Top 5 Incredible Images from the Hubble Telescope

5. Lagoon Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula is one of only two Nebula visible to the naked eye.

Located about 4,000-6,000 light years away, in the Sagittarius constellation, the Lagoon Nebula is one of only two Nebula visible to the naked eye in mid-northern latitudes. But the naked eye won’t catch a glimpse that comes anywhere near the quality of this photo. In this picture you can see waves of gas and dust breaking, which gives it the sandy look.

4. R136

This is one of the most detailed photos we have from the Hubble telescope. Not only is this a relatively young group of stars, but some of the blue stars seen in the photo are among the largest we know: some are 100 times larger than our sun. This image was taken in 2009, and measures 100 light years across.

3. Omega Centauri

Omega Centauri is a densely packed collection of stars more than 17,000 light years away from Earth.

This photo from 2002 shows one of the biggest of the 200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way: Omega Centauri. It is about 17,000 light years away from Earth. The whole cluster contains about 10 million stars – 2 million of which can be seen in this picture.

2. Stellar Spire

About 90 trillion kilometers high, the Stellar Spire is a massive tower of cold gas and dust.

This spire is about 9.5 light years high, and located in the Eagle Nebula. The pillar may contain newborn stars: some stars form when gas is compressed by gravity, while others may form due to the massive heat from neighboring stars.

1. The Milky Way

Thanks to two of the biggest space telescopes working together, here’s the sharpest picture ever made of the Galactic core.

With so much mention of the Milky Way throughout the other entries, it only makes sense to finish with a photo of exactly that. Here’s a composite image of the centre of our galaxy. It was made by combining the infra-red camera and multi-object spectrometer of the Hubble with color photos from the Spitzer Space telescope. What you can see in the image is about 20,000 light years away, and 300 light years across.

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