Ring in the new year with a calendar of lesser-known Hubble space images

By Georgina Torbet Published January 4, 2020

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Sh 2-106, or S106 for short. This is a compact star-forming region in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan). A newly-formed star called S106 IR is shrouded in dust at the center of the image and is responsible for the surrounding gas cloud’s hourglass-like shape and the turbulence visible within. Light from glowing hydrogen is colored blue in this image. NASA & ESA

The Hubble Space Telescope has produced many famous images, capturing cosmic wonders from the Pillars of Creation to the Bubble Nebula. Many of these famous images are found in Hubble’s Top 100 Images, and pouring over these stunning views is a delightful way to spend an afternoon.

But there are also plenty of Hubble images that aren’t so well known but are just as captivating and informative. To celebrate the arrival of 2020, researchers from the European Space Agency have put together a free downloadable calendar featuring 12 of Hubble’s loveliest but little-known images.

Recommended Videos

The images were selected from 30 “hidden gems” found in the archive of Hubble pictures which were posted to social media last year. The most popular images were added to the calendar, which celebrates 30 years since Hubble was launched.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The beautiful image above is the featured picture for June, showing the “turbulent surroundings” of compact star-forming region Sh 2-106 in the constellation of Cygnus. The image was created by combining two sets of data, one taken in the infrared wavelength and one in the visible light wavelength which picks up the hydrogen gas glowing blue when excited.

Saturn Hubble Space Telescope Image — NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team

Other stand-out images are a stunning view of Saturn showing off the planet’s rings and moons, which is the image for July, and a colorful image of the spookily-named Tarantula Nebula which is the image for November. This region of the Large Magellanic Cloud is full of ionized hydrogen gases, making it ideal for the formation of new stars, and with its large number of stars, it is the most luminous nebula of its type in the nearby universe.

The calendar is available for free from the Hubble website, and there’s also a high-quality printable version available if you’d like to hang a copy up in your house, so you can look at the wonders of the universe every day.

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Space

Hubble Space Telescope hits a milestone in its 31-year operation

The Hubble Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope has passed a remarkable milestone, as it has now been operating for more than one billion seconds. The telescope was deployed from Space Shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990, and has been in operation for more than 31 years since then.

"On January 1, 2022, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope officially passed the one-billion second mark," NASA wrote in a recent update. "Hubble’s first one-billion seconds included five astronaut servicing missions to replace and repair components of the telescope, and more than 1.5 million scientific observations and counting! We can only imagine what discoveries the next one-billion seconds will bring as new telescopes like the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope and the future Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope build upon Hubble’s discoveries and work together with Hubble to expand our understanding of the universe."

Space

Hubble image captures a stunning spiral galaxy in the constellation of Aquila

This astronomical portrait from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases an edge-on view of the majestic spiral galaxy UGC 11537. The infrared and visible light capabilities of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 have captured the galaxy’s tightly wound spiral arms swirling around its heart. The image reveals the bright bands of stars and the dark clouds of dust threading throughout the galaxy.

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures the glorious spiral galaxy UGC 11537, seen at an angle that shows off both its long spiral arms and the bright clump of stars at its center. It is located 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Aquila (Latin for "eagle").

As well as being pleasing to look at, this image was collected to further scientific knowledge about the enormous black holes at the galaxy's heart. "This image came from a set of observations designed to help astronomers weigh supermassive black holes in the centers of distant galaxies," Hubble scientists wrote. "Hubble’s sharp-eyed observations along with data from ground-based telescopes allowed astronomers to make detailed models of the mass and motions of stars in these galaxies, which in turn helps constrain the mass of supermassive black holes."

Space

Hubble Space Telescope restored and active following synchronization issue

The Hubble Space Telescope floats above Earth.

After an error that occurred in late October forced it into safe mode, the Hubble Space Telescope is now back up and running at full strength.

Hubble suffered an issue with the communications between its computers and instruments on October 25, when several synchronization messages were lost. To prevent any damage to its instruments, the telescope automatically went into safe mode in which only the basic essential parts of the telescope functioned. That meant that it stopped collecting science data while engineers on the ground figured out what had gone wrong.