Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights

Since its launch in 1990, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has offered us stunning images that capture the overwhelming beauty of the universe, but Hubble is far more than pretty pictures. In its three-plus decades of exploration, Hubble has generated as many questions as it has answered — uncovering new mysteries while expanding our understanding of the universe in ways we never imagined.

Hubble’s scientific instruments gather wavelengths of light from ultraviolet, through visible, and into the near-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its sensitivity to such a broad range of wavelengths makes it one of the most valuable and productive observatories in the history of astronomy. Hubble exceeds 1.5 million observations, from which astronomers have written more than 20,000 peer- reviewed scientific papers. Publications cited those papers more than one million times — a number that increased over the lifetime of the mission by an average exceeding 100 per day.

Hubble’s extensive archive of observations also allows astronomers to study astronomical objects that display subtle changes over time, which help shape our understanding of the very nature and evolution of the universe. Every modern astronomy textbook includes contributions from Hubble.

The stories you find here represent a small sample of Hubble’s thought-provoking discoveries and images. Selecting this set from thousands of awe-inspiring observations was difficult, but they serve to highlight some of Hubble’s greatest scientific achievements to date.