Hubble Space Telescope turns 36: Top 5 images from the past year

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the Trifid Nebula reveals how color maps density in a star-forming region 5,000 light-years away. Bright blue areas show sparse dust cleared by intense radiation, while dark brown and near-black regions mark the densest clouds. Yellow streaks highlight zones where gas and dust are actively being eroded, and scattered orange stars have carved out space around them. Over time, this nebula will disperse, leaving behind only newly formed stars.

Captured on Aug. 22, 2024, by the Hubble Space Telescope, this image of Saturn highlights its softly banded atmosphere and bright rings. Several moons are visible, including Janus, Mimas—with its shadow cast on the planet—and Epimetheus. Part of the OPAL program, the image helps scientists track seasonal changes, storms, and atmospheric evolution over time.

Located 4,400 light-years away in the constellation Draco, this stunning planetary nebula captured by the Hubble Space Telescope showcases one of the most complex structures ever observed. Despite the name, planetary nebulae are not planets, but rather the glowing, expanding shells of gas shed by stars in their final stages of life. The Cat’s Eye holds historical significance: in 1864, its unique light spectrum provided the first evidence that these objects are composed of gas, not stars.

These new Hubble Space Telescope images of a protostar reveal the chaotic environments surrounding protostars within the Orion Molecular Cloud complex. The survey investigated how these developing stars interact with their surrounding envelopes of gas and dust, specifically analyzing the outflow cavities carved by stellar winds and jets. Contrary to previous theories, researchers found that these cavities do not expand significantly during later formation stages, suggesting that the reduction in mass accretion and the overall slow rate of star formation are driven by factors other than the clearing of these envelopes.

Captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on November 8, 9 and 10, 2025, this sequence provides a rare, real-time look at a comet in the early stages of breaking apart. Hubble’s STIS instrument resolved the comet into at least five distinct fragments, each surrounded by its own cloud of gas and dust—a level of detail impossible to achieve from the ground.