BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Hubble Space Telescope - 27th birthday Aptil 2017

A young stellar object collapsing into a Sun-like star. Normally, it would be shrouded in dust, but in this Hubble image we're looking at one of its poles where a stellar jet has cleared a space.

Anybody can vote for a favorite Hubble image. The first round gives you 16 pairs with a vote for your preference from each pair. You can see how the voting is going so far for each one. Some of them were really hard choices for me.

The first round voting ends next Wednesday, March 11th. Have a go!

A beautiful oil painting of the Flame Nebula which is an entry in the #OdetoHubble competition.

Voting on the second round of the Hubble image tournament finishes on the 18th. There are only four choices to make for this round. Have a look here. One of my favorites - the Hubble Deep Field - has already been voted out.

The Favorite Hubble Image voting is down to the quarter-finals, so only four decisions to make. You can vote here.

Here are the two pairs of images in the semi-finals of the voting for the 25th anniversary favorite image.

Hubble image of the jewel-like center of the Messier 70 globular cluster. This star cluster orbits close to the center of the Milky Way, about 30,000 light years from us in the constellation Sagittarius. The cluster is almost seventy light-years in diameter. French astronomer Charles Messier discovered it in 1780.

Digital painting of the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024). Another work of art inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula is in Orion, part of a star-forming region that includes the Horsehead Nebula. Alnitak, one of the three stars of Orion's belt provides the ultraviolet light that energizes the nebula.

The voting for the 25th Anniversary favorite Hubble image finished today. The public has spoken, and the winner is the iconic image of the Eagle Nebula Pillars, known popularly as the "pillars of creation". Protected within the dense gas are developing young stars. The "pillars" are about 100 AU in size. Since 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, these things are *big*.

Here is an excellent video giving a brief history of the Hubble Space Telescope, including its relationship with the Space Shuttle and its major discoveries. It's narrated by Tony Darnell: The Most Important Instrument Ever Built.