Created for Hubble's 20th anniversary, this dramatic image showcases a three-light-year-tall cosmic pillar within the Carina Nebula. The structure resembles a fantasy mountain landscape, earning its poetic name.

The image dramatically reveals the dynamic process of star formation with towering dust pillars and energetic jets produced by newly forming stars. Its vibrant colors and dramatic composition have made it one of Hubble's most popular space posters.

This detailed view of our nearest star factory reveals over 3,000 stars in various stages of formation. While visible to the naked eye as merely a fuzzy patch in Orion's sword, Hubble's image brings the nebula to vivid life.

The image shows intricate details of stellar birth and the complex interactions between stellar winds, radiation, and surrounding gas and dust. This extraordinary level of detail has helped astronomers better understand the processes involved in star formation.

This colorful mosaic of the Crab Nebula (NGC 1952) is one of the largest images the Hubble Space Telescope has ever taken. 

It shows the expanding debris from a star that exploded in 1054 CE, with a neutron star at its center. 

Spanning about 6 light-years across and located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, this supernova remnant continues to expand at 1,500 kilometers per second.

Captured in infrared light for Hubble's 23rd anniversary, this image reveals the famous dark nebula silhouette in the Orion constellation. 

The infrared capability of Hubble allows us to see through much of the obscuring dust, revealing the nebula's internal structure and the young stars forming within it.

This revolutionary image fundamentally changed our understanding of the early universe by revealing nearly 10,000 galaxies in a seemingly empty patch of sky, looking back 13 billion years in time.

By pointing at a tiny area for over 270 hours, Hubble created one of astronomy's most important images, showing galaxies at various stages of evolution. This profound achievement demonstrated the universe's incredible density and the vast number of galaxies it contains.

Building upon the Ultra Deep Field, this image is the deepest optical view of the universe, looking back 13.2 billion years – when the universe was only 3% of its current age.

By combining 10 years of Hubble observations of the same patch of sky, astronomers created an even deeper view into space and time, revealing galaxies that formed just 450 million years after the Big Bang. 

This image has been crucial in helping astronomers understand the earliest periods of galaxy formation

This remarkable image demonstrates Einstein's theory of general relativity in action, showing four images of the same quasar created by gravitational lensing of a foreground galaxy.

Named after Albert Einstein, whose theory predicted this effect, the Einstein Cross demonstrates how massive objects can bend light from distant sources, creating multiple images. This phenomenon has become a crucial tool for astronomers studying dark matter and cosmic expansion.

The edge-on view of NGC 4594 reveals a brilliant white core encircled by thick dust lanes, resembling a wide-brimmed hat.

Located about 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, this striking galaxy showcases a complex structure with a bright central bulge, a flat disk, and an extended halo of stars and globular clusters.

The Sombrero Galaxy's distinctive appearance has made it one of the most recognizable galaxies in Hubble's portfolio and a favorite subject for space images displayed in classrooms and homes worldwide.

This classic spiral galaxy (M51) is shown interacting with a smaller companion galaxy, illustrating how galaxies evolve through such encounters.

The detailed image reveals the spiral arms being distorted by the gravitational pull of the smaller galaxy, triggering new star formation visible as blue regions within the spiral structure. 

This cosmic dance demonstrates the dynamic nature of galactic evolution and provides astronomers with valuable data about these common interactions.

This stunning planetary nebula in the Scorpius constellation shows the extraordinary complexity of a dying star's outer layers with temperatures reaching 20,000°C.

Its distinctive butterfly shape results from twin lobes of material ejected from the central dying star. 

The intricate patterns and vivid colors make it one of the most visually arresting Hubble images, frequently reproduced as decorative space posters.

This time-lapse sequence captures a light echo expanding around a mysterious stellar outburst. 

The light from the sudden flare illuminated progressively more distant rings of dust surrounding the star.

This created the illusion of expanding matter when in fact only the light was moving outward. 

This rare phenomenon provided astronomers with a unique opportunity to study both the unusual stellar event and the previously invisible dust shells that surrounded it.

This image shows a doomed star 100 times more massive than our Sun in the midst of a massive eruption. 

Located about 7,500 light-years away, Eta Carinae is one of the most massive and luminous stars in our galaxy. It experienced a massive outburst in the 1840s, nearly becoming a supernova. 

Hubble's detailed observations help astronomers understand the fate of massive stars and the processes leading to their eventual explosion

This planetary nebula reveals intricate patterns of stellar material ejection in concentric rings, showing the complex final stages of a Sun-like star's life.

The nebula's remarkable structure includes at least eleven shells of gas and dust, suggesting the dying star shed its mass in a series of periodic eruptions. 

The Cat's Eye Nebula offers a glimpse into what our own Sun might produce in about 5 billion years.

This supernova remnant in the Cygnus constellation shows delicate threads of ionized gas – the aftermath of a star that exploded about 8,000 years ago.

The Hubble image captures only a small section of this expansive structure, which spans about 110 light-years. 

The different colors represent different temperatures and compositions of the gas, revealing how the supernova blast wave interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium.

This infrared image shows the most active star-forming region in our Local Group of galaxies, containing more than 800,000 stars and protostars.

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, this colossal stellar nursery spans over 1,000 light-years. Were it at the same distance as the Orion Nebula, it would cast shadows on Earth. 

Hubble's infrared capabilities reveal the nebula's structure through the obscuring dust clouds.

Showcased for Hubble's 26th anniversary, this emission nebula in Cassiopeia shows a massive star blowing a giant bubble into space. 

The expanding shell of gas, 7 light-years across, is created by fierce stellar winds from a star 45 times more massive than our Sun. 

The bubble's seemingly perfect shape results from the uniform pressure of surrounding interstellar matter containing the expansion

Nicknamed "Pandora's Cluster" due to the violent merging of at least four smaller clusters, this massive structure is part of Hubble's Frontier Fields program. 

The combined gravitational effects of the cluster's galaxies distort and magnify light from more distant objects, allowing Hubble to see deeper into the universe than would otherwise be possible. 

This cosmic collision site reveals insights into both cluster dynamics and early galaxy formation.

Released for Hubble's 30th anniversary, this image shows two neighboring nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud that resemble an undersea world. 

NGC 2014 (the red region) and NGC 2020 (the blue region) showcase different stages of star formation and the powerful influence massive stars have on their surroundings. 

The contrasting colors result from different elements and temperatures in the two regions.

This detailed view captured during Mars' close approach shows the planet's dust storms and polar caps. 

Hubble regularly observes Mars, creating a valuable long-term record of seasonal changes and weather patterns. 

This particular opposition was notable for a global dust storm that obscured much of the surface detail but provided scientists with data about Martian atmospheric dynamics.

Released for Hubble's 25th anniversary, this image shows a cluster of about 3,000 stars in a turbulent stellar nursery. 

Located about 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, this young, compact star cluster is only about one to two million years old. 

The image reveals how radiation and stellar winds from the cluster's massive stars are sculpting the surrounding gas cloud, triggering new star formation.

Often called the "Eye of God" due to its appearance, this planetary nebula in Aquarius shows the future fate our own Sun might experience. 

Located about 700 light-years away, the Helix is one of the closest planetary nebulae to Earth. 

The Hubble image reveals intricate details of the expanding shells of gas ejected by the dying central star, including thousands of small, comet-like knots with tails pointing away from the star

This rare ring galaxy - located 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens Caput - shows a perfectly circular structure with a detached core.

Discovered in 1950 by astronomer Art Hoag, this unusual galaxy features a yellow central nucleus surrounded by a nearly perfect ring of blue stars with almost nothing connecting them.

The peculiar structure may have resulted from a collision with another galaxy billions of years ago, though its exact formation remains a mystery.

This starburst galaxy in Ursa Major shows a dramatic core explosion with material ejected perpendicular to the galactic plane.

The visible plumes of hot gas (appearing red in Hubble images) extend thousands of light-years above and below the galactic disk, driven by the combined effect of supernovae and strong stellar winds from a period of intense star formation. 

This activity was likely triggered by a close encounter with the neighboring galaxy M81.

Released for Hubble's 28th anniversary, this image shows a turbulent nursery of giant stars in the Sagittarius constellation. 

The Lagoon Nebula spans 55 by 20 light-years, but Hubble's image focuses on just a small portion about 4 light-years across.

The image reveals how radiation and winds from massive young stars are sculpting the nebula and triggering new star formation through compression of the surrounding gas.

This picture shows a dramatic pillar of gas and dust in the upper 2.5 light-years of the nebula, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon.

This entire nebula extends 7 light-years long in the Monoceros constellation (2,500 light-years away).

Part of the larger star-forming region NGC 2264, the Cone Nebula is a dense cloud of molecular hydrogen gas and dust being eroded by harsh ultraviolet radiation from nearby hot, massive stars.

This process sculpts the distinctive cone shape and simultaneously triggers star formation within the dense column.