
NASA's Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope took the picture on June 26, when Mars was approximately 43 million miles (68 million km) from Earth � the closest Mars has ever been to Earth since 1988. Hubble can see details as small as 10 miles (16 km) across. Frosty white water ice clouds and swirling orange dust storms above a vivid rusty landscape reveal Mars as a dynamic planet in this sharpest view ever obtained by an Earth-based telescope.

Horsehead Nebula Rising to the Occasion
The Horsehead, also known as Barnard 33, is a cold, dark cloud of gas and dust, silhouetted against the bright nebula, IC 434. Rising from a sea of dust and gas like a giant seahorse, the Horsehead nebula is one of the most photographed objects in the sky. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took a close-up look at this heavenly icon, revealing the cloud's intricate structure.

The Lure of the Rings
Resembling a diamond-encrusted bracelet, a ring of brilliant blue star clusters wraps around the yellowish nucleus of what was once a normal spiral galaxy in this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in January 2004. This image was released to commemorate the 14th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990 and its deployment from the space shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990.

Frightening Eyes
In the direction of the constellation Canis Major, two spiral galaxies pass by each other like majestic ships in the night. The near-collision has been caught in images taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

Swarm of Stars
This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Located about 28, 000 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters are particularly useful for studying stellar evolution, since all of the stars in the cluster have the same age (about 15 billion years), but cover a range of stellar masses.