This is a list of images released to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's anniversaries. They celebrate its "birthday" when it was launched into orbit on April 24, 1990, by the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery. [1]
The 15th anniversary, in 2005, was celebrated with a collection of images of M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy), and also with a section of the Eagle Nebula. [2] The 15th anniversary included a collection of other content including, in multiple languages, the video release, Hubble — 15 Years of Discovery. [3]
The 17th-anniversary celebration featured a panorama of part of the Carina Nebula, and a collection of images selected from that area. [5]
In its 17 years of exploring the heavens, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made nearly 800,000 observations and snapped nearly 500,000 images of more than 25,000 celestial objects. Hubble does not travel to stars, planets and galaxies. It takes pictures of them as it whirls around Earth at 17,500 miles an hour. In its 17-year lifetime, the telescope has made nearly 100,000 trips around our planet.
— 17th Anniversary Press release [5]
59 images of merging galaxies were released for the 18th anniversary on 24 April 2008. [6]
In April 2019, a special celebration image of the Southern Crab Nebula (aka Hen 2-104) was released. [16] This nebula is located in the Constellation Centaurus. [16]
| Current instruments |   | |
|---|---|---|
| Previous instruments | ||
| Space Shuttle missions | ||
| Special fields and images |
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| Related | ||
