These stunning images show some of the mesmerising sights captured by the Hubble Telescope during its 30 years of observing space.
Hubble was sent into low Earth orbit on April 24, 1990 to capture images and data of distant galaxies, planets and supermassive black holes deep within our universe.
It has yielded some 1.4 million observations, while providing data for more than 17,000 scientific papers, according to the European Space Agency (ESA) which operates the telescope with Nasa.
Hubble was sent into low Earth orbit on April 24, 1990 to capture images and data of distant galaxies, planets and supermassive black holes deep within our universe.
It has yielded some 1.4 million observations and provided data for more than 17,000 scientific papers, according to the European Space Agency (ESA) which operates the telescope with Nasa.
This year's image – showing giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbour NGC 2020 – has been nicknamed the ‘Cosmic Reef’ because it looks like an undersea world.
It reveals a vast star-forming region close to the Milky Way, located some 163,000 light-years away.
Narrowing the age of the universe down to about 13.8 billion years is one of Hubble’s many achievements, as well as finding that the universe is not just expanding, but accelerating, a discovery which won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.
