Although this year has been very unusual and has slowed down several times, the space has not stopped surprising. In fact, what is around us keeps evolving and there were several images that the Earth received from some dairy neighbors.
Now, with the year 2020 coming to an end, we show you the 10 best photos captured by the Hubble Space Telescope selected by Forbes.
The views captured by the Hubble Space Telescope are always incredible. From various perspectives of the Solar System to distant and apparently unknown galaxies, the Universe is being unveiled. In 2020, there were several moments captured on what was his 30th birthday. Today, we leave you with the 10 most striking photographs captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
10 - The dusty shadow of a black hole
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope captured the heart of the active galaxy IC 5063. As we can see, the photograph reveals a mixture of bright rays and dark shadows from the burning core, where a supermassive black hole is.
09 - Relativistic rings
In Einstein's theory, massive bodies behave like distant bodies. In photography we can see a phenomenon that is actually rare and strange.
If you pay attention, it identifies GAL-CLUS-022058s, located in the constellation of Fornax. This is one of the most complete Einstein rings ever discovered in our Universe.
08 - Floating gas cells
When a new massive star begins to shine, although it is still inside the cold molecular cloud from which it was formed, its energetic radiation can ionize the cloud's hydrogen. That way, you can create a large, hot bubble of ionized gas.
Then, the photograph captured by the Hubble Space Telescope captured the frEGGs: compact, dark globules of dust and gas. In fact, some of them are even giving rise to low-mass stars.
07 - Large spiral galaxy
In the photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope we can see UGC 2885.
Being a galaxy with a really unusual size, the galaxy is located 232 million light years away, in the constellation of Perseus. Namely, it is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times more stars.
06 - Disintegration of comet ATLAS
The Hubble Space Telescope identified 30 fragments of comet C / 2019 Y4 (ATLAS), which disintegrated. In fact, they are the clearest images of this event, the resulting pieces of which are about the size of a house and were, at the time of the photograph (April 20 and 23), 146 million kilometers from Earth.
05 - Butterfly Nebula
As recent observations reveal, they reveal a brilliant “S” curve that highlights a rich gas and iron discharge.
The nebula originates from the presence of one or more stars located in its center. In addition, it is 2,500 and 3,800 light years away, in the Scorpius constellation.
04 - Turbulent Jupiter
This was the last photograph of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on August 25. So, the clear view offered by Hubble is allowing researchers to study the planet's meteorology, such as the storms that occur there.
03 - Extreme margin
Despite appearing as a delicate element, the photograph captured by Hubble portrays the reality of a small part of the supernova explosion wave Cygnus, located 2 400 light years away.
02 - Starlink
Hubble saw a photograph interrupted by the passage of a SpaceX Starlink satellite.
01 - Cosmic Coral
The Hubble Space Telescope captured how young, energetic and massive stars illuminate and shape the place where they were born with strong winds and ultraviolet radiation.
In the photograph, we can see NGC 2014, a giant red nebula and NGC 2020, a smaller blue neighbor. So, both are part of a vast region of star formation in the Great Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy of satellites located in the Milky Way, 163,000 light years away.
In fact, the name “Cosmic Coral” appears due to the likelihood between the nebulae and the seabed.
So, since 1990 and during its 30 years of activity, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has produced almost 164 terabytes of data available to generations of present and future researchers. In addition, it has already enabled more than 1.4 million observations of approximately 47,000 celestial bodies.
