The Hubble Space Telescope, which is more often simply called as Hubble, has helped thousands of astronomers make sense of the vast universe around us, capturing images of galaxies from millions of light-years away to stars and lost planets within our own system.
Hubble's 30th Anniversary
Hubble has been capturing images of space for the past three decades, and for its 30th anniversary, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released stunning new photos caught by HST.
"We're commemorating Hubble's 30th birthday this year. Hubble is a wonderful telescope - it's in space orbiting the earth to get above the blurring effects above the Earth's atmosphere," said NASA Hubble senior project scientist, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman.
According to News4, the collection of new images includes photos of colorful nebulae, galaxies, and even clusters of stars.
Wiseman also said that the images were requested by astronomy enthusiasts worldwide and that many of these images may actually be familiar among them as the images chosen from a catalog can be seen through a backyard telescope.
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Hubble's Caldwell Catalog
The images were from a catalog known as the Caldwell catalog, which is compiled by Sir Patrick Caldwell-Moore, a British amateur astronomer and science communicator.
According to an official blog post by NASA, the Caldwell catalog was inspired by a much earlier catalog made by French astronomer Charles Messier known as the Messier catalog, which included over 100 cosmic objects that might "might fool fellow comet hunters into thinking they had discovered new comets."
In December 1995, the catalog was first published by the "Sky & Telescope" magazine, which included 109 images of star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies that are bright enough to be seen by amateur astronomers.
All of the cosmic objects in Caldwell's catalog are not found in Messier's.
New Images for the Caldwell Gallery
For Hubble's 30th anniversary, the space agency decided to release more than 50 new images caught by the space telescope, with 30 of them found in the Caldwell catalog.
The space telescope has captured the images throughout its career in helping scientists and astronomers here on Earth uncover the secrets of the vast universe, but all have not been processed for public release until now.
In 2019, NASA also released the first gallery of Hubble images of Caldwell objects, so this new list will join the first gallery.
Besides seeing stunning, high-resolution images of these cosmic objects, the Hubble Caldwell catalog will also include a basic star chart of where amateur astronomers can find the object so they can personally see it through their own backyard telescope.
If you don't know what equipment to use, they will also list down suggestions of a telescope you can get and use.
But if you simply want to marvel at the stunning images, each image has also been provided a description of what it is.
The Hubble Space Telescope was initially launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in April of 1999, and since then, it had worked non-stop and had been upgraded five times.
For those who want to see the new images of Hubble's Caldwell catalog, click here.
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Written by: Nhx Tingson
