Amazing images and photos from NASA's Hubble Space telescope!

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In addition to studying the unknown objects of the universe, the Hubble telescope has given us information about the known planets within our solar system. Back in 1994, the telescope saw 21 pieces of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smash into Jupiter. In 2009, Hubble observed a Pacific-Ocean-sized dark spot on the gas giant believed to be the result of another asteroid impact. The Great Red Spot of Jupiter has also been a primary observation point of the Hubble telescope, which is used to track its mysterious shrinking. Hubble even provided the first photographs of striking aurora lights at Jupiter and Saturn's southern and northern poles. One of the most interesting things Hubble has provided astronomers with is evidence of an enormous underground saltwater ocean on our solar system's largest moon, Jupiter's Ganymede. It's believed that Ganymede's subterranean ocean contains more water than all of Earth's surfaces combined.




Number 9. The Kuiper Belt

While Hubble was exploring Pluto, an icy dwarf planet within the Kuiper belt, it discovered four new Plutonian moons: Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx. The first two moons, Hydra and Nix, were more recently found to be rotating unpredictably around Pluto. While continuing its exploration of the Kuiper Belt, a ring containing small solar system bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune, Hubble also discovered two other previously unseen objects. One object the Hubble telescope spotted was deemed 2014 MU69 at the time - now called Arrokoth, a Native American term that means "sky". The NASA New Horizons team decided to focus on Arrokoth, directing the New Horizons spacecraft toward the unknown object. It performed the flyby on January 1, 2019, capturing close-up photographs that revealed Arrokoth is red and double-lobed, which NASA compares to a "partially flattened snowman." The New Horizons flyby of Arrokoth was the farthest ever conducted, as the object lies a billion miles past Pluto - and 4.1 billion miles from Earth.




Number 8. Other Worlds

When Hubble was launched in April 1990, astronomers had yet to discover planets beyond the solar system we belong to. Since then, over 4,000 have been found. Hubble has provided significant information about these exoplanets by taking the first atmospheric composition measurements. These measurements revealed that the planets are too hot to support life as far as we know, but showed that many components for life are present on extrasolar planets, such as sodium, carbon, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane. In addition to these discoveries, one of the most significant things Hubble captured was a photograph of the planet Fomalhaut b, circling the star Fomalhaut , which is 25 light-years away from us in the Pisces Australis constellation. The image confirmed the 2008 announcement of the planet's presence in 2012 and was "the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star," according to Hubblesite.




Number 7. Shapeshifting Galaxies

Edwin Hubble placed all galaxies into three shapes: irregular, elliptical, and spiral. But, the Hubble telescope later revealed an incredible number of oddly shaped galaxies as it explored the distant, ancient universe. The NASA website explains that there were more strange-looking galaxies longer ago because the universe was much smaller. Because of this, galaxies were more likely to come into contact. These interactions take place over hundreds of millions of years, so Hubble has been able to capture images of several galaxies throughout the various stages of their mergers. One such merger, called "the Mice", consists of two spiral galaxies colliding about 290 million light-years away - photographed by the Hubble telescope in 2002. These two galaxies may eventually become one and have provided insight into what the collision of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and Andromeda might be like in the distant future. According to the NASA website, in 4 billion years, Andromeda and the Milky Way will begin their merger, although the former is currently 2.5 million light-years from us. Billions of years from now, astronomers believe that the collision will result in an enormous elliptical galaxy.

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