35 Years of the Hubble Space Telescope: A Revolution in Astronomy
April 24, 2025, marks the 35th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most iconic and influential scientific instruments of our time. A collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), Hubble has revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos through its extraordinary observations.
An Ambitious Project with a Complicated Start
Conceived as early as the 1970s, the Hubble Space Telescope was designed to overcome the limitations of ground-based telescopes, which are affected by Earth’s atmosphere. Launched on April 24, 1990, by the Space Shuttle Discovery, Hubble initially faced significant issues: its first images were blurry due to a flaw in its main mirror. Fortunately, a space servicing mission in 1993 corrected the defect, ushering in a new era of astronomical observation.
Major Scientific Contributions Over 35 years, Hubble has made more than 1.7 million observations, targeting around 55,000 different astronomical objects. Its discoveries have been groundbreaking: notably, it helped reveal that the expansion of the universe is accelerating—a finding that earned a Nobel Prize in Physics for the researchers involved. Hubble has also provided extraordinary images of the oldest galaxies, deepening our understanding of cosmic evolution, and analyzed the atmospheres of exoplanets, bringing us closer to discovering potentially habitable worlds.
Spectacular Images for Its 35th Anniversary To celebrate this milestone, ESA and NASA have released a series of images:
Mars in ultraviolet, revealing impressive water-ice clouds.
This is a combination of Hubble Space Telescope images of Mars taken from December 28th to 30th, 2024. At the midpoint of the observations, Mars was approximately 98 million kilometres from Earth. Thin water-ice clouds that are apparent in ultraviolet light give the Red Planet a frosty appearance. The icy northern polar cap was experiencing the start of Martian spring. In the left image, the bright orange Tharsis plateau is visible with its chain of dormant volcanoes. The largest volcano, Olympus Mons, pokes above the clouds at the 10 o’clock position near the northwest limb. At an elevation of 21 000 metres, it is 2.5 times the height of Mt. Everest above sea level. Valles Marineris, Mars’ roughly 4,000 kilometre-long canyon system, is a dark, linear, horizontal feature near center left. In the right image, high-altitude evening clouds can be seen along the planet’s eastern limb. The 2,250-kilometre-wide Hellas basin, an ancient asteroid impact feature, appears far to the south. Most of the hemisphere is dominated by the classical “shark fin” feature, Syrtis Major. [Image description: Two views of planet Mars on a black background of space observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. At left, text: December 28, 2024 20:00 UT. At right, text: December 29, 2024 13:18 UT. In both images, its atmosphere is clear and the surface appears detailed. Most of the planet is shades of orange. At left, the brightest orange area appears in the left half. At right, the brightest orange area is centered and takes on the rough shape of a sleeping mask. In both views, darker surface features are noticeable on the lower half of the planet. These have a mix of orange, blue, and gray hues. At the top and bottom, white regions mark the planet’s polar caps. The entire limb of the planet, its visible edge, has a blue hue. The blue doesn’t form an even circle at the edges, and appears thinner toward the left and right, and thicker in some areas.]https://youtu.be/Gscy0Qprqb8
The planetary nebula NGC 2899, whose complex structure resembles a cosmic butterfly.
This Hubble Space Telescope image captures the beauty of the moth-like planetary nebula NGC 2899. This object has a diagonal, bipolar, cylindrical outflow of gas. This is propelled by radiation and stellar winds from a nearly 22 000 degree Celsius white dwarf at the center. In fact, there may be two companion stars that are interacting and sculpting the nebula, which is pinched in the middle by a fragmented ring or torus – looking like a half-eaten donut. It has a forest of gaseous “pillars” that point back to the source of radiation and stellar winds. The colours are from glowing hydrogen and oxygen. The nebula lies approximately 4,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Vela. [Image description: The planetary nebula NGC 2899 is shaped like a single macaroni noodle, with its edges pointed up, but its edge-on central torus is semi-transparent in the middle. The top and bottom edges are thick and orange. The center is semi-transparent blue and green. The wider central region looks roughly like a moth, also filled with semi-transparent blue and green. There are two pinpoint-like white stars with diffraction spikes toward the center. Immediately below them, slightly toward the right, is a smaller blue orb, a central star. The next layer of gas and dust is whiter, with some thicker pillars that look like they are rising up at bottom center. The colour fades into reds and purples, and then to orange ]https://youtu.be/FjM-tLf8zas
The Rosette Nebula, revealing intense star formation activity.
This is a Hubble Space Telescope photo of a small portion of the Rosette Nebula, a huge star-forming region spanning 100 light-years across and located 5,200 light-years away. Hubble zooms into a small portion of the nebula that is only 4 light-years across (the approximate distance between our Sun and the neighbouring Alpha Centauri star system.) Dark clouds of hydrogen gas laced with dust are silhouetted across the image. The clouds are being eroded and shaped by the seething radiation from the cluster of larger stars in the center of the nebula (NGC 2440). An embedded star seen at the tip of a dark cloud in the upper right portion of the image is launching jets of plasma that are crashing into the cold cloud around it. The resulting shock wave is causing a red glow. The colours come from the presence of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. [Image description: A tiny portion of the Rosette Nebula. Very dark gray material shaped like a V extends from just below top left all the way down to the lower right corner and back up toward the top right. It looks like thick smoke that has billowed out irregularly, thicker along the line from top left to bottom right, and looser on the piece that goes toward the top right. Behind the dark gray on the left side, from the bottom left to top center, there is dust that looks like arced claw marks that appears in light orange and yellow. The background at top left is hazier and some blues are covered in semi-transparent orange wisps, which makes sections take on green hues. In the bottom right, the background is bluer. There are a few bright red and purple stars scattered along the right half, most toward the bottom. The largest star is at right-center, just at the edge. It is red and has four diffraction spikes.]
Dark clouds of hydrogen mixed with dust are silhouetted across the image. These clouds are being eroded and shaped by the intense radiation emitted by the cluster of massive stars located at the center of the nebula (NGC 2440).
The spiral galaxy NGC 5335, illuminated by the birth of young stars in its arms.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured in exquisite detail a face-on view of a remarkable-looking galaxy. NGC 5335 is categorized as a flocculent spiral galaxy with patchy streamers of star formation across its disk. There is a striking lack of well-defined spiral arms that are commonly found among galaxies, including our Milky Way. A notable bar structure slices across the center of the galaxy. The bar channels gas inwards toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Such bars are dynamic in galaxies and may come and go over two-billion-year intervals. They appear in about 30 percent of observed galaxies, including our Milky Way. [Image description: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 observed by the Hubble Space Telescope takes up the majority of the view. At its center is a milky yellow, flattened oval that extends bottom left to top. Within the oval is a bright central region that looks circular, with the very center the brightest. In the bright central region is what looks like a bar, extending from top left to bottom right. Around this is a thick swath of blue stars speckled with white regions. Multiple arms wrap up and around in a counterclockwise direction, becoming fainter the farther out they are. Both the white core and the spiral arms are intertwined with dark streaks of dust. The background of space is black. Thousands of distant galaxies in an array of colors are speckled throughout.]https://youtu.be/dCK8forphOw
Maintenance and Longevity: A Technical Feat
Hubble’s exceptional longevity is the result of five space servicing missions carried out between 1993 and 2009. Astronauts, including several Europeans, repaired, upgraded, and extended the life of this space observatory, allowing it to continue delivering valuable data well beyond its originally planned lifetime.
Source
Find the article published on the Hubble website on 04/23/2025 here
