To celebrate the Hubble telescope’s 30th year in space, here are the ten most important pictures it took in 2020—and they’re all out of this world.
Galaxy IC 5063 casts a long shadow: Dust clouds near its central black hole create a cosmic silhouette that appears to extend for 36,000 light years.
An alignment of distant galaxies creates this gravitational lens-like effect, the largest and most complete of the so-called “Einstein rings.”
A star will be born in these frEGG clouds (or “free-floating evaporating gaseous globules”) as they evaporate.
This distant galaxy, known as UGC 2885, is the largest spiral galaxy ever discovered, with approximately ten times as many stars as the Milky Way.
Comet ATLAS is a meteoroid mystery: Hubble captured it separating into as many as 30 fragments in 2020, but scientists don’t know why it broke apart.
NGC 6302 continues to transform as a beautiful butterfly nebula: New photos reveal a bright “S-curve” tracing a recent iron-rich gas ejection.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot gained some company this year, in the form of a smaller, color-changing oval.
Hubble captured the highest-resolution image ever taken of this gaseous shockwave, a 10,000- to 20,000-year-old remnant from the Cygnus supernova.
Even space isn’t immune to photobombs: This white streak across the Kuiper belt was created by SpaceX’s Starlink crossing in front of Hubble’s field of view.
But this image of red and blue nebulas was chosen to be Hubble’s 30th-anniversary image—making it truly the star of the show.