Hubble’s Messier Catalog

Hubble has captured images of many objects in the Messier catalog that you can view yourself with a backyard telescope.

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M1, the Crab Nebula, is the remnant of a stellar explosion that was seen in the year 1054 AD. The...
An oval of colorful tendrils of gas and dust stretching from lower-left to upper right. Ova's outer ring is rusty-red tendrils, followed by a yellow/lime-green ring of tendrils. Oval's center is bright turquoise with white tendrils bisecting it. All set on a black background.
Peering deep into M1, this spectacular Hubble image captures the nebula’s beating heart: the rapidly spinning pulsar at its core....
The core of the Crab Nebula - M1 showing ripples in the gas and dust.
This time-lapse movie of the Crab Nebula, made from NASA Hubble Space Telescope observations, reveals wave-like structures expanding outward from...
moving black and white image of supernova like ripples in pond
This Hubble image of Messier 2’s core was created using observations taken at visible and infrared wavelengths. M2 contains over...
A Hubble image of a ball of thousands of stars
This image of M3’s core was constructed using Hubble observations in visible and infrared light.
Hubble view of M3 - a ball of thousands of stars.
This sparkling picture taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the centre of globular cluster M 4. The power...
Hubble view of M4, a colorful ball of thousands of stars
In order to capture M4’s oldest white dwarfs, Hubble took many snapshots of the cluster in infrared, visible and ultraviolet...
white dwarfs in M4
The globular cluster Messier 5, shown here in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, is one of the oldest belonging...
Hubble view of M5, a collection of thousands of stars of different colors.
Visible right next to the stinger of the scorpion in the constellation Scorpius, Messier 7 is an easy naked-eye target...
A black background is filled with small, reddish-orange stars. Larger blue-white stars are scattered across the image, with a slightly higher concentration at upper left.
Unlike the many globular clusters Hubble has imaged, open clusters are groups of stars that are only loosely bound by...
An open cluster of stars, with many small stars in the background and several larger white and yellow in the foreground.
Because globular clusters like M12 have such high concentrations of stars, they often contain binary star systems — systems of...
A globular cluster of thousands of white, blue, and larger yellow stars.
Like shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, over 100,000 stars whirl within the globular cluster M13, one of the...
A globular cluster of thousands of stars, mainly white and yellow with small blue stars intermixed.
This image of M14 includes observations taken in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths of light. Astronomers used this data to...
The field is filled with orange, red, yellow, blue, and white stars. They appear as a spherical, dense mass that tapers out toward the edges of the image on a black background.
This image of M14 was assembled using both infrared and visible-light observations from Hubble. Its stair-step appearance results from the...
A view of a globular cluster of thousands of stars taken in infrared and visible light by Hubble.
This cluster of stars is known as Messier 15, and is located some 35,000 light-years away in the constellation of...
A dense globular cluster of thousands of stars.
This Hubble image of M15 provides a wider view of the cluster. The glowing blue blob toward the bottom left...
Hubble view of M15
Astronomers used the Hubble Space telescope to revisit one of its most iconic subjects, the so-called "Pillars of Creation" in...
Three giant pillars of rusty colored dust and gas with a blueish green background.
Observing in infrared light, Hubble pierced through the obscuring gas and dust of M16’s Pillars of Creation. This ethereal image...
This image shows the pillars as seen in infrared light, allowing it to pierce through obscuring dust and gas and unveil a more unfamiliar — but just as amazing — view of the pillars. In this ethereal view the entire frame is peppered with bright stars and baby stars are revealed being formed within the pillars themselves. The ghostly outlines of the pillars seem much more delicate, and are silhouetted against an eerie blue haze. Hubble also captured the pillars in visible light.
This haunting spire, captured by Hubble in visible and infrared light, is composed of cold gas and dust within M16....
Hubble view of a brownish spire of gas and dust within M16, against a background of mostly red and some blue gas.
Illuminated by ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars on the right side of this photograph, M17, also known as the...
The edge of a gas cloud with many colors of gas mixed throughout.
This Hubble image captures a small region within M17. This hotbed of star formation is colored according to the chemical...
A diagonal cliff of yellows and brown dust and gas in front of a more etherial cloud of blue and green gas.
This image of M19 includes Hubble observations taken in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths of light. A small gap in...
The field is filled with orange, red, yellow, blue, and white stars. They appear as a spherical, dense mass that tapers out toward the edges of the image on a black background.
This Hubble image of M19 was created using observations of both visible and ultraviolet light. The image’s stair-step appearance results...
A portion of a globular cluster with thousands of stars with a stair step look due to the detector that was used to take the image.
This eerie Hubble image features the center of the Trifid Nebula and the three wing-like bands of thick dust for...
Red and brown gas and dust with several bright stars at the center. The image is a set of rectangles mosaiced together.
This Hubble image reveals a star-forming cloud of gas and dust in M20 being torn apart by radiation from a...
star-forming cloud of gas and dust with a rounded hump that includes two skinny towers of gas and dust that resemble the head of an insect with its antennas.
This image shows the center of the globular cluster Messier 22, also known as M22, as observed by the NASA/ESA...
The center of globular cluster M22 with its thousands of stars.
An aging star's last hurrah is creating a flurry of glowing knots of gas that appear to be streaking through...
Cluds of dust and gas in shads of blue, yellow and dark brown that make up a protion of the Dumbbell Nebula
This globular cluster, M28, is most notable for being the first of its kind known to contain a millisecond pulsar:...
The central portion of a galaxy cluster with thousands of stars that tapers off the further from the center you get.
This brilliant image of Messier 30 (M30), taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), is composed of exposures in...
Thousands of mostly white and yellowish stars in a globular cluster.
Assembled from a total of 7,398 exposures taken over 411 individual pointings of the telescope, this image of our nearest...
This sweeping bird's-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) shows stars, lanes of dark dust and bright core. The central region is on the left.
This image from Hubble spans 7,900 light-years and reveals M31’s crowded central region. The bright area to the right of...
The central core of M31 which is filled with yellowish stars
This image of a portion of the elliptical galaxy M32 was captured by the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS),...
thousands of stars can be seen in the corner of a galaxy that is void of gas and dust.
This image of a large part of M32 was created from ultraviolet observations with Hubble and provides evidence that the...
A bluish image of the core and surrounding of a companion galaxy to Andromeda. The color is due to the image being taken in ultraviolet light.
This gigantic image of the Triangulum Galaxy — also known as Messier 33 — is a composite of about 54...
A galaxy image with little structure but a clear central region of yellowish stars and an exterior of dust and blue star formation.
NGC 604 is an enormous star-forming nebula in one of M33’s spiral arms. Spanning almost 1,500 light-years, NGC 604 is...
A star-forming nebula NGC 604 with red, white, and olive green gas and stars.
This stunning Hubble image offers the sharpest view of the Orion Nebula ever obtained. Created using 520 different Hubble exposures...
An intense cloud of red, purple, brown and similar color gas that is the Orion Nebula that includes pockets of starbirth.
Appearing like glistening precious stones, M42’s Trapezium cluster, named for the trapezoidal arrangement of its central massive stars, is seen...
Bright stars at the center that form a trapezium.
Resembling an interstellar Frisbee, the dark feature in these two Hubble images is a protoplanetary disk of dust seen edge-on...
Two seprate images of protoplanetary disks of dark black gas surround a newborn star in Orion Nebula
Separated from the Orion Nebula (M42) by only a dark lane of dust, M43 was recognized as a distinct nebula...
Purple, red, brown and similar color gas with a bright star in the middle.
This Hubble image, assembled from observations at visible and infrared wavelengths of light, shows several of the brilliant, hot, young...
A brownish cloud of gas with several bright stars scattered throughout and a few pockets of dense gas/dust.
In this image, which combines visible and infrared observations, Hubble has captured the eerie, wispy tendrils of an interstellar cloud...
Lower left is an interstellar cloud in Pleiades of wispy tendrils of white/gray dust and gas. Rays of iight from a star in the upper right are visible.
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the planetary nebula NGC 2438, which is located in front of the open...
right side of image: circular nebula with reddish-white star at center, turquoise interior with hazy, cloudy yellow-orange and red rings around the center
This Hubble image of M49 was created using observations at infrared wavelengths. There is an X-ray source at the core...
A blurred/soft elliptical galaxy of stars at the center.
The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy M51 appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. They...
A spiral galaxy seen from overhead, with its two major arms spiraling out from its bright white core. At the end of the arm on the right is another bright white blob, this is a second galaxy. The arms are bluish and purple, peppered with countless stars.
Thousands and thousands of brilliant stars make up the globular cluster Messier 53, captured with crystal clarity in this image...
Large galaxy that's globular in shape, the closer to the center you get the brighter and whiter the image due to the amount of stars. Stars are everywhere in this image, of all sorts of colors.
This beautiful visible and infrared Hubble image shows what could be just another globular cluster, but this dense group of...
Large galaxy that's globular in shape, the closer to the center you get the brighter and whiter the image due to the amount of stars. Stars are everywhere in this image, of all sorts of colors.
This image shows just a portion of M55, the cluster as a whole appears spherical because the stars’ intense gravitational...
Field is filled with white stars, smattered with blue-white and reddish-orange stars. Stars are concentrated at the center of the image. All are on a black background.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the globular cluster Messier 56 (also known as M...
Large galaxy that's globular in shape, the closer to the center you get the brighter and whiter the image due to the amount of stars. Stars are everywhere in this image, of all sorts of colors.
M57, or the Ring Nebula, is a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a sun-like star. The tiny white dot...
Black background holding an oval of light. The outer ring of the oval is orange-red. Moving inward the ring is more greenish-yellow. The center of the ring is bright blue with one small star at its center and another above and to the right of it.
Discovered in 1779 by Charles Messier, M58 was one of the first galaxies recognized to have a spiral shape and...
Spiral galaxy seen from above. Bright central core is white due to the light from so many stars, on the outer edge of the galaxy the arms spread out, with light blue and purple dust and gas, peppered with stars.
M59 is one of the largest elliptical galaxies in the Virgo galaxy cluster. However, it is still considerably less massive,...
A hazy white-yellow light shines in the top left corner of the image against black space, dotted with faint, distant stars.
The Virgo cluster is a collection of more than 1,300 galaxies, including the elliptical galaxy M60. Unlike spiral galaxies, elliptical...
A hazy white-yellow light shines in the center of the image against black space, dotted with faint, distant stars. In the top right of the image is a spiral galaxy with many arms as seen from overhead. It is light blue.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of nearby spiral galaxy Messier 61, also known as NGC 4303....
Spiral galaxy seen from above. Bright central core is white due to the light from so many stars, on the outer edge of the galaxy the arms spread out, with light blue and purple dust and gas, peppered with stars.
This Hubble image of M61’s center is comprised of observations taken in visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. It is the...
Spiral galaxy seen from above. Bright central core is white due to the light from so many stars, on the outer edge of the galaxy the arms spread out, with light blue and purple dust and gas, peppered with stars.
The globular star cluster M62 is one of the closest clusters to the center of our galaxy. It has a...
A sparkling cluster of yellow and white stars, primarily concentrated near the upper right.
The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in a new image from the NASA/ESA...
A spiral galaxy with a glowing yellow center. Its spiral arms are full of dark reddish-brown lanes of dust and faint purple stars.
Easily identified by the spectacular band of absorbing dust partially obscuring its bright nucleus, M64, or the Black Eye galaxy,...
A spiral galaxy fills the image. Dark spiral arms dotted with brown dust and pinkish bursts of stars surround a bright core.
In order to penetrate the dust clouds swirling around the center of M64, Hubble observed it at infrared wavelengths. The...
A bright galaxy core shines near the lower center of the image, surrounded by hazy, dusty spiral arms.
The 1st of March 1780 was a particularly productive night for Charles Messier. Combing the constellation of Leo for additions...
A spiral galaxy with a bright core fills the image, surrounded by faint spiral arms laced through with dark dust. A black rectangle is at the upper left, showing a portion where there is no Hubble data.
Showing a large portion of M66, this Hubble photo is a composite of images obtained at visible and infrared wavelengths....
A spiral galaxy is viewed sideways, with the glowing core closer to the upper left of the image. It is surrounded by spiral arms laced through with dark dust and bright regions of star formation.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled...
A bright cluster of white stars, more concentrated near the center.
This dazzling image shows the globular cluster Messier 69, or M 69 for short, as viewed through the NASA/ESA Hubble...
A cluster of bright stars, concentrated at the center.
In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the brilliance of the compact centre of Messier 70, a...
A cluster of bright stars, concentrated at the center.
This Hubble image of M71 was created from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for...
Several stars shine against black space.
As the first in the new weekly series of spectacular images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Hubble Picture...
A cluster of white stars, loosely concentrated toward the center.
This Hubble image of M74 is a composite of exposures taken in 2003 and 2005 at visible and infrared wavelengths....
A large spiral galaxy fills the image. Its bright, yellow core is near the upper left, surrounded by big spiral arms laced through with dark dust and purple and pink regions of star formation.
M75 is the most centrally concentrated globular cluster in Messier’s catalog, with the majority of its stars located in a...
A bright cluster of white and orange stars, concentrated more densely at the center.
M76 is located in the constellation Perseus and is approximately 2,500 light-years away from Earth.
A hazy cloud of pale green covers the center of the image, against black space dotted with reddish stars. A stair step region of black at the lower right shows where there is no Hubble data.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of spiral galaxy Messier 77 — a galaxy in the...
A bright spiral galaxy with a yellow core shines at the center, surrounded by spiral arms laced through with dark dust and pink regions of star formation.
This ultraviolet image from Hubble probes the bright, active core of M77. Brightness fluctuations in this region imply that an...
A close-up view of the galactic core, seen in bright orange, yellow, and red tones.
This colorful image features a small part of M78, a reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion.
A hazy, cloudy region mostly in blue in the upper left diagonal half of the image, and mostly brown and yellow near the lower right diagonal.
It's beginning to look a lot like the holiday season in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a blizzard...
A cluster or white and orange stars, more densely concentrated at the center.
In this image of M80, observations in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths of light are featured. This data helped scientists...
Image center holds a dense sphere of stars in colors of red, orange, yellow, white, and blue. The stars are densely packed at image center and taper out toward the image's edges. They are on a black background.
A giant sphere of stars in colors of white, yellow, yellow-orange
This stunning Hubble image was assembled using observations in visible and infrared light. The galaxy’s spiral arms, which wind all...
A bright spiral galaxy with a large, yellow core, with small spiral arms surrounding it.
M82 or the Cigar galaxy, shines brightly at infrared wavelengths and is remarkable for its star formation activity.
A white band of stars that cuts across a black background, from the lower left to the upper right, is the galaxy M82. Reddish brown gas and dust overlays the galaxy concentrated in the center of the image and fanning out above and below the white band of the galaxy. Black background is dotted with stars.
This Hubble image is the most detailed view of M82’s core ever captured. It isolates the light from glowing gas...
A bright glowing region in pale green and purple stretches across the image, laced through with dark brown lanes of dust and black space along the top and bottom.
This beautiful Hubble image captures hundreds of thousands of individual stars, thousands of star clusters and hundreds of supernova remnants...
A large spiral galaxy stretches across the image, with a bright core surrounded by large spiral arms laced through with dark dust and purple and pink regions of star formation.
This Hubble image provides a close-up view of the myriad stars near M83’s core, the bright, whitish region at far...
Several stars near the core of the galaxy M83 are seen in this image, in dark pink blooms of star birth and bright blue pockets of star formation.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the galaxy Messier 84 — also known as NGC 4374 — an object...
A hazy, yellow-white galactic core shines against black space, with a couple ribbons of dark dust in front of it.
The Hubble image on the left shows the bright core of M84 surrounded by a dark band of gas and...
Two images side by side. On the left, the bright galaxy core of M84 glows. On the right, a colorful, jagged line represents a spectrograph plot.
This moody image shows a galaxy named Messier 85, captured in all its delicate, hazy glory by the NASA/ESA Hubble...
Diffuse oval haze against black background. Stars and distant galaxies shine through it. Just above image center the haze gets brighter and denser toward the bright-white core of the galaxy. Top, just left of center is a bright foreground star.
This Hubble observation of M86 was taken in near-infrared and visible light using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2...
A bright, hazy point of white light shines near the top center of the image, against black space dotted with distant stars.
This Hubble image of M87 is a composite of individual observations in visible and infrared light. Its most striking features...
A bright, yellowish galaxy core shines near the center, with a faint jet of material ejecting toward the right.
Streaming out from the center of M87 like a cosmic searchlight is one of nature’s most amazing phenomena: a black-hole-powered...
This close-up image shows a jet of material ejecting down and to the lower left corner from a bright, orange-ish galaxy core.
Located approximately 47 million light-years away, M88 is a spiral galaxy with well-defined and symmetrical arms.
A bright galaxy core shines at the center of the image, surrounded by large spiral arms laced through with dark dust and bright blue regions of star formation.
This Hubble observation was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 using a single visible-light filter. With Hubble,...
This image shows a bright galaxy core at the top right, surrounded by spiral arms, all in grayscale.
M89 contains approximately 100 billion stars and well over 2,000 globular clusters.
A hazy, yellow-white light shines near the top right, against black space dotted with faint, distant stars.
This Hubble observation was taken in infrared, ultraviolet and visible light with the telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2....
A purple-white galaxy core is seen near the top left of the image, surrounded by spiral arms laced through with dark dust and purple regions of star formation.
This image of M91 combines ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths. It was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 as...
A bright yellow galaxy core shines, surrounded by spiral arms laced through with dark dust and bright blue regions of new stars.
This image is composed of Hubble observations taken in visible and infrared light by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera...
This image shows a portion of the galaxy M91, with some of the bright core visible at the top of the image, surrounded by spiral arms.
This striking NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a glittering bauble named Messier 92. By exploring the composition of globular...
A bright cluster of stars, more concentrated at the center.
This image shows the galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs, about 16...
A bright yellow galaxy core shines, surrounded by spiraling arms laced through with dark dust and blue-white regions of new stars.
This Hubble observation reveals a section of Messier 95 featuring its central bar of stars in the upper left and...
Near the top left, a bright galaxy core shines, surrounded by spiral arms with dark dust and purple-white regions of star formation.
In this infrared and visible-light image from Hubble, the spiral galaxy M96 resembles a giant maelstrom of glowing gas, rippled...
A spiral galaxy against black space. The galaxy's bright, yellow core is surrounded by spiraling arms laced with dark brown dust and pink and purple bursts of star formation.
This image of M98 was taken in 1995 with Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
A bright yellow galaxy core shines, surrounded by spiral arms laced through with dark dust and bluish regions of star formation. A black stair step region near the upper left shows an area without Hubble data.
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a detailed view of the spiral arms on one side...
The bright blue spiraling arms of a galaxy are seen against black space, with a yellowish core visible near the top of the image.
The mysterious star PTF 10fqs appears at the tip of the arrow in this Hubble image of M99.
An image of spiraling galaxy arms full of bright blue new stars, with a white arrow pointing to the star PTF 10fqs.
​M100 is a stunning example of a grand-design spiral galaxy.
A bright yellow core is visible near the right center of the image, surrounded by dark spiraling arms laced through with brown dust and bright blue regions of new stars.
These three images show the central region of spiral galaxy M100, taken with three generations of cameras aboard Hubble, and...
Three images of a spiral galaxy are side by side, with sharper resolution to the right.
This Hubble image of a region of M100 shows a type of pulsating star called a Cepheid variable. These stars...
Grayscale image of a spiral galaxy, with pulled out images designating Cepheid variable stars.
Soon after Hubble first began sending images from space, scientists discovered that the telescope's primary mirror had a flaw called...
a side by side comparison of galaxy m100 before and after the fix for Hubble's spherical aberation was installed.
Hubble captured this stunning view of spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101), which is also called the Pinwheel Galaxy.
Looking like a pinwheel, this face-on spiral galaxy holds a bright-white core at image center. Arms curve outward from the core. They hold dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions. All on a black background dotted with stars.
Hubble’s sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing M102, also known as the Spindle galaxy, into two halves.
A galaxy is seen edge-on, with a dark lane of dust obscuring it surrounded by a hazy white glow, all against a black background.
Looking like a broad-brimmed Mexican hat, the “Sombrero” galaxy, M104, is a spiral galaxy seen nearly edge-on.
A bright hazy, oblate ball of stars fills the scene. Its core is bright white. Around the equator is a disk of bright stars and dark dust. The dust lane is prominent and bisects the sphere of stars.
This Hubble image of M105 was taken in near-infrared and visible light. Like most elliptical galaxies it appears rather featureless...
A hazy white-yellow light shines against black space, dotted with faint, distant stars.
Hubble peered into the core of M105 (also known as NGC 3379) and measured the motions of stars swirling around...
A bright, yellow-orange galaxy core shines, veering into red hues at the corners of the image.
This magnificent view of the spiral galaxy M106 was assembled from Hubble exposures and ground-based images taken by the amateur...
A bright yellow galaxy core, surrounded by spiral arms with pink and brown lanes of dust and bright regions of star formation.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a...
A bright cluster of white and yellow stars against black space.
M108 is one of the largest and brightest members of the Ursa Major cluster, as well as part of the...
A grayscale image of a galaxy core surrounded by spiral arms laced through with dark dust. A black stair-step shaped region designates where there is no Hubble data.
Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy, Messier 109.
Haze of light. Bright core of the galaxy just left of center. A smattering of rusty-brown dust clouds in the foreground.
M110 is an elliptical galaxy, which means that it has a smooth and nearly featureless structure. Elliptical galaxies do not...
Several faint stars crowd the image, with a larger white-blue galaxy core near the right side of the image.