The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a flyaround of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking from the Harmony module’s space-facing port on November 8. Photo courtesy of NASA
This image, showing an X1.0 class solar flare flash in the center of the sun, was captured on October 28, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. It shows a blend of light from the 171 and 304 angstrom wavelengths. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground however, when intense enough, they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. Photo courtesy of NASA
Aboard the ISS are NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Mark Vande Hei; Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Pyotr Dubrov; and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. Joining the crew aboard station the next day were Crew-2 mission crew members: Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA
This long exposure photograph was taken during an orbital night period on April 8 from the International Space Station 271 miles above the Indian Ocean. The Milky Way extends above the airglow blanketing the Earth's horizon with an aurora near the bottom right of the frame. Photo courtesy of NASA
The Soyuz MS-18 crew ship, with three Expedition 65 crew members aboard, approaches the International Space Station 265 miles above Russia on April 9. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, riding alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, would dock to the Rassvet module just three hours and 23 minutes after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo courtesy of Roscosmos/NASA
A full moon is pictured above the Earth's horizon on March 27, 2021, as the International Space Station orbited 262 miles above Iran. Photo courtesy of NASA
The night lights of Tokyo are pictured from the International Space Station on February 27 as it orbited 261 miles above Japan. Photo courtesy of NASA
A volcano is pictured in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia as the International Space Station orbited 264 miles above on April 2. Photo courtesy of Roscosmos/NASA
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used two different cameras to create this panoramic selfie, comprised of 60 images, in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall on March 26. These were combined with 11 images taken by the Mastcam on the mast, or “head,” of the rover on March 16. The hole visible to the left of the rover is where its robotic drill sampled a rock nicknamed “Nontron.” The Curiosity team is nicknaming features in this part of Mars using names from the region around the village of Nontron in southwestern France. Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA spacewalker and Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Victor Glover works to ready the International Space Station's port-side truss structure for future solar array upgrades on January 27. Photo courtesy of NASA
An image of the area where the Perseverance Mars rover landed is shown during an update at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on February 18. Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA
The first photos taken by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover after landing on the Martian surface on February 18. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. Photo courtesy of NASA
The United Arab Emirates' Hope probe captured this photo of Mars from about 15,500 miles above the Red Planet’s surface. The UAE Space Agency released the image on February 14, days after the probe entered Mars' orbit. Photo by UAE Space Agency/UPI
NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy, serving as commander of the Expedition 63 mission aboard the International Space Station, took these photos of Hurricane Laura as it continued to strengthen in the Gulf of Mexico on August 25, 2020. Photo courtesy of NASA
The International Space Station was orbiting over Kazakhstan and into China while the solar eclipse shadowing a portion of the Asian continent was captured by an external high definition camera on June 21. In the left foreground, is the H-II Transfer Vehicle-9 from Japan. Photo courtesy of NASA
NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy (L) and Bob Behnken work on U.S. spacesuits inside the ISS's Quest airlock on June 20. The two are slated to conduct spacewalks on June 26 and July 1 to begin the replacement of batteries for one of the power channels on the orbiting laboratory. Photo courtesy of NASA
This satellite image from June 14 shows a brush fire, sparked by a vehicle fire, near Bush Highway and Arizona State Route 87. By June 16, nearly 65,000 acres northeast of Phoenix had burned, making the Bush Fire the largest in the state this year and the largest burning now in the United States. Photo courtesy of NASA
Tropical Storm Cristobal is pictured on June 7 from the ISS as it was nearing southeastern Louisiana. The orbiting lab was just off the coast of West Palm Beach, Fla., when this photograph was taken. Photo courtesy of NASA
An orbital nighttime view from the ISS as it orbited above the Indian Ocean shows the "aurora australis" and a starry sky with Russia's Progress 74 resupply ship in the foreground on June 7. Photo courtesy of NASA
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley (L) and Bob Behnken, who flew SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, briefs mission controllers about their experience in the new vehicle on June 1. Photo courtesy of NASA
SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, is pictured approaching the International Space Station with part of southwestern Turkey, including the coastal city of Demrem, in the background on May 31. Photo courtesy of NASA
Northrup Grumman's Cygnus resupply ship, with its prominent cymbal-shaped UltraFlex solar arrays, is pictured in the grips of the Canadarm2 robotic arm moments before its release ending its 83-day stay at the International Space Station on May 11. Photo courtesy of NASA
Somalia's capital city, Mogadishu is seen as the International Space Station passed over the Horn of Africa on February 19. This historic port on the coast of the Indian Ocean is home to more than 2 million people. The red and orange colors in the dune fields are due to natural chemical and weathering processes that left behind traces of iron in the sandy minerals. These dunes stand in contrast to the lightly-colored, calcium carbonate-rich sands near the shore. Photo courtesy of NASA
NASA's Juno mission captured this look at Jupiter's tumultuous northern regions during the spacecraft's close approach to the planet on February 17. Notable features in this view are the long, thin bands that run through the center of the image from top to bottom, observed since Juno's first close pass by Jupiter in 2016. The streaks are layers of haze particles that float above the underlying cloud features. Scientists don't yet know precisely what these hazes are made of or how they form. NASA/UPI
This image is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed during its 30-year lifetime. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbor NGC 2020, which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, about 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef" because it resembles an undersea world. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
This Hubble image shows a globular cluster known as NGC 104, or, more commonly, 47 Tucanae, since it is part of the constellation of Tucana (The Toucan) in the southern sky. Scientists using Hubble observed the white dwarfs in the cluster. These dying stars migrate from the crowded center of the cluster to its outskirts. While astronomers knew about this process, they had never seen it in action until the detailed study of 47 Tucanae. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, was imaged with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 aboard Hubble. This image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. This picture has been composed from three separate images taken in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly ionized oxygen (blue). Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
The Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation, one of Hubble's most iconic images, shows the pillars as seen in visible light, capturing the multi-colored glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-colored elephants' trunks of the nebula's famous pillars. With these new images comes better contrast and a clearer view for astronomers to study how the structure of the pillars is changing over time. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
This image from Hubble shows the dramatic shape and color of the Ring Nebula, otherwise known as Messier 57. From Earth's perspective, the nebula looks like a simple elliptical shape with a shaggy boundary. However, observations combining existing ground-based data with new Hubble data show that the nebula is shaped like a distorted doughnut. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
This image from Hubble depicts bright blue newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region known as N90. The dust in the region gives these distant galaxies a reddish-brown tint. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard Hubble snapped this image of the planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula, on July 27, 2009. NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3800 light-years away. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is nearly half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
Hubble's image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
This picture, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard Hubble, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264), a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the moon. The entire pillar is seven light-years long. Astronomers believe that these pillars may be incubators for developing stars. The ACS made this observation on April 2, 2002. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA
This composite image, produced by the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, provides a view of the Americas at night. The clouds and sun glint, added here for aesthetic effect, are derived from MODIS instrument land surface and cloud cover products. Photo courtesy of NASA/UPI
The "aurora australis" is pictured near the southernmost point of the International Space Station's orbital trek above the Indian Ocean on April 8. Photo courtesy of NASA
The NGC 4651 galaxy may look serene and peaceful as it swirls in the vast, silent emptiness of space. It is believed that this galaxy consumed another smaller galaxy to become the beautiful spiral. Although only a telescope like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which captured this image, could give a picture this clear, NGC 4651 can also be observed with an amateur telescope. Photo courtesy of NASA
The Canadarm2 robotic arm and Dextre, the fine-tuned robotic hand, are remotely controlled on Earth to extract Bartolomeo from the pressurized trunk of the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship on March 25. Bartolomeo is a European Space Agency science payload system that will enable numerous external science experiments to be conducted and controlled outside the space station. Photo courtesy of NASA
The bright lights of Osaka, Japan, on Osaka Bay were pictured from the International Space Station on March 15 during an orbital night pass 259 miles above the island nation. Photo courtesy of NASA
The cities of southeast China glitter brightly during an orbital night pass on March 5 as the International Space Station soared 259 miles above the Asian continent. The brightest lights at right center represent the city of Shanghai on the coast of the East China Sea. Photo courtesy of NASA
The well-lit New York/New Jersey metropolitan area is viewed during the early morning hours on February 2 as the International Space Station orbited 263 miles above the northeastern United States. Landmarks include the dark rectangular area (lower center) that is Central Park in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of NASA
Mount Rainier is viewed from the International Space Station on February 19. Photo courtesy of NASA
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy known as NGC 4689. It is known as an "anemic galaxy," a galaxy that contains only quite small quantities of the raw materials needed to produce stars. This image was featured as ESA's Picture of the Week during the week of February 21. Image courtesy of ESA
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo craft is pictured on February 18 attached to the International Space Station's Unity module shortly after being captured with the Canadarm2 robotic arm, where it will stay for three months. Photo courtesy of NASA
The ISS flies in front of the moon in February as seen from Madrid. The photographer attached a camera to a telescope and while recording at 25 frames per second captured the 690-millisecond transit on video and composed this image of 17 stacked frames. Photo courtesy of Javier Manteca/ESA
The Mississippi River runs past Lake Pontchartrain, through the city of New Orleans, La., and into the Gulf of Mexico beaming from the sun's glint on February 7. Photo courtesy of NASA
NASA astronaut and Expedition 62 flight engineer Jessica Meir observes a floating sphere of water formed by microgravity inside the ISS's Kibo laboratory module on February 9. Photo courtesy of NASA
The Pine Island Glacier recently spawned an iceberg over 115 square miles that very quickly shattered into pieces. This almost cloud-free image, captured on February 11 by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, shows the freshly broken bergs in detail. Photo courtesy of ESA
The cork heat shield of the European Space Agency's Qarman CubeSat burns away in simulated atmospheric re-entry conditions, during ground testing on February 12. Qarman (QubeSat for Aerothermodynamic Research and Measurements on Ablation) will gather data on atmospheric re-entry using temperature and pressure sensors and a spectrometer. Photo courtesy of ESA
The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea and separates Spain on the European continent from Morocco on the African continent. The ISS was orbiting 265 miles above the Atlantic off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal, when this photograph was taken on February 11. Photo courtesy of NASA
Noctilucent clouds, or night shining clouds, the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere, are pictured from the International Space Station orbiting 269 miles above the South Pacific on February 12. Noctilucent clouds are only visible when the sun is below the Earth's horizon and illuminates them. Photo courtesy of NASA
April 24 (UPI) -- NASA released a new image of two colorful, neighboring nebula Friday to mark the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The twin objects, part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, are about 163,000 light-years away from Earth. Astronomers nicknamed the colorful red-and-blue image the "Cosmic Reef," a nod to its similarity to undersea life.
NASA launched the Hubble into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on April 24, 1990. The 12-ton space telescope, then the most expensive satellite ever built, was meant to be a vital research tool for astronomers seeking to see deep into space and discover key details about the origins of the universe.
Hubble snapped its first image less than a month after its launch, that of an ancient star cluster. Elated scientists said those first images were two to three times sharper than expected.
Over its three decades of use, NASA and the European Space Agency were able to narrow its estimation for the age of the universe (13.7 billion years), determine the expansion rate of the universe, predict and watch the same supernova explode twice, observe the aftermath of a comet's collision with Jupiter, and discover a fifth moon orbiting Pluto.
"Hubble has given us stunning insights about the universe, from nearby planets to the farthest galaxies we have seen so far," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. "It was revolutionary to launch such a large telescope 30 years ago, and this astronomy powerhouse is still delivering revolutionary science today. Its spectacular images have captured the imagination for decades, and will continue to inspire humanity for years to come."
The telescope has made 1.4 million observations in 30 years, resulting in more than 17,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications. NASA described it as the "most prolific space observatory in history," and while it soon won't be the most technologically advanced telescope in space now, astronomers plan to keep it in use as long as it produces useful results.
NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be able to see deeper into space, in 2021.