Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights
This downloadable e-book showcases some of Hubble’s ground-breaking discoveries over its more than three decades of observations.
Our Solar System
The e-book takes readers on a visual and scientific journey that spans the cosmos across several main topic areas. Beginning in our local neighborhood with Studying the Planets and Moons, we learn how Hubble’s systematic and long-term observations of the planets help us better understand their dynamic atmospheres and moons. In Tracking Evolution in the Asteroid Belt, we explore Hubble’s observations of these rocky worlds, learning more about their interactions and compositions. Beyond the realm of the planets, where Hubble is Uncovering Icy Objects in the Kuiper Belt, we explore how Hubble helped researchers plan NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and discovered a moon around the rocky, icy dwarf planet Makemake.
Our Galaxy
Leaving our solar system, we head into the Milky Way where Hubble studies the lifecycle of stars. In Exploring the Birth of Stars, we see how Hubble’s capability to see ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light enables the study of different aspects of star formation. We then follow Hubble through The Death Throes of Stars, where the telescope reveals the intricate shells that form around these dead and dying celestial beacons. Hubble also explores the systems around other stars, Finding Planetary Construction Zones in disks around protostars and Recognizing Worlds Beyond Our Sun where exoplanets dubbed ‘super Earths’ and ‘evaporating Neptunes’ feed our scientific interest and imaginations.
The Universe
Hubble’s vision extends well beyond our galaxy, where the observatory is uncovering the mysteries of galaxy evolution by Tracing the Growth of Galaxies through its Deep Field observations and studying Galaxy Details and Mergers like the one that will happen between our own Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. Hubble’s observations of galaxies led to the conclusion that Monster Black Holes are Everywhere, living at the heart of most galaxies.
Hubble is also Homing in on Cosmic Explosions in distant galaxies, helping astronomers pinpoint their locations and define their origins. In Discovering the Runaway Universe, we learn how Hubble observations have not only better defined the universe’s expansion rate, but also revealed that the expansion rate is accelerating, a discovery that won the Nobel Prize. Hubble is Focusing in on Gravitational Lenses that help extend Hubble’s views to the early universe, where it has discovered some of the most distant objects ever seen. Hubble’s study of gravitational lenses is also Shining a Light on Dark Matter, and knowing the location of mysterious dark matter is helping astronomers better define the large-scale structure of the universe by Mapping the Cosmic Web through computer simulations and slime molds.
Working with its partner observatories in space and on Earth, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope will continue to uncover the mysteries of the universe and reshape our cosmic view far into the future. After its first 35 years of discoveries, we can imagine the wonders yet to come.
This e-book is compatible with most electronic devices. If you have problems with the EPUB version, we suggest trying the more widely accessible PDF version.
