The sparkling centerpiece of Hubble's silver anniversary fireworks is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2, named for Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund, who discovered the grouping in the 1960s. (credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
An image of the tip of the Cone Nebula, which is about half a light-year long as taken by the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, released June 5, 2002. The entire nebula is 7 light-years long. The Cone resides in a turbulent star-forming region, located 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
A close-up image of the Horsehead nebula taken from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals the cloud's intricate structure and resemblance to a giant seahorse, April 24, 2001. The detailed view of the horse's head was released in celebration of the the orbiting observatory's eleventh anniversary. (Photo Courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
New pictures from the Hubble telescope, made available April 5, 2001 are giving astronomers a detailed view of the Whirlpool galaxy's spiral arms and dust clouds, which are the birth sites of massive and luminous stars. This galaxy, also called M51 or NGC 5194, is having a close encounter with a nearby companion galaxy, NGC 5195, just off the upper edge of this image. The companion's gravitational influence is triggering star formation in the Whirlpool, as seen by the numerous clusters of bright, young stars [highlighted in red]. (Photo courtesy NASA/The Hubble Heritage Team/Newsmakers)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
An image produced by the Hubble telescope of the perfectly "edge-on" galaxy, or NGC 4013 , March 1, 2001. This new Hubble picture reveals, with great detail, huge clouds of dust and gas extending along, as well as far above, the galaxy's main disk. NGC 4013 is a spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, lying some 55 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. Viewed face-on, it would look like a nearly circular pinwheel, but NGC 4013 happens to be seen edge-on from our vantage point. Even at 55 million light-years, the galaxy is larger than Hubble's field of view, and the image shows only a little more than half of the object, albeit with unprecedented detail. (Photo Courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
According to observations made by astronomers, planet formation is a hazardous and violent process, April 26, 2001. These four snapshots, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on February 26, 1998 and January 11, 1999, show dust disks around embryonic stars in the Orion Nebula being "blowtorched" by a blistering flood of ultraviolet radiation from the region's brightest star. Within these disks are the seeds of planets. The doomed systems look like hapless comets, with wayward tails of gas boiling off the withering, pancake-shaped disks. (Photo courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
(File/Photo by NASA)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
The majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4414 as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Photo by NASA)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This Hubble space telescope image released January 4, 2001 shows the Hubble-X, a glowing gas cloud in one of the most active star-forming regions in galaxy NGC 6822. The galaxy lies 1.6 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius, one of the Milky Way's closest neighbors. This hotbed of star birth is similar to the fertile regions in the Orion Nebula in our Milky Way Galaxy, but on a vastly greater scale. The intense star birth in Hubble-X occurred about 4 million years ago, a small fraction of the approximate 10-billion-year age of the universe. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
A Hubble Space Telescope image released February 1, 2001 of the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz3) reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying star. The Hubble images directly challenge old ideas about the last stages in the lives of stars. By observing Sun-like stars as they approach their deaths, the Hubble Heritage image of Mz3, along with pictures of other planetary nebulae, shows that our Sun's fate probably will be more interesting, complex, and striking than astronomers imagined just a few years ago. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
An image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, released by NASA November 2, 2000, shows a striking example of a galaxy collision more than 200 million light year away, in NGC 6745. The yellowish center of the photo shows a large spiral galaxy with its core still intact, colliding with a smaller galaxy seen in the bright blue sections of the image. The blue light shows the distinct path taken by the smaller galaxy during the encounter, as the galaxies did not merely interact gravitationally as they passed one another, but actually collided. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
NASA Scientists say that the the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope captured one of the sharpest images of Mars June 26, 2001. Details as small as 10 miles across are visible. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Multiple images of the Crab Nebula made over a span of several months are shown in this undated photo. The images, made over several months with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, provide moving pictures of matter and antimatter propelled to nearly the speed of light by the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star the size of Manhattan. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
A composite image of the Crab Nebula showing X-ray (blue), and optical (red) images superimposed is shown in this undated photo. Multiple observations made over several months with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope captured the spectacle of matter and antimatter propelled to nearly the speed of light by the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star the size of Manhattan. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
These Hubble Space Telescope images, captured from 1996 to 2000, show Saturn''s rings open up from just past edge-on to nearly fully open as it moves from autumn towards winter in its Northern Hemisphere, part of the course of its 29-year journey around the Sun. (Photo courtesy of NASA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
A spectacular color panorama of the center of the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The picture, seamlessly composited from a mosaic of 15 separate fields, covers an area of sky about five percent of the area covered by the full moon. (Courtesy of NASA)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Previously unseen details of a mysterious, complex structure within the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) are revealed by this image of the "Keyhole Nebula," obtained with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The picture is a montage assembled from four different April 1999 telescope pointings with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The picture is dominated by a large, approximately circular feature, which is part of the Keyhole Nebula, about 8000 light-years from Earth. The Carina Nebula also contains several other stars that are among the hottest and most massive known, each about ten times as hot, and 100 times as massive as the sun. (Courtesy of NASA)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Just weeks after NASA astronauts repaired the Hubble Space Telescope in December, 1999, the Hubble Heritage Project snapped this picture of NGC 1999, a nebula in the constellation Orion. The Heritage astronomers, in collaboration with scientists in Texas and Ireland, used Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) to obtain the color image. (Courtesy of NASA)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
The Pistol Star Nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope October 8, 1997. The Hubble celebrates its 10th anniversary on April 24, 2000. (Photo courtesy NASA)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
The Hubble Space Telescope took this image of a dying star named "NGC 6369" on November 7, 2002. The star, also known as the "Little Ghost Nebula," is 2000 to 5000 light years from earth and is similar in mass to our Sun. The ghostly halo surrounding the star is caused by the shedding of the stars outer layers during the final stages of its life cycle. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
An image from NASA''s Hubble Space Telescope of a vast, sculpted landscape of gas and dust where thousands of stars are being born, July 26, 2001. The star-forming region, called the 30 Doradus Nebula, has the largest cluster of massive stars within the closest 25 galaxies. (Photo Courtesy of NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a group of galaxies called the Seyfert's Sextet on June 26, 2000. Although the name of this grouping suggests that there are six, there are in reality only four galaxies in the group that are slowly merging into one. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This handout image from the European Space Agency shows an artist's impression of the hydrogen atmosphere of transiting planet HD 209458b streaming off of the planet as it orbits close to its parent star on March 12, 2003. According to the ESA the Hubble Space Telescope made observations of the planet, which is described as a "hot Jupiter" because the gas giant is similar to Jupiter in our solar system and because orbits precariously close to its parent star. (Photo by Alfred Vidal-Madjar/ESA/NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this image released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the galaxy NGC 3310, a starburst galaxy that is forming clusters of new stars at a prodigious rate, is shown taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Septemer 7, 2001 while in space. Nasa plans to replace the Hubble telescope with the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and plans to deorbit the Hubble telescope sometime in 2010. According to Anne Kinney, division director of astronomy and physics at NASA headquarters, NASA states August 1, 2003 that it is firmly committed to the new JWST, a deep-space observatory due for launch in 2011 on a European Ariane 5 rocket. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this image released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope shows a halo of hot gas surrounding spiral galaxy NGC 4631 that is similar to the Milky Way galaxy June 19, 2001 while in space. NASA plans to replace the Hubble telescope with the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and plans to deorbit the Hubble telescope sometime in 2010. According to Anne Kinney, division director of astronomy and physics at NASA headquarters, NASA states August 1, 2003 that it is firmly committed to the new JWST, a deep-space observatory due for launch in 2011 on a European Ariane 5 rocket. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
NASA's Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope took this picture June 26, 2003 of Mars. Mars was approximately 43 million miles (68 million km) from Earth, the closest Mars has ever been to Earth since 1988. Frosty white water ice clouds and swirling orange dust storms above a vivid rusty landscape reveal Mars as a dynamic planet in this sharpest view ever obtained by an Earth-based telescope. Hubble can see details as small as 10 miles (16 km) across. Especially striking is the large amount of seasonal dust storm activity seen in this image. One large storm system is churning high above the northern polar cap (Top) and a smaller dust storm cloud can be seen nearby. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This festively colorful nebula, called NGC 604, is one of the largest known seething cauldrons of star birth in a nearby galaxy. This star-birth region contains more than 200 brilliant blue stars within a cloud of glowing gases some 1,300 light-years across, nearly 100 times the size of the Orion Nebula. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Resembling a flaming creature on the run, this image exposes the hidden interior of a dark and dusty cloud in the emission Nebula IC 1396. Young stars previously obscured by dust can be seen here for the first time. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this NASA handout, a view of deepest view of the visible universe ever achieved are seen in a Hubble Telescope composite photograph released March 9, 2004. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) photograph is a composite of a million one-second exposures and reveals galaxies from the time shortly after the big bang. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This NASA image shows ladder-like structures within a dying star. This new image, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals startling new details of one of the most unusual nebulae known in our Milky Way. Cataloged as HD 44179, this nebula is more commonly called the "Red Rectangle" because of its unique shape and color as seen with ground-based telescopes. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Deep Space Image Of Celestial Star Factory A Nasa Hubble Space Telescope Image Of Star Cluster N81. 50 Young Bright Baby Stars Pack A Tiny Region Of Space. The Radiation Given Off By These Stars Makes The Nebula Glow. (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Stsci-Prc99-01 Looking Down A Barrel Of Gas At A Doomed Star The Nasa Hubble Space Telescope Has Captured The Sharpest View Yet Of The Most Famous Of All Planetary Nebulae: The Ring Nebula (M57). In This October 1998 Image, The Telescope Has Looked Down A Barrel Of Gas Cast Off By A Dying Star Thousands Of Years Ago. This Photo Reveals Elongated Dark Clumps Of Material Embedded In The Gas At The Edge Of The Nebula; The Dying Central Star Floating In A Blue Haze Of Hot Gas. The Nebula Is About A Light-Year In Diameter And Is Located Some 2,000 Light-Years From Earth In The Direction Of The Constellation Lyra. The Colors Are Approximately True Colors. The Color Image Was Assembled From Three Black-And-White Photos Taken Through Different Color Filters With The Hubble Telescope'S Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Blue Isolates Emission From Very Hot Helium, Which Is Located Primarily Close To The Hot Central Star. Green Represents Ionized Oxygen, Which Is Located Farther From The Star. Red Shows Ionized Nitrogen, Which Is Radiated From The Coolest Gas, Located Farthest From The Star. The Gradations Of Color Illustrate How The Gas Glows Because It Is Bathed In Ultraviolet Radiation From The Remnant Central Star, Whose Surface Temperature Is A White-Hot 216,000 Degrees Fahrenheit (120,000 Degrees Celsius). (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
F 356597 001 05/1999 Space Hubble Telescope Images Of Southern Crab Nebula Detail Reveals The Nested Bubble Structure Of The Nebula (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
F 358487 005 Space New Hubble Images Uncover Important Clues About The Galaxy's Origins And Beginnings. (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
The Sharpest View Of Mars Ever Taken From Earth Was Obtained By The Recently Refurbished Nasa Hubble Space Telescope (Hst). This Stunning Portrait Was Taken With The Hst Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 (Wfpc2) On March 10, 1997, Just Before Mars Opposition, When The Red Planet Made One Of Its Closest Passes To The Earth (About 60 Million Miles Or 100 Million Km) (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This image released 07 October, 2004 by NASA shows Kepler's supernova remnant produced by combining data from NASA's three Great Observatories -- the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Kepler's supernova was first seen 400 years ago by sky watchers, including famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. The combined image unveils a bubble-shaped shroud of gas and dust that is 14 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second). AFP PHOTO/NASA (Photo credit should read HO/AFP/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This Hubble Space Telescope image released by NASA's Hubble Heritage team 04 February shows the self-destruction of a massive star called supernova 1987-A (C) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a near-by galaxy. Astronomers in the Southern hemisphere witnessed the explosion of this star on 23 February, 1987. The supernova remnant is surrounded by inner and outer rings of material. This is a three-color composite image of the supernova and its neighboring region taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 02 in September 1994, February 1996 and July of 1997. (AFP PHOTO NASA/HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM /Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this handout image released from the Hubble Space Telescope the Whirlpool Galaxy is seen , April 25, 2005 released for the Hubble 15th anniversary. Nasa's Space Telescope has obited the Earth for 15 years and has taken more than 700,000 images of the comos. This image is one of the sharpest images Hubble has ever produced, taken with the newest camera. (Photo by Hubble Space Telescope/Nasa via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this handout image released from the Hubble Space Telescope the Eagle Nebula is seen, April 25, 2005. Released for the Hubble's 15th anniversary. Nasa's Space Telescope has orbited the Earth for 15 years and has taken more than 700,000 images of the cosmos. This image is one of the sharpest images Hubble has ever produced, taken with the newest camera.(Photo by Hubble Space Telescope/Nasa via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this handout from NASA, the mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, shows six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion as released December 2, 2005. Japanese and Chinese astronomers witnessed this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, together with, possibly, Native Americans. The orange filaments are the remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula's eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star's rotation. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Picture released 04 October 2006 by the European Space Agency shows one-half of the Hubble Space Telescope field of view with nine stars that are orbited by planets with periods of a few days. Planets so close to their stars with such short orbital periods are called "hot Jupiters. These are considered "candidate" exoplanets - planets that orbit stars other than our own - because most of them are too faint to allow for spectroscopic observations that would allow for a precise measure of the planet?s mass. A seam of stars at the centre of the Milky Way has shown astronomers that an entirely new class of planets closely orbiting distant suns is waiting to be explored, according to a paper published 04 October 2006. An international team of astronomers, using a camera aboard NASA's Hubble telescope, delved into a zone of the Milky Way known as the "galactic bulge", thus called because it is rich in stars and in the gas and dust which go to make up stars and planets. The finding opens up a new area of investigation for space scientists probing extrasolar planets. AFP PHOTO NASA/ESA/K. SAHU (STScI) AND THE SWEEPS SCIENCE TEAM (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
Picture released 04 October 2006 by the European Space Agency shows an artist's impression of a unique type of exoplanet discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. This image presents a purely speculative view of what such a "hot Jupiter" (word dedicated to planets so close to their stars with such short orbital periods) might look like. A seam of stars at the centre of the Milky Way has shown astronomers that an entirely new class of planets closely orbiting distant suns is waiting to be explored, according to a paper published 04 October 2006. An international team of astronomers, using a camera aboard NASA's Hubble telescope, delved into a zone of the Milky Way known as the "galactic bulge", thus called because it is rich in stars and in the gas and dust which go to make up stars and planets. The finding opens up a new area of investigation for space scientists probing extrasolar planets - planets that orbit stars other than our own. AFP PHOTO NASA/ESA/K. SAHU (STScI) AND THE SWEEPS SCIENCE TEAM (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
This handout image of the giant, active galaxy NGC 1275, obtained August 21, 2008 was taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope?s Advanced Camera for Surveys in July and August 2006. It provides amazing detail and resolution of fragile filamentary structures, which show up as a reddish lacy structure surrounding the central bright galaxy. These filaments are cool despite being surrounded by gas that is around 55 million ?C. They are suspended in a magnetic field which maintains their structure and demonstrates how energy from the supermassive black hole hosted at the centre of the galaxy is transferred to the surrounding gas. (Photo by NASA/ESA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this handout provided by NASA, a visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a red ring of dust and debris that surrounds the star Fomalhaut and the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
In this handout image provided by NASA, a colourful cloud of gas and dust, a nebula named Knockout 4-55 (or K 4-55), is photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope on May 4, 2009 in Space. The nebula has an eye that appears to be looking right back at Hubble. It is the penultimate images the camera will take before NASA plans to send the shuttle Atlantis into space to make upgrades and repairs to Hubble, when astronauts will replace the telescope's camera with the Wide Field Camera 3. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
NASA Celebrates Hubble 25th Anniversary
A photo released by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on February 5, 2009 of an unusual spiral galaxy in the Coma Galaxy Cluster in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices, the hair of Queen Berenice. The cluster, also known as Abell 1656, is about 320 million light-years from Earth and contains more than 1000 members. The brightest galaxies, including NGC 4921 shown here, were discovered back in the late 18th century by William Herschel. AFP PHOTO/NASA/ESA Hubble (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)