NASA Amazing View

One of the universe's most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104) is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat. The Hubble Heritage Team took these observations in May-June 2003 with the space telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

In the direction of the constellation Canis Major, two spiral galaxies pass by each other like majestic ships in the night. The near-collision has been caught in images taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The Hubble Space Telescope has caught the most detailed view of the Crab Nebula, revealing the intricate epitaph of a long-dead star. The photo was released on December 1, 2005.

This image resembling Vincent van Gogh's painting, "Starry Night," is an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon). This Hubble Telescope image was obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004

For the 15th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists used the ACS, Hubble's newest camera, to record a new region of the eerie-looking Eagle Nebula, producing an image with stunning detail. The new Eagle Nebula image reveals a tall, dense tower of gas being sculpted by ultraviolet light from a group of massive, hot stars.

From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of a garden-variety ant. This dramatic NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, showing 10 times more detail, reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, Sun-like star.

This new image was released to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. The new Whirlpool Galaxy image showcases the spiral galaxy's classic features, from its curving arms, where newborn stars reside, to its yellowish central core that serves as home for older stars. A feature of considerable interest is the companion galaxy located at the end of one of the spiral arms.

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has captured a spectacular pair of galaxies engaged in a celestial dance of cat and mouse or, in this case, mouse and mouse. Located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, the colliding galaxies have been nicknamed "The Mice" because of the long tails of stars and gas emanating from each galaxy. Otherwise known as NGC 4676, the pair will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy.

Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this celestial object is actually just a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264) - so named because in ground-based images it has a conical shape - this monstrous pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, on May 11, 2002, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon. The entire pillar is seven light-years long.

In its first glimpse of the heavens following the successful December 1999 servicing mission, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured a majestic view of the Eskimo Nebula, a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a dying, Sun-like star.

This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation. The wave-like patterns of gas have been sculpted and illuminated by a torrent of ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars (which lie outside the picture to the upper left).

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) captured this mosaic of The Tarantula Nebula. The Tarantula is situated 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the Southern sky and is clearly visible to the naked eye as a large milky patch. Astronomers believe that this smallish irregular galaxy is currently going through a violent period in its life. It is orbiting around the Milky Way and has had several close encounters with it.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this interesting photo of the inside of an inflating, see-through space bubble. The transparent bubble is considered a nebula, and it is called N44F. The scene is about 160,000 light-years away in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud.

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 the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture is a montage assembled from four different April 1999 telescope pointings. The picture is dominated by a large, approximately circular feature, which is part of the Keyhole Nebula, named in the 19th century by Sir John Herschel. This region is about 8000 light-years from Earth.

Undersea corral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? On April 1, 1995, Hubble snapped this image of pillar-like structures in the Eagle nebula. These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are columns of cool, interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that serve as incubators for new stars.

Astronomers, using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope in October and November 1997 and April 1999, imaged the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) with unprecedented clarity. For the first time, they were able to understand the geometry and dynamics of this very complicated system. Earlier pictures taken of the nebula with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 1 left many issues unanswered, as the data could not be fully calibrated for scientific use. In addition, those data never imaged the enigmatic inner structure presented here.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Trifid Nebula reveals a stellar nursery being torn apart by radiation from a nearby, massive star. The picture also provides a peek at embryonic stars forming within an ill-fated cloud of dust and gas, which is destined to be eaten away by the glare from the massive neighbor.

Hubble Space Telescope continues snapping breathtaking pictures of the solar system's most photogenic planet. This view, taken on March 22, 2004, is so sharp that many individual ringlets can be seen in Saturn's ring plane.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula on September 9, 2004. The Cat's Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings."

This Hubble telescope snapshot of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula, reveals that the object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. A planetary nebula is the glowing relic of a dying, Sun-like star.