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Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

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Hubble Images

Explore Hubble's Iconic Images

Hubble News

Hubble's Latest Discoveries

Ciencia Hubble

Telescopio espacial Hubble

Throughout the history of science, revolutionary instruments propel our understanding with their landmark discoveries. The Hubble Space Telescope is a testament to that concept. Its design, technology and serviceability have made it one of NASA's most transformative observatories. From determining the atmospheric composition of planets around other stars to discovering dark energy, Hubble has changed humanity's understanding of the universe.

Mission Type

Space Telescope

Destination

Low Earth Orbit

Launch

APR 24, 1990

Objective

Understand the Universe

Celebrating 36 Years of Discoveries

More Hubble News

Highlights from Hubble's 36th Year in Orbit

Discover some of the scientific achievements from Hubble’s latest year in orbit.

A tightly cropped Hubble view of a vast star-forming region known as the Trifid Nebula. The top left is bright blue. Brown and amber colors run from top right through the center in irregular, overlapping lines to the bottom-center. At bottom right, the view is almost black. Tiny, amber-colored stars appear throughout the scene. Toward the left there is a prominent brown shape that looks like a head with two horns. The left horn points left and is wavy. The right horn is triangular and points up. The brown dust continues, flowing down, as if along a back, and up toward the top right. A prominent line, about the same length as the left horn, appears below the middle of the body, and changes from orange to red. A small, separate semi-transparent pillar is left of the head. A few slightly larger, blue foreground stars with four diffraction spikes appear throughout.

NASA’s Hubble Dazzles With Young Stars in Trifid Nebula

Hubble’s longevity allowed it to capture changes in the Trifid Nebula on a human time scale.

$A tightly cropped Hubble view of a vast star-forming region known as the Trifid Nebula. The top left is bright blue. Brown and amber colors run from top right through the center in irregular, overlapping lines to the bottom-center. At bottom right, the view is almost black. Tiny, amber-colored stars appear throughout the scene. Toward the left there is a prominent brown shape that looks like a head with two horns. The left horn points left and is wavy. The right horn is triangular and points up. The brown dust continues, flowing down, as if along a back, and up toward the top right. A prominent line, about the same length as the left horn, appears below the middle of the body, and changes from orange to red. A small, separate semi-transparent pillar is left of the head. A few slightly larger, blue foreground stars with four diffraction spikes appear throughout. NASA Logo in white lettering in the upper-right corner. The title "'Cosmic Sea Slug' Appears in Hubble's 36th Birthday Image" appears along the bottom.$

“Cosmic Sea Slug” Appears in Hubble’s 36th Birthday Image

Join Hubble's Senior Project Scientist, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, as she takes us on a tour of Hubble's 36th birthday image, the Trifid Nebula.

Latest News

All Hubble News

NASA’s Hubble Dazzles With Young Stars in Trifid Nebula

Hubble Spies an Active Spiral

NASA’s Hubble Detects First-Ever Spin Reversal of Tiny Comet

NASA Webb, Hubble Share Most Comprehensive View of Saturn to Date

NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2026

NASA’s Hubble Revisits Crab Nebula to Track 25 Years of Expansion

NASA’s Hubble Unexpectedly Catches Comet Breaking Up

NASA Discovers Crash of Extreme Stars in Unexpected Site

36 Years of Discovery

The History of Hubble

Since the time of Galileo and his telescope, astronomers have struggled with a constant obstacle to their view of the cosmos: Earth's atmosphere. But that changed with Hubble.

Why a space telescope?

The Hubble Space Telescope travels through space with Earth in the background in this picture, taken after the fourth servicing mission in 2002.

NASA

Image Galleries

Explore Hubble's media galleries to view and download high-resolution Hubble images of the universe, mission operations, Hubble astronauts, and more!

All Hubble Galleries

Hubble’s Universe Gallery

Hubble Mission Operations Gallery

Hubble Astronauts Gallery

What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday?

Hubble explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday.

Check Out Your Birthday!

Hubble Nebula - Orion Nebula

More Hubble Interactives

A sphere of blues, oranges, reds and whites at the center with a jagged white line running vertically down

Hearing Hubble

Have you heard a Hubble image?

A screenshot of Hubble's Cosmic Adventure game.

Hubble’s Cosmic Adventure

Go on a cosmic journey with Hubble

Screenshot of the "What is Hubble Observing" tool window. Black background with stars filling the window. Text indicating the target. A bright patch in the center of the window is the Crab Nebula. It appears as a jagged-edged bright cloud.

What is Hubble Observing?

See the area of sky Hubble is investigating.

An astronaut stands in front of a background of a nebula against a deep field of galaxies. The words "Name That Nebula" hovers above.

Name that Nebula!

Match nebulae with their names

Illustration Title: "The Lost Universe" in yellow at the top of the page. A green, yellow, and beige dragon is wrapped around an illustration of the Hubble Space Telescope. The image background is in various shades of blue and black and depicts a dark forest with trees in black silhouette.

Lost Universe

NASA's Tabletop Role-Playing Game Adventure

Faint band of stars, gas, and dust stretches from left to right across the frame. This band is a representation of our galaxy as seen from space, edge-on. Colorful icons representing the types of objects Hubble has observed litter the frame: blue stars, orange spiral for galaxies, pink clouds for nebulae, yellow swirling top for exotic objects, and a green circle for exoplanets.

Hubble's Skymap

Get a Hubble's-eye-view of cosmic objects

Photograph of Hubble orbiting the Earth

Hubble Spacecraft 360 Degree Tour

Virtually Tour Hubble in orbit

A title slide that says "astronaut Fun Facts"

Hubble Astronaut Fun Facts

Play this trivia game and test your knowledge!

360 image of Hubble's "Space Telescope Operations Control Center" The image is stretched because it is designed for 360 degree viewing. The image shows many desks within the control center with data on their screens.

Control Center 360-Degree Tour

Take a virtual tour of Hubble's operations center

Hubble's Latest Features

A colorful grouping of red, yellow, orange, blue, and white stars sits at image center. The stars appear close together at image center and appear less dense as you move outward.

Hubble's Messier Marathon 2026

New images were added every day between March 14-21, 2026!

Within a field of glittering multicolored stars, bluish clouds of gas edged in glowing red cluster at the top of the image and in a bubble-shaped clump to the mid-right. A single shining star throws diffraction spikes across the upper left of the image.

Hubble's Stellar Construction Zones

Hubble took us on a tour of star and planet-forming regions, releasing new images everyday from January 12-17, 2026.

Hubble & Citizen Science

Hubble's vast and growing archive of observations is a treasure trove for researchers, especially with the support of volunteers who help them comb through and catalog data.

Hundreds of galaxies in a diverse array of shapes and colors are scattered across the dark background of space.

Science Operations

Hubble science operations selects scientific proposals, schedules scientific observations, calibrates and archives mission science data.

Podcast cover illustration for “Universo curioso de la NASA.” The colorful image shows a cosmic landscape with various celestial bodies: a bright yellow Sun, Earth in vibrant blue, green, fuchsia and orange colors; a large red and orange planet representing Mars, a black hole with an accretion disk, and the Moon in purple tones. The title 'Universo curioso' appears in the center with a gradient effect in various colors, and 'DE LA NASA' in smaller dark coral letters. The background is black and dark violet, dotted with small yellow stars and waves that create a vibrant space atmosphere.

Universo curioso de la NASA

El telescopio de la gente: 35 años de imágenes de Hubble

An illustration of an astronaut jumping from the moon toward Mars.

Hubble: An Engineering Marvel

Join Hubble engineers Morgan Van Arsdall, deputy mission operations manager, and Lynn Bassford, flight operations manager as they discuss incredible engineering and operations that keeps Hubble working more than three decades after launch.

Hubble appears on the screen of a laptop surrounded by yellow, technical-looking digital text and keyboards

AI and Hubble Science

Artificial intelligence programs can search Hubble's massive data archive, assisting researchers in their scientific investigations.

In image of the components contained in Hubble 25th Anniversary 3D Model

Hubble 3D Models

Explore the components of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope by printing your own 3D model!

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A bright binary star surrounded by a colorful nebula on the black background of space. The star in the center is a large white spot surrounded by a circular glow. It has a large, X-shaped set of diffraction spikes around it. The nebula extends far above, below, left and right of the star in long, arcing shapes made of thin, multicolored filaments — mostly red and greenish colors, but lit in a bright cyan near the star where its light illuminates the gas.

New Lithographs

Two new Hubble lithographs are available to download as PDFs: the star R Aquarii (pictured above) and Center of Starburst Galaxy Messier 94 (NGC 4736).

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Featured Story

NASA’s Hubble Captures Light Show Around Rapidly Dying Star

This stunning image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals a dramatic interplay of light and shadow in the Egg Nebula,…

Hubble E-Books

Learn about Hubble's discoveries, history, and iconic images in these free, downloadable e-books.

All Hubble E-Books

A star cluster fills the upper-left corner of the image. The lower half of the image is filled with billowing clouds of dust and glowing gas. The scene is dotted with white, blue and a smattering of red and yellow stars. All on a black background.

Hubble’s Beautiful Universe

Beautiful Universe takes readers on a journey through Hubble’s mission, from 1990 to today, with many of the breathtaking images of the cosmos it collected along the way.

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Cover for the e-book "Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights"

Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights

Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights features some of Hubble’s ground-breaking discoveries over its more than three decades of observations.

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Hubble overview book cover

Hubble: An Overview of the Space Telescope

Hubble: An Overview of the Space Telescope briefly describes its history, design, operation, science, technology transfers, and cultural impact.

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Hubble Focus: Black Holes e-Book Cover. An illustration of the Hubble Space Telescope with its opening facing the viewer and marking the "o" in Focus. An image of the giant galaxy M87 and its black - generated- jet fills most of the cover.

Black Holes: Into the Vortex

Black Holes: Into the Vortex explores Hubble’s recent discoveries about black holes, incredibly dense objects whose gravity is so intense that not even light can escape its pull.

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Explore More Hubble

On The Shoulders of a Giant

What's the same and what's different? Compare these two NASA flagship missions.

Hubble view of an expanding halo of light around star V838 Monocerotis. Center of the ball-like cloud holds a bright star surrounded by red gas. The outer region of the "ball" is a tan color dotted with stars. Black background dotted with stars.

Hubble Science Highlights

Hubble has affected every area of astronomy. Its most notable scientific discoveries reflect the broad range of research and the breakthroughs it has achieved.

Hubble Nebula - Crab Nebula

Explore the Night Sky

Your backyard telescope and binoculars may not have the capabilities of Hubble, but you can still see amazing objects. Compare what you see with the images Hubble has taken.

Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble E-books

Investigate the mysteries of the universe with Hubble. Learn Hubble's history. E-books dive deeper into Hubble discoveries and more.

You Can Do NASA Science!

Participate in authentic research via NASA Citizen Science.

NASA invites people of all ages and backgrounds to participate in authentic NASA research via "citizen science" or "participatory science" projects, where volunteers and amateurs have helped make thousands of important scientific discoveries.

Pick a Project

Keep Exploring

Discover More NASA Missions

TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite)

NASA’s TESS discovers exoplanets, worlds beyond our solar system. In the course of its extended observations of the sky, TESS…

Europa Clipper

Roman

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and astrophysics.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is the world's most powerful X-ray telescope.