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The Art of Hubble

Sometimes Hubble Space Telescope data is best visualized through art. Artists and scientists worked together to depict Hubble discoveries in these illustrations.

This is an artist's concept of a gas giant planet orbiting a red dwarf star. The planet has not been...
The lower portion of the image is filled by a large gas giant lying on its side, with its layers of yellow rings circling from top to bottom like Uranus. The planet's clouds are bands of different shades of red, orange, yellow, and brown, with a small moon orbiting the planet in the foreground just beyond the rings. In the upper portion of the image is the magenta-colored parent star.
This is an artist's impression of a unique type of exoplanet discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. The planet is...
The orange star in the lower-left corner emits a purplish loop from the top and bottom to represent its high-energy particles, which extends to the Jupiter-like planet above it to the right. Its purple magnetic field forms a hyperbolic behind it, away from the star.
This is an artist's impression of a Jupiter-sized planet passing in front of its parent star. Such events are called...
Most of the background of the image is taken up by a portion of the burning orange-and-yellow star, except for the lower-left, which shows the blackness of space with dots of white stars. In the foreground near the center is a planet strongly resembling Jupiter, with bands of red, orange, and light brown clouds.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers detected evidence of hazes in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star....
The left/upper-left of the image is taken up by a portion of the burning orange-and-yellow star, while the right/lower right shows the blackness of space with dots of white stars. In the foreground at the center-to-lower-left is a planet with swirling pinkish-orange clouds.
This is an artist's impression of an embryonic galaxy brimming with star birth in the early universe, less than a...
A large dark magenta cloud of gas and dust takes up the center of the image, with five clumps of spherical white star clusters resembling beehives. In the background, against the black backdrop of space are a few dozen small colorful spheres and disks of other galaxies, with many more faint white dots of other galaxies much further away.
This illustration shows a potential planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbiting the star Fomalhaut. A structure comprised mostly of brown and...
The star appears bright white in the upper right, with a brown disk extending from it to the upper right and lower left of the image. Below it near the center is a taupe-colored planet surrounded by a disk of material, fading from dark to lighter orange and then to light yellow, extending to the whole bottom and right of the image. In the upper left is the black background of space with many white stars.
This is an artist's impression of the Jupiter-size extrasolar planet HD 189733b being eclipsed by its parent star. The planet...
The upper half of the image is taken up by an orange star with yellow patches and fiery loops extending from the surface, with a black sunspot at the far left. In the background, peeking out from and partially obscured by the star, is a planet with clouds in bands of pale blue, yellow, and orange.
This artist's depiction shows a view of the gas giant planet HD 209458b, as seen from the surface of a...
The lower quarter of the image is the gray-brown surface of a rocky object. Peeking above it in the center-right is the upper-third of a yellow star with orange patches. On the left, a red cloud trails out from behind a reddish planet to the top left of the image, making it look like the planet is plunging toward the star.
This is an artist's concept of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting the nearby star Epsilon Eridani, located 10.5 light-years from Earth....
On the left is a gas giant with bands of red, magenta, white, and dark orange clouds, with thin, pale yellow-orange rings. A gray moon is visible below-right of the planet, near the bottom-center of the image, and the smaller spheres of two smaller, more distant moons in the lower left and directly in front of the planet near the top. On the right is the yellow planet star, with a thin white disk that stretches across the image all the way from left to right.
This is an artist's concept of the fastest-rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102,...
Near the center is a blue-white star with a "flattened" elliptical shape, flattening to an electric-blue disk on the left and right that resembles a thin blowtorch flame. At the bottom-left is a reddish-orange planet, all against a black background of space with many white stars.
This artist's rendering illustrates the evaporation of exoplanet HD 189733b's atmosphere in response to a powerful eruption from its host...
The entire center-to-right of the image is taken up by a burning red, orange, and yellow star, with a bright white patch on the right. In the foreground at the center-left, partially in front of the star, is a pale yellow planet releasing its atmosphere as a white tail/stream behind it, trailing off the left side of the image.
This is an artist's concept of the giant planet HR 8799b. The planet was discovered in 2007 using the Gemini...
The image is taken from the perspective of standing on a gray rocky surface, taking up the lower-left of the image. In the center is the host planet, with clouds of violet, light blue, and gray, with thin gray rings. In the upper-right, partially concealed by the rings, is the host star, mostly white with a slightly orangey glow.
This is an artist's concept of a close binary pair of stars that are merging to form a "blue straggler"...
The lower one-third of the image is a light brown, rocky terrestrial surface from which the image is being "taken", while the upper part of the image is the blackness of space with many white stars. On the right, two blue-white stars orbit close to each other with an exchange of pale blue gas and dust between them, looking like a pair of glowing goggles staring down at the surface.
This is an artist's concept of the extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b. It is a "hot Jupiter" planet orbiting a star that...
Most of the background of the image is taken up by a portion of the burning yellow-and-orange star, except for the lower-left, which shows the blackness of space with dots of white stars. In the foreground near the center is a planet strongly resembling Jupiter, with bands of red, white, and light brown clouds.
Deep inside the Hyades star cluster, a pair of burned-out stars are yielding clues to the presence of rocky planets...
A glowing white star sits at the center of a disk of debris composed of numerous rings, very much resembling the rings of Saturn. They're light orange near the center, fading to lavender, fading to deep blue at the edges, with several gaps. In the foreground on the right is a rocky gray asteroid.
This artist's concept illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASS J22282889-431026. Brown dwarfs are more massive and hotter than planets but...
A large sphere sits at the center of the image, mostly dark fuchsia at the top, bottom, and bands through the middle, whilte the space between the bands is red and pink-orange. The background is the black backdrop of space, with countless multicolored stars.
This is an artist's concept of a plume of water vapor ejected off of the frigid, icy surface of the...
The lower half of the image is a jagged icy surface, with a plume of water shooting up on the right to near the top of the image. This plume partially obscures the view of Jupiter, with its orange, brown, and white clouds, which fills the entire top-right quadrant. The Sun appears as a shining white glow at the very top of the image, slightly to the left.
This is an artist's rendition of the gas giant planet HD 209458b (unofficially named Osiris) located 150 light-years away in...
In the foreground on the upper left is a gas giant planet with bands of red, orange, and yellow clouds. In the background in the lower right is the reddish-white parent star. The blackness of space, with countless multicolored stars, forms the background.
This is an artist's impression of Supernova 1993J, an exploding star in the galaxy M81, observed on Earth in the...
A small white sphere glows at the center of a colorful, spherical-shaped shell. Most of the outer edges are red and yellow, with trails of red, yellow, green, and blue dust inside the shell. This is against the black backdrop of space with countless stars scattered throughout.
This is an artist's impression of a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), located on the outer rim of our solar system...
The Sun glows in the center of the image as a small but bright yellow star. In the bottom-left quadrant in the foreground is a rocky, gray, asteroid-shaped Kuiper Belt Object. In the background, the vastness of space appears salt-and-pepper, almost hazy white, thanks to the presence of so many stars.
This is an artist's concept of the moon Ganymede as it orbits the giant planet Jupiter. The Hubble Space Telescope...
In the lower right in the foreground is Ganymede, a gray-and-brown pockmarked sphere with two wispy lines of blue aurorae on the moon's dark side facing the viewer. In the upper-left is Jupiter, with its bands of red, white, and brown clouds, and the Great Red Spot partially visible.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen dubbed the "Behemoth" bleeding off a planet,...
In the center-right of the image is a the reddish-white star. Below it is a pinkish planet with a pale blue cloud surrounding it and forming an arc behind it toward the left side of the image. The arc fades to purple at the very end. The blackness of space and many multicolored stars form the background.
This is an artist's rendition of a binary black hole found in the center of the nearest quasar host galaxy...
A tilted disk has a large, mostly-empty space in the middle; the inner ring of the disk is bright electric blue-white, which changes to light blue, then light purple, and finally dark pink at the outer edges. In the mostly-empty center are two smaller disks, also black in the middle surrounded by electric blue, connected to each other and the inner disk with light blue tendrils. In the background is the blackness of space with many white stars.
This is an artist's impression of Earth-like planets that could form over the next trillion years in the evolving universe....
Several Earth-like planets--with blue oceans, green and brown landmasses, and white ice caps, all in different shapes--form an arc, with the foreground planet in the bottom center and the arc of other planets going first to the right and then to the left further into the background. The background is a Hubble Deep Field, with a prominent spiral galaxy in the upper right. At the bottom, especially the lower-left, is another, closer spiral galaxy.
This is an artist's concept of the fireworks that accompany the birth of a star. The young stellar object is...
The disk of gas and dust is viewed nearly edge-on. Its glowing light pink center emits bright pink plasma jets to the top and bottom, which are surrounded by glowing turquoise light. Surrounding the center are dark red and black clouds of gas, which forms the outer disk and is most easily seen.
Makemake is one of several dwarf planets that reside in the frigid outer realm of our solar system called the...
The bottom half of the image is primarily filled by the sphere of Makemake; the top of it is reddish-brown with dark brown spots, while the rest of it looks black because it's in darkness. On the right side of Makemake, partially in front of it, is a small gray moon. IN the background is the background of space with countless bright stars and the disk of the Milky Way running from top to bottom; in front of this disk near the top is a bright yellow-white star, the Sun.
This artist's concept shows two Earth-sized worlds passing in front of their parent red dwarf star, which is much smaller...
A bright red-orange star burns in the center of the image, with red flames burning off it in all directions. Two dark gray spheres orbit in front of the star, one on the far left (partially in front of the star, partially off the side), and the other at the bottom center.
This artist's depiction shows a gas giant planet circling a pair of red dwarf stars. The Saturn-mass planet orbits roughly...
In the foreground in the lower-left is a planet mostly in darkness, while its right side is lit up. It has swirling bands of clouds in various shades of blue and light purple. The background is the backdrop of space, with the galactic disk running from bottom left to top right. In the upper right is a pair of reddish stars, shining like a pair of eyes.
This illustration shows one of the darkest known exoplanets — an alien world as black as fresh asphalt — orbiting...
In the upper-left corner in the foreground is a very dark reddish-grayish-brown planet, surrounded at the edges by a gray haze. This haze trails behind the planet and forms a thin ring around its yellow star in the lower-right, which has a few loops of orange flames.
This illustration shows the seething-hot planet Kepler-13Ab, which circles very close to its host star, Kepler-13A. Seen in the background...
At the bottom-center of the image is a planet on its side, with bands of red and orange clouds running from top to bottom; the top quarter of the planet is fully white due to being in its star's light. In the center of the image is the blue-white star. At the top is another blue-white star, which appears much smaller due to its greater distance, with a small reddish dot of the third star..
This artist's depiction shows the interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah) racing toward the outskirts of our solar system. The object,...
On the left is a light brown object, shaped like a flat stone standing vertical, that releases a whitish haze on its right side. This is the side facing the Sun (a bit below and right of center). The background is the blackness of space, many dots of smaller stars, and brighter dots of other, nearer stars and other Solar System objects.
Neutron stars are among the strangest objects in the universe — the dense, collapsed cores of giant stars. The entire...
At the center is a large disk. The neutron star is a white dot at its center, immediately surrounded by a small empty black space before reaching the disk. The inner ring of the disk is yellow-orange, and after that, turns to red and dark fuchsia. The background is the vastness of space, mostly purple with patches of black, and countless white stars.
This is an artist’s impression of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-121b. The bloated planet is so close to its star...
In the upper left is the yellow-white star, partially cut off at the corner of the image. On the right, slightly below center, is a reddish-pink planet that is bulging on the left towards its star and lit up with a whitish glare, while forming a wispy-white tail in an arc in front of it (to the left) and a veil behind it (to the lower-right).
Violent outbursts of seething gas from young red dwarf stars may make conditions uninhabitable on fledgling planets. In this artist's...
Near the center is a reddish-orange star with patches of yellow. The red-orange flares coming off its surface atmosphere form three prominent looping "prongs" on the right, upper left, and lower left, with another c-shaped loop between the two left prongs. In the lower-left of the image is a red-brown-light brown planet leaving a thin gray-and-red trail behind it to the bottom-left.
Exoplanet WASP-107b is one of the lowest density planets known. While the planet is about the same size as Jupiter,...
A bright yellow-orange star burns at the center of the image, with an orange stellar flare forming a loop in the upper-left. A black circle (the shadow of the planet) appears to the lower-left of the center of the star, with a grayish haze surrounding it.
This is an artist's concept of a blue supergiant star that once existed inside a cluster of young stars in...
A blue-white star glows bright at the center, with two arcs of gas and dust to its upper right and lower right, shaped like a backward S together., with a darker haze of light brown to the star's left. A couple dozen more blue-white stars burn around it, mostly above it but a few below as well.
This is an artist's concept of the tiny moon Hippocamp, which was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2013....
In the foreground at the bottom of the image (partially cut off at the bottom) is a lumpy, crater-filled gray object resembling an asteroid. At the left of the image (cut off on the left and top by the edges) is the blue Neptune, the left side dark and the right side bright from where it faces the Sun. On the right is the glowing white Sun, and above Hippocamp/right of Neptune/above-left of the Sun is a small grayish sphere, another of Neptune's moons in the distance.