Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Hubble turns 32, continues to reveal the wonders of space

By

Tomorrow, Sunday, April 24, marks the 32nd birthday of the Hubble Space Telescope. Since its launch in 1990, the telescope has helped uncover secrets of the universe as well as produced some absolutely stunning images of space.

Hubble’s 32nd Year in Orbit

NASA has released a video about Hubble’s birthday, including an overview of some of the things the telescope has imaged and discovered in the last few months and years. That includes recently measuring the largest comet ever seen and observing the weather on Jupiter and Saturn, including how the storm which makes up Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is getting faster and Saturn’s bands of atmosphere are changing colors. In addition, study of two of Jupiter’s moons — Ganymede and Europa — showed that they have water vapor in their atmospheres.

Recommended Videos

And that’s just within the solar system. In the Milky Way, Hubble has imaged creepy star CW Leonis, taken an ultraviolet image of planet PDS 70b, and seen an expanding bubble of gas near the heart of our galaxy. Further out into the cosmos, Hubble has spotted a black hole that seems to be helping stars to form instead of destroying them, solved the mystery of a mirrored double galaxy, and detected the farthest star ever seen, whose light had taken nearly 13 billion years to reach us.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called the Hickson Compact Group 40. This snapshot reflects a special moment in their lifetimes as they fall together before they merge.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called the Hickson Compact Group 40. This snapshot reflects a special moment in their lifetimes as they fall together before they merge. NASA, ESA, and STScI

In addition, Hubble scientists shared one more beautiful Hubble image for the telescope’s birthday, showing a group of five galaxies that are unusually packed together. The Hickson Compact Group 40 consists of three spiral galaxies, one elliptical galaxy, and one lenticular galaxy, all of which are so close together they will eventually collide together and merge into one large galaxy.

While other similarly dense galaxy groups have been observed near the centers of huge galaxy clusters, this group is unusual for being located in a relatively empty area of space, leading astronomers to wonder why the group is so squished together. One theory is that large amounts of dark matter are clouded around the galaxies, slowing their movements and holding the group together.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
The expansion rate of the universe still has scientists baffled
This image of NGC 5468, a galaxy located about 130 million light-years from Earth, combines data from the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. This is the most distant galaxy in which Hubble has identified Cepheid variable stars. These are important milepost markers for measuring the expansion rate of the Universe. The distance calculated from Cepheids has been cross-correlated with a Type Ia supernova in the galaxy. Type Ia supernovae are so bright they are used to measure cosmic distances far beyond the range of the Cepheids, extending measurements of the Universe’s expansion rate deeper into space.

The question of how fast the universe is expanding continues to confound scientists. Although it might seem like a fairly straightforward issue, the reality is that it has been perplexing the best minds in physics and astronomy for decades -- and new research using the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope doesn't make the answer any clearer.

Scientists know that the universe is expanding over time, but what they can't agree on is the rate at which this is happening -- called the Hubble constant. There are two main methods used to estimate this constant: one that looks at how fast distant galaxies are moving away from us, and one that looks at leftover energy from the Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background. The trouble is, these two methods give different results.

Read more
See what James Webb and Hubble are observing right now with this tool
james webb hubble live tracker screenshot 2024 03 06 220259

If you're looking for a relaxing way to peruse the fascinating sights of space on your lunch break, then a newly updated tool from NASA has you covered. The Space Telescope Live tools show the current targets of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, letting you browse the cosmos from the perspective of two of the hardest-working telescopes out there.

You can visit the web-based tools at WebbTelescope for the James Webb Space Telescope and HubbleSite for the Hubble Space Telescope. Clicking on a link will bring you to a portal showing the current and past observations of the telescope and a ton of detail about the observations.

Read more
Hubble spots a massive star forming amid clouds of dust and gas
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a relatively close star-forming region known as IRAS 16562-3959.

A stunning new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the birth of a new, massive star at around 30 times the mass of our sun. Nestled with a nearby star-forming region called IRAS 16562-3959, the baby star is located within our galaxy and around 5,900 light-years from Earth.

You can see the sparkle of bright stars throughout the image, with the star-forming region visible as the orange-colored clouds of dust and gas stretching diagonally across the frame. These clouds are where dust and gas clump together to form knots, gradually attracting more dust and gas, growing over time to become protostars.

Read more