Even if you know nothing about astronomy, you've likely heard the name Hubble in reference to the Hubble Space Telescope.
This telescope, which uses a series of high-resolution cameras to observe the visible universe, has captured the hearts of the public with its stunning images and the hearts of the scientific community with its wealth of data collected over the last 24 years.
Many wonders of our universe, including the nature of dark matter, formation of stars, and atmospheric composition of exoplanets, have been observed either indirectly or directly by Hubble. Here is a series of beautiful Hubble images that also taught us something about the incredible, mysterious, and unique universe in which we live.
Eric Goldschein contributed to an earlier version of this post.
In 2006, Hubble set its sites on the mesmerizing Orion Nebula and discovered 16 planets nuzzled within its beautiful confines. Before the Kepler Spacecraft launched in 2009 and began searching the galaxy for exoplanets, the number of known planets outside of our solar system was limited. This Hubble discovery was a momentous find that strongly hinted at the prevalence of planets throughout our universe.
What you're seeing at the center of this Hubble image is a very important type of luminous star called a Cepheid variable. Before Hubble, astronomers had only a vague idea of the age of the universe. But by using the patterns by which these stars brighten and dim over short periods of time, astronomers obtained extremely accurate distances to these objects, which helped them pin down the 14-billion-year age of the universe.
We can't see dark matter, but we know it's there thanks to Hubble. The is a real Hubble image of a galaxy cluster with false coloring superimposed on top. The false blue indicates where most of the cluster's mass is located but also where few galaxies lie. This suggests that there is a large clump of dark matter at the center of the cluster.
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