Hubble Space Telescope

Lee worked for the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre from 2008 - 2011. He wrote press and science releases, as well as information supporting Picture of the Week campaigns. 

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Rare cosmic footprint

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been used to capture a striking image of a rare astronomical phenomenon called a protoplanetary nebula. This particular example, called Minkowski’s Footprint, also known as Minkowski 92, features two vast onion-shaped structures either side of an ageing star, giving it a very distinctive shape.

Protoplanetary nebulae like Minkowski’s Footprint have short lives, being a preliminary stage to the more common planetary nebula phase. In the middle of the image
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Return to the Carina Nebula

Looking like an elegant abstract art piece painted by talented hands, this picture is actually a NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a small section of the Carina Nebula. Part of this huge nebula was documented in the well-known Mystic Mountain picture (heic1007a) and this picture takes an even closer look at another piece of this bizarre astronomical landscape (heic0707a).

The Carina Nebula itself is a star-forming region about 7500 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of
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Engulfed by stars near the Milky Way’s heart

Engulfed by stars near the Milky Way’s heart

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged an area so jam-packed with stars that they almost overwhelm the inky blackness of space. This includes the globular star cluster Djorgovski 1, which was only discovered in 1987

Djorgovski 1 is located close to the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy, within the bulge. If the galaxy is thought of as being like a city, then this bulge is the very busiest district at its centre. Djorgovski 1's proximity to this
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Spectacular Hubble view of Centaurus A

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a close-up view of the galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble’s out-of-this-world location and world-class Wide Field Camera 3 instrument reveal a dramatic picture of a dynamic galaxy in flux.

Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, is well known for its dramatic dusty lanes of dark material. Hubble’s observations, using its most advanced instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3, are the most detailed ever made of this galaxy. They have been combined here in a multi
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Hubble watches a celestial prologue

The two billowing structures in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of IRAS 13208-6020 are formed from material that is shed by a central star. This is a relatively short-lived phenomenon that gives astronomers an opportunity to watch the early stages of planetary nebula formation, hence the name protoplanetary, or preplanetary nebula. Planetary nebulae are unrelated to planets and the name arose because of the visual similarity between some planetary nebulae and the small discs of the ou
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Commotion in a crowded cluster

Deep within the Milky Way lies the ancient globular cluster Terzan 5. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the cluster in wonderful detail, but it is the chaotic motions of its stars that make it particularly interesting to astronomers.

Terzan 5 has an exceptionally dense core. As a result, it is thought to have one of the highest stellar collision rates for a globular cluster. And packed in at such close quarters, many stars are pushed so close together that they form tight binary
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Galactic fountain of youth

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the edge-on profile of the slender spiral galaxy NGC 5775. Although the spiral is tilted away from us, with only a thin slither on view, such a perspective can be advantageous for astronomers because the regions above and below the galaxy’s disc can be seen much more clearly.

For instance, astronomers have previously used the high inclination of this spiral to study the properties of the halo of hot gas that is visible when the galaxy is observed
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Breathing new life into an old cluster

Breathing new life into an old cluster

The globular cluster Messier 5, shown here in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, is one of the oldest belonging to the Milky Way. The majority of its stars formed more than 12 billion years ago, but there are some unexpected newcomers on the scene, adding some vitality to this aging population.

Stars in globular clusters form in the same stellar nursery and grow old together. The most massive stars age quickly, exhausting their fuel supply in les
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Dwarf galaxy: small but perfectly formed

Galaxies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with most being classed as either elliptical or spiral. However, some fall into the miscellaneous category known as irregulars, such as UGC 9128 shown here in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.

UGC 9128 is a dwarf irregular galaxy, which means that in addition to not having a well-defined shape, it probably contains only around one hundred million stars — far fewer than are found in a large spiral such as the Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies are
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The secret of stellar youth

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a clear view of the unusual globular cluster Palomar 1, whose youthful beauty is a puzzle for astronomers. This faint and sparse object is very different from the more familiar brilliant and very rich globular clusters and had to wait until 1954 for its discovery by George Abell on photographs from the Palomar Schmidt telescope.

Globular clusters are tightly bound conglomerations of stars, which are found in the outer reaches of the Milky Way, in
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Hubble peers through the looking glass

Hubble peers through the looking glass

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope usually works as a solo artist to capture awe-inspiring images of the distant Universe. For this picture, though, Hubble had a helping hand from the subject of the image, a galaxy cluster called LCDCS-0829, as the huge mass of the galaxies in the cluster acted like a giant magnifying glass. This strange effect is called gravitational lensing.

The object was discovered during the Las Campanas Distant Clusters Survey, whi
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Arcade adventure for young stars

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study the young open star cluster IC 1590, which is found within the star formation region NGC 281 — nicknamed the Pacman Nebula due to its resemblance to the famous arcade game character. This image only shows the central part of the nebula, where the brightest stars at the core of the cluster are found, with part of the Pacman’s hungry mouth visible as the dark region below.

But Pacman isn’t gobbling up these stars. Instead, the neb
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The beauty of asymmetry

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a planetary nebula with unconventional good looks.

Planetary nebulae signal the demise of mid-sized stars (up to about eight times the mass of the Sun); when the star’s hydrogen fuel supply is exhausted, its outer layers expand and cool, creating a cocoon of gas and dust. This gas then glows as it is bathed in the strong ultraviolet radiation from the central star. NGC 5882 is a quite bright, but small, example of a planetary nebula that lies dee
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Cluster’s deceptive serenity hides violent past

The high concentration of stars within globular clusters, like Messier 12, shown here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, makes them beautiful photographic targets. But the cramped living quarters in these clusters also makes them home to exotic binary star systems where two stars are locked in tight orbits around each other and matter from one is gobbled up by its companion, releasing X-rays. It is thought that such X-ray binaries form from very close encounters between stars
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Family of stars breaking up

Most of the rich globular star clusters that orbit the Milky Way have cores that are tightly packed with stars, but NGC 288 is one of a minority of low-concentration globulars, with its stars more loosely bound together. This new image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope completely resolves the old stars at the core of the cluster.

The colours and brightnesses of the stars in the picture tell the story of how the stars have evolved in the cluster. The man
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Orion’s lesser-known nebula takes centre stage

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a close-up view of an outer part of the Orion Nebula’s little brother, Messier 43. This nebula, which is sometimes referred to as De Mairan’s Nebula after its discoverer, is separated from the famous Orion Nebula (Messier 42) by only a dark lane of dust. Both nebulae are part of the massive stellar nursery called the Orion molecular cloud complex, which includes several other nebulae, such as the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) and the Flame Nebula (NG
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Perfect spiral overlaid with Milky Way gems

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this finely detailed image of the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6384. This galaxy lies in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), not far from the centre of the Milky Way on the sky. The positioning of NGC 6384 means that we have to peer at it past many dazzling foreground Milky Way stars that are scattered across this image.

In 1971, one member of NGC 6384 stood out against these bright foreground stars when one of its stars exploded
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Old stars with a youthful glow

The dazzling stars in Messier 15 look fresh and new in this image from the NASA/Hubble Space Telescope, but they are actually all roughly 13 billion years old, making them some of the most ancient objects in the Universe. Unlike another recent Hubble Picture of the Week, which featured the unusually sparse cluster Palomar 1, Messier 15 is rich and bright despite its age.

Messier 15 is a globular cluster — a spherical conglomeration of old stars that formed together from the same cloud of gas, f
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Fiery young stars wreak havoc in stellar nursery

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a violent stellar nursery called NGC 2174, in which stars are born in a first-come-first-served feeding frenzy for survival.

The problem is that star formation is a very inefficient process; most of the ingredients to make stars are wasted as the cloud of gas and dust, or nebula, gradually disperses. In NGC 2174, the rate at which the nebula disperses is further speeded up by the presence of hot young stars, which create high velocity winds that bl
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The star city that never sleeps

The star city that never sleeps

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has captured this moment in the ever-changing life of a spiral galaxy called IC 391. Although these massive star cities appear static and unchanging, their stellar inhabitants are constantly moving and evolving, with new stars being born and old stars reaching the ends of their lives —often in spectacular fashion, with an immense supernova explosion that can be viewed from Earth.

On 3 January 2001, members of the Beijing Astr
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Islands of stars in the river

Islands of stars in the river

The spiral galaxy NGC 1345 and its loose and ragged arms dominate this rich image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It is a member of the Eridanus Galaxy Cluster — a group of about 70 galaxies that lies 85 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (the River). This region of the night sky is well populated with bright galaxies, with the Fornax Cluster of galaxies also nearby on the celestial sphere, although the two clusters are actually sep
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Dying star cocooned within its own gases

Dying star cocooned within its own gases

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to image the tiny planetary nebula NGC 6886. These celestial objects signal the final death throes of mid-sized stars (up to about eight times the mass of the Sun); when such a star exhausts its supply of hydrogen fuel, the outer layers begin to expand and cool, which creates an envelope of gas and dust that shrouds the dying star. However, the star doesn't go down without a fight, finding alterna
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Stellar powerhouses in the Eagle Nebula

A spectacular section of the well-known Eagle Nebula has been targeted by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This collection of dazzling stars is called NGC 6611, an open star cluster that formed about 5.5 million years ago and is found approximately 6500 light-years from the Earth. It is a very young cluster, containing many hot, blue stars, whose fierce ultraviolet glow make the surrounding Eagle Nebula glow brightly. The cluster and the associated nebula together are also known as Messier 1
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Doing cartwheels to celebrate the end of an era

Doing cartwheels to celebrate the end of an era

An image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been reprocessed using the latest techniques to mark the closure of the Space Telescope European Coordination Facility (ST-ECF), based near Munich in Germany, and to celebrate its achievements in supporting Hubble science in Europe over the past 26 years.


Astronomer Bob Fosbury, who is stepping down as Head of the ST-ECF, was responsible for much of the early r
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