Press Releases

16 January 2025: The largest photomosaic of the Andromeda galaxy, assembled from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations, has been unveiled. It took more than 10 years to collect data for this colorful portrait of our neighboring galaxy and was created from more than 600 snapshots. This stunning, colorful mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars, and is spread across roughly 2.5 billion pixels.

9 December 2024: From 2014 to 2024, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been studying the outer planets under a program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) to obtain long-time baseline observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in order to understand their atmospheric dynamics and evolution. Hubble is the only telescope that can provide high spatial resolution and image stability for global studies of cloud coloration, activity, and atmospheric motion on a consistent time basis to help constrain the underlying mechanics of weather and climate systems.

14 November 2024: In an epic story of survival witnessed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, one of our nearest galactic neighbours has crashed through the Milky Way galaxy’s gaseous halo and lived to tell the tale. But in the process, this dwarf galaxy, called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has been stripped of most of its own surrounding halo of gas. Researchers were surprised to find such an extremely small gaseous halo remaining — one around 10 times smaller than halos of other galaxies of similar mass. Still, the LMC has held onto enough of its gas to keep forming new stars. A smaller galaxy wouldn’t have survived such an encounter. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure the size of the LMC’s halo — something they could do only with Hubble.

31 October 2024: Stare deeply at these galaxies. They appear as if blood is pumping through the top of a flesh-free face. The long, ghastly ‘stare’ of their searing eye-like cores shines out into the supreme cosmic darkness.

16 October 2024: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided a dramatic and colourful close-up look at one of the most rambunctious stars in our galaxy, weaving a huge spiral pattern among the stars. Hubble's images capture its details and its evolution is featured by a unique timelapse video.

9 October 2024: Astronomers have observed Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, for at least 150 years. But there are always new surprises – especially when the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope takes a close-up look at it.

26 September 2024: In a surprise finding, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but are apparently in a dangerous neighbourhood nearby.

17 September 2024: With the help of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early Universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help scientists understand how supermassive black holes were created.

10 July 2024: An international team of astronomers has used more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spanning two decades to detect seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky. These stars provide compelling new evidence for the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole.

23 April 2024: In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of the legendary NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 24 April, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Messier 76, M76, or NGC 650/651) located 3400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The photogenic nebula is a favourite target of amateur astronomers.

18 April 2024: Astronomers recently used a trove of archived images taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to visually snag a largely unseen population of smaller asteroids in their tracks. The treasure hunt required pursuing 37 000 Hubble images spanning 19 years. The payoff was finding 1701 asteroid trails, with 1031 of those asteroids uncatalogued. About 400 of these uncatalogued asteroids are about below a kilometre in size.

25 March 2024: Jets emerge from the cocoon of a newly forming star to blast across space, slicing through the gas and dust of a shining nebula, in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

21 March 2024: It takes two to tango, but in the case of brown dwarfs that were once paired as binary systems, that relationship doesn’t last for very long, according to a recent survey using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

14 March 2024: The giant planet Jupiter, in all its banded glory, is revisited by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in these latest images, taken on 5–6 January 2024, that capture both sides of the planet. Hubble monitors Jupiter and the other outer Solar System planets every year under the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy programme (OPAL). This is because these large worlds are shrouded in clouds and hazes stirred up by violent winds, leading to a kaleidoscope of ever-changing weather patterns.

25 January 2024: Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed the smallest exoplanet where water vapour has been detected in its atmosphere. At only approximately twice Earth’s diameter, the planet GJ 9827d could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres elsewhere in our galaxy.

9 January 2024: A Fast Radio Burst (FRB) is a fleeting blast of energy that can – for a few milliseconds – outshine an entire galaxy. Over the past few years hundreds of FRBs have been detected. They pop off all over the sky like camera flashes at a stadium event, but the sources behind these intense bursts of radiation remain uncertain.

4 January 2024: An international team of astronomers has assembled and reprocessed observations of the exoplanet WASP-121 b that were collected with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in the years 2016, 2018 and 2019. This provided them with a unique dataset that allowed them not only to analyse the atmosphere of WASP 121 b, but also to compare the state of the exoplanet’s atmosphere across several years. They found clear evidence that the observations of WASP-121 b were varying in time. The team then used sophisticated modelling techniques to demonstrate that these temporal variations could be explained by weather patterns in the exoplanet's atmosphere.

21 December 2023: This photo of Saturn was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 22 October 2023, when the ringed planet was approximately 1365 million kilometres from Earth. Hubble's ultra-sharp vision reveals a phenomenon called ring spokes.

20 December 2023: To celebrate the holiday season, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the galaxy known as UGC 8091, which resembles a sparkling festive snow globe. With a dazzling array of wavelengths of light captured by filters on Hubble's premier scientific instruments, the millions of stars in this galaxy are being explored in more depth than ever before.

16 November 2023: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has measured the size of the nearest Earth-sized exoplanet that passes across the face of a neighbouring star. This alignment, called a transit, opens the door to follow-on studies to see what kind of atmosphere, if any, the rocky world might have.