The merging Antennae galaxies are seen in the sharpest image yet taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006. As the two galaxies smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The two spiral galaxies started to fuse together about 500 million years ago making the Antenna galaxies the nearest and youngest example of a pair of colliding galaxies.
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.
This image provided by NASA shows the light echo around the variable star V838 Monocerotis taken by the Hubble Space Telescope released Saturday Oct. 27, 2006. The unusual variable star V838 Monocerotis continues to puzzle astronomers. This previously inconspicuous star underwent an outburst early in 2002, during which it temporarily increased in brightness to become 600 000 times more luminous than our Sun.
The Eagle Nebula, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is seen April 25, 2005. 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.
The Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2005. Here, the Whirlpool Galaxy is seen April 25, 2005.
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.