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Hubble’s Nebulae

A Collection of Hubble Nebula Images

Glowing like a multi-faceted jewel, the planetary nebula IC 418 lies about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of...
Colorful oval shaped nebula with orange gas on the outside as the color gets more and more purple the more you move to the inside. A bright white/purple star sits at the center.
Extremely intense radiation from newly born, ultra-bright stars has blown a glowing spherical bubble in the nebula N83B, also known...
In the right half of the image, dark red gas forms a background haze, streaked with a line of black dust. On the left, a bright white star glows near the top of a red-and-orange bubble of gas and dust.
From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of a garden-variety...
A dark starfield appears around an unusually shaped nebula. The nebula has two main lobes on the left and the right and may seem to resemble an ant.
Caldwell 100 (also called Collinder 249) is a loose collection of stars, known as an open cluster, that’s embedded within...
A rusty-orange background is dotted with dark clouds. One large, dark cloud at upper right, two medium-sized dark clouds at the bottom; one left, the other right, of center. The upper left corner is blacked-out in a step pattern.
A unique peanut-shaped cocoon of dust, called a reflection nebula, surrounds a cluster of young, hot stars in this view...
Pale red streaks of dust cross the bottom of the image. Near the top are several bright stars and a white-orange double-bubble of gas surrounded by more reddish dust.
This Hubble image zooms in to a stellar nursery within Caldwell 57 called Hubble-V. The image combines observations taken by...
This pinkish-red glowing gas cloud resembles curling flames from a campfire. A faint tail of gas trailing off the top of the cloud sits opposite a dense cluster of bright white and yellow stars at the bottom.
Resembling the hair in Botticelli's famous portrait of the birth of Venus, softly glowing filaments stream from a complex of...
In the lower-left, a cloud of white gas, lined out the outside with red, surrounds a glowing star at the center. Streams of glass flow in a flame shape from the left to the right: yellow-orange on the far left, and more blue and pale green near the center. The image is missing a "stair-step" portion in the upper-left, so it appears plain black.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope continues to reveal various stunning and intricate treasures that reside within the nearby, intense star-forming region...
A very small portion of a larger nebula with a distinct arc of yellow-orange and more diffuse orange gas streaming away to its upper left.
Resembling a rippling pool illuminated by underwater lights, the Egg Nebula offers astronomers a special look at the normally invisible...
In the image center, an opaque oval cloud of gray gas aligned from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock hides a star. Two strong beams of light from the star emerge from large holes in both sides of the cloud, forming narrow cones extending toward 8 o’clock and 2 o’clock. The central cloud is surrounded by concentric, wispy shells of gas illuminated by the star’s light. The shells reflect extra light where they’re hit by the twin beams. These clouds and beams appear in a rainbow of colors. A crowd of smaller stars with cross-shaped spikes over them surrounds the nebula on a black background.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recently obtained images of the planetary nebula NGC 6369. This object is known to amateur...
At the center is a single star surrounded by rings of mottled gas. It strongly resembles an eye.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this photograph of a strange object that bears an uncanny resemblance to a hamburger. The...
Two white, hyperbolic/bow-shaped arcs of gas and dust with what appears to be a black streak passing through the middle, set against a black backdrop with hundreds of stars.
Like many other so-called planetary nebulae, IC 4406 (also known as the Retina Nebula) exhibits a high degree of symmetry;...
The center of a rainbow-colored "bubble" is light green and light blue, with gas spreading outward from it, fading to a yellow-orange at the top and bottom edges. At the right and left outer edges, the gas turns to orange, and has dark red wisps at the outer edges.
Remnants from a star that exploded thousands of years ago created a celestial abstract portrait, as captured in this NASA...
Gaseous filaments in shades of orange and green cross the frame from upper left to lower right.
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.
Resembling the puffs of smoke and sparks from a summer fireworks display in this Hubble Space Telescope image, these delicate...
Filaments of yellow, green, and blue spread out over the center like a backward “P.”
"Starry Night", Vincent van Gogh's famous painting, is renowned for its bold whorls of light sweeping across a raging night...
Large red star in the center of the image surrounded by brown dust and gas swirling around it unevenly. 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.
In this unusual image, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the celestial equivalent of a geode —...
On the left side of an image is an orange-yellow bubble of gas and dust resembling an egg yolk, surrounded by a stream of whitish gas. This gas streams to the right of the image to create a wispy red-orange cloud of dust.
The Butterfly Nebula, also called Caldwell 69 and NGC 6302, is one of the brightest and most extreme planetary nebulae...
Two lobes of gas and dust expand outward from the center toward the lower left and upper right of the image. Most of the image is filled by the lower lobe. The center of each lobe is bright-white ringed by a orange-yellow and then a rusty, orange-brown. The nebula is on a black background.
Astronomers may not have observed the fabled "Stairway to Heaven," but they have photographed something almost as intriguing: ladder-like structures...
A glowing star at the center of what looks like a red X. Closer to the center, red-orange rectangular clouds of gas and dust are thicker., thinning out before reaching the "ends" of the X.
The Crab Nebula is an expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event...
Bright green, orange, and yellow tendrils intertwined within this egg shaped nebula.
A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust is seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby...
A yellow-orange flair of gas, surrounded by white, shaped like an angel's wings. Above it is a green cloud of dust surrounding a blue haze around a star at the center. It's surrounded by blue haze, with dark green gas at the edges and many stars in the background.
Not only is the Cat's Eye Nebula, formally cataloged NGC 6543, one of the first planetary nebulae to be discovered,...
Purple and soft yellow dust and gas surrounding bright white star in the center of the image. Lots of bubbles of dust interweave each other.
Swirls of gas and dust reside in this ethereal-looking region of star formation. This majestic view, located in the Large...
Many glowing stars, some especially bright with small chunks of white dust, with hazy blue gas and clumps of dark red-black dust.
This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming....
Large clouds of dust and gas in pinks, purples, on the outside with brighter yellows and whites nearer to the center. Bright white stars in the center of the image.
The planetary nebula designated NGC 2818, lies in the southern constellation of Pyxis. The colors in the image, captured by...
This planetary nebula takes up the entire frame. It is surrounded by an orange oval of wispy clouds shaped almost like lips. Inside the oval is a bright blue cloud pierced by a few small spikes of the orange clouds.
This image shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our Sun. The star is ending its life by...
Red/orange bubbles of gas explode from a bluish center against black.
This image depicts bright, blue, newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region...
Blue-white clouds fill the scene. The top, right, and lower-right hold rusty-brown, dark clouds. These clouds billow out along the top and bottom of the image in an elongated backwards "C." Bright stars dot the scene.
This Hubble Space Telescope image captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being...
Large orange, yellow, and red clouds of dust and gas. Called Mystic Mountain because they appear as if they're giant mountainous pillars of gas with a blue background.
This image shows an example of a bipolar planetary nebula known as PN Hb 12 — also known as Hubble...
Two hourglass-shaped red lobes of gas, with a bright star at the center, against a black background.
This close-up, visible-light view by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals previously unseen details of the Ring Nebula. The object is...
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.
Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since...
Large, dark red cloud of dust and gas surrounded by grey wisps of smoke and gas. Many stars in the black background of space.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed a nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. Planetary nebulae represent the final brief stage in...
A blue cloud of gas and dust, adorned with filaments and knots of gas in red, orange, and yellow. It resembles a skull, with the thicker gas filament forming a "mask" around the "eyes".
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, resembles a soaring, celestial angel. The...
Two blue lobes of hot gas, shaped like wings, surrounded by reddish-pink gas and dust.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this infrared-light portrait of a roiling region of star birth located 6,400 light-years away. The...
Lower -left quadrant is filled with rusty-brown dust cloud dotted with a few bright stars. Hazy pillars of gas and dust rise up toward the right. A bluish-white glow fills the lower-right quadrant. The haze is more transparent as you move toward the upper right corner. Background is dotted with stars.
Like lifting a giant veil, the near-infrared vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovers this dazzling view deep inside the...
Intertwined wisps of light purple clouds of dust and gas envelope the entire image. Countless orange stars pepper the image.
The Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635, is an enormous bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star. The...
Large blue bubble in the center of the image with tufts of yellow/orange clouds of dust and gas in the top left of the image, and a bit at the top of the blue bubble. Random purple stars are seen speckled at random throughout the image.
In this image, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured two nebulae, situated so they appear as one. They reside in the...
The center of the image displays a combination of two nebulas, red clouds of gas and dust, that are close to each other. On the left and right is a massive number of stars and galaxies, which appear as red, green, and blue dots. The brightest stars have plus-sign-shaped diffraction spikes.
This Hubble image shows the central region of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The young and dense...
A colorful white, orange, and brown and dust cloud with a bright blue star cluster near the bottom.
This image shows in stunning detail a small section of the expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about...
A colorful rainbow chain of gas and dust stretches across the image from the lower left corner to the upper right.
The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resembles a glittering fireworks display in this Hubble Space Telescope image....
A combination of yellow, brown, red, and blue/violet colored gas intermixed with blue and yellow stars.