Press Releases

10 January 2008: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string.

10 January 2008: Astronomers are using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to dissect one of the largest structures in the Universe as part of a quest to understand the violent lives of galaxies. Hubble is providing indirect evidence of unseen dark matter tugging on galaxies in the crowded, rough-and-tumble environment of a massive supercluster of hundreds of galaxies.

8 January 2008: Hubble has revealed that mysterious "blue blobs" in a structure called Arp's Loop between M81 and M82 are blue clusters of stars less than 200 million years old with many stars as young as, and even younger than, 10 million years.

11 December 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers a fascinating new insight into the atmosphere of a planet in orbit around another star. The observations provide evidence of the presence of hazes in the atmosphere of the planet HD 189733b.

29 November 2007: Hubble has sent back an early Christmas card with this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 74. It is an enchanting reminder of the impending season. Resembling glittering baubles on a holiday wreath, bright knots of glowing gas light up the spiral arms; regions of new star birth shining in pink.

15 November 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has probed the bright core of Comet 17P/Holmes which, to the delight of sky watchers, mysteriously brightened by nearly a million-fold in a 24-hour period beginning October 23, 2007.

30 October 2007: Two galaxies perform an intricate dance in this new Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxies, containing a vast number of stars, swing past each other in a graceful performance choreographed by gravity.

16 October 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found out the true nature of a dwarf galaxy that astronomers had for a long time identified as one of the youngest galaxies in the Universe. Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have made observations of the galaxy I Zwicky 18 which seem to indicate that it is in fact much older and much farther away than previously thought.

2 October 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular image of NGC 3603, a giant nebula hosting one of the most prominent massive young clusters in the Milky Way, thus supplying a prime template for star formation studies.

6 September 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope have joined forces to discover nine of the smallest, faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant Universe. Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the newly discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy.

22 August 2007: Imagine cruising the heavens from your desktop and seeing all the spectacular images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Exploding stars and faraway galaxies are just a mouse click away today through Sky in Google Earth.

31 July 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has photographed three magnificent sections of the Veil Nebula - the shattered remains of a supernova that exploded some 5-10,000 years ago. The new Hubble images provide beautiful views of the delicate, wispy structure resulting from this cosmic explosion.

3 July 2007: Nearly 12.5 million light-years away in the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449 a veritable stellar "fireworks" is on display - here shown in exquisite detail through the eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope.

28 May 2007: The sharpest image ever taken of the large "grand design" spiral galaxy Messier 81 is being released today. The image, constructed from a series of images taken with NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is among the largest ever released. Messier 81 is one of the brightest galaxies that can be seen from the Earth.

15 May 2007: An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a ghostly ring of dark matter that was formed long ago during a titanic collision between two massive galaxy clusters. It is the first time that a dark matter distribution has been found that differs substantially from the distribution of ordinary matter.

2 May 2007: Analysis of Hubble observations of the massive globular cluster NGC 2808 provides evidence that it has three generations of stars that formed early in the cluster's life. This is a major upset for conventional theories as astronomers have long thought that globular star clusters had a single "baby boom" of stars early in their lives and then settled down into a long, quiet middle age.

24 April 2007: One of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras has been released to celebrate the 17th anniversary of the launch and deployment of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows a 50 light-year-wide view of the tumultuous central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth – and death – is taking place.

3 April 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an unrivalled snapshot of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672. This remarkable image provides a high definition view of the galaxy's large bar, its fields of star-forming clouds and dark bands of interstellar dust.

2 March 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with several other ground- and space-based telescopes, has captured a galaxy being ripped apart by a galaxy cluster's gravitational field and harsh environment. The finding sheds light on the mysterious process by which gas-rich spiral-shaped galaxies might evolve into gas-poor irregular- or elliptical-shaped galaxies over billions of years. The new observations also show one mechanism to form the millions of "homeless" stars seen scattered throughout galaxy clusters.

22 February 2007: Twenty years ago, astronomers witnessed one of the brightest stellar explosions in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called SN 1987A, blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on 23 Feb., 1987.