The Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its 30th birthday on April 24, 2020.
To mark the occasion, it premiered this image of a giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020).
Both are part of a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away.
Hubble continues to reveal the mysteries of the cosmos.
Here are some achievements from Hubble’s latest year in orbit.
SOLAR SYSTEM
Hubble captured detailed images of Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn.
Hubble also captured images of the first confirmed interstellar comet to visit our solar system: Comet 2I/Borisov.
Hubble identified regular table salt hiding in plain sight on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
The salt could come from a subsurface ocean, which might be more like Earth’s oceans than once thought.
EXOPLANETS
Hubble detected water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in its star’s “habitable zone.”
K2-18b is the only exoplanet known to have water in its atmosphere...
...and temperatures that could sustain liquid water if it is rocky.
Hubble helped to uncover clues about the atmosphere and origins of exoplanet GJ 3470 b.
Bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, this planet is unlike anything in our solar system...
...but planets like it are common elsewhere in the galaxy.
EXTRAGALACTIC
The Hubble Legacy Field combines 16 years of observations to trace the history of the universe.
This vast portrait of the cosmos contains roughly 265,000 galaxies…
...stretching back 13.3 billion years through time.
Astronomers used the telescope to refine the Hubble constant, tracking the universe’s growth.
After 30 years, Hubble continues its mission of discovery, further uncovering the mysteries of the universe.
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