NASA's Hubble Celebrates 21st Anniversary

[Tsaprazi Eleni]

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273.

Hubble was launched April 24, 1990, aboard Discovery's STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology.

The newly released Hubble image shows a large spiral galaxy, known as UGC 1810, with a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewel-like points across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light.

NASA - NASA's Hubble Celebrates 21st Anniversary with 'Rose' of Galaxies

[Tomjo59]

Well I'll raise a glass of something to Hubble - of all the time, effort and money spent on scientific endeavours over the centuries, it must rate as the best value for money of all, in terms of what it has revealed to us, and enhancing human knowledge of the universe.