Click through a gallery of pictures sent back from the Hubble Space Telescope since its final servicing mission.
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This image, released April 22, captures the chaotic activity atop a three light-year tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth.
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Butterfly in space
A beautiful view of a star in its death throes is featured in a gallery of images sent back by the Hubble Space Telescope after its final shuttle servicing mission in May 2009. The planetary nebula NGC 6302, better known as the Butterfly Nebula or the Bug Nebula, is about 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The features that look like dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, blasted away from a dying star bigger than the sun. This picture was taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
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Clash of galaxies
A clash involving members of the famous galaxy group known as Stephan's Quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide color range, from young, blue stars to aging, red stars. The new image of the grouping was taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. It's a bit of a misnomer to call this group a "quintet." Studies have shown that the galaxy NGC 7320, at upper left, is actually in the foreground, about seven times closer to Earth than the rest of the group.
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Pillar of creation
Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 took this picture of a "pillar of creation" in the Carina Nebula, about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Carina. Clouds of gas and dust conceal the cradles of newborn stars.
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Full of stars
Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 captured this panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of the globular cluster Omega Centauri. The full cluster, which lies about 16,000 light-years from Earth, boasts nearly 10 million stars. The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old.
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Mist of stars
An earlier image from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys shows the globular cluster Omega Centauri and provides the context for the space telescope's new image of the same cluster. The blue-lined box indicates the area covered by the newly released image from Wide Field Camera 3: about 6.3 light-years or 1.4 arcminutes wide.
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Great Black Spot
A dark smudge serves as the telltale sign of a cosmic collision in this picture of Jupiter, taken on July 23 by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Scientists believe the smudge was caused by debris from a comet or asteroid that plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated.
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It's a wonderful whirl
The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217, which lies 6 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, shines bright in the first image of a celestial object taken with Hubble's newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys. The camera was restored to operation in May during the shuttle Atlantis' final Hubble servicing mission. This image was assembled from data acquired on June 13 and July 8 during testing and calibration of the camera.
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Leftovers from a supernova
The supernova remnant N132D resides in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small companion galaxy of the Milky Way about 170,000 light-years away. A visible-light image of N132D, taken in August with Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3, reveals a crescent-shaped cloud of pink emission from hydrogen gas and soft purple wisps of glowing oxygen. Scientists probed these wisps with Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and discovered pristine gas ejected by the supernova that had not yet mixed with surrounding gas.