Hubble Space Telescope Observations on the Sky

This animation starts with a flat projection of the entire sky. In this projection the sky is bisected by the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope target locations over the 21 years are shown sequentially, from solar system to extragalactic. Stellar targets are spread over the entire celestial sphere; planets lie along the solar system's ecliptic plane (S-shaped in this projection), and distant targets are at high galactic latitudes. As of July 4, 2011, Hubble has made one million science observations.