Hi, Great to see these amazing space photos. I even created a (free) space calendar just to showcase your beautiful Smithsonian photostream on Flickr. Hope that's OK. You are welcome to download my PDF calendar if you want: http://calendartoprint.com/2013-space-calendar/ With thanks - Martin

I may chuckle for several days at "James" reference to "foul mouth weed suckers, or, smokers" from his 2011 entry..What a tool you are, brother ! "foul mouthed" , maryjuana ?? What was that IQ, again, bro'? ...heh, heh, man o' man !!

Many years ago i was humiliated and shamed and too young to let it pass and in a fiery, tearful rage, prayed to be taken away from the pain..That night, in a dream, I was taken on a voyage thru our solar system..to see the planets..the colors were as vivid as these and the blackness of space was a color unlike any I had ever seen..I woke up and Thanked God ! Will never forget it..Was just like these photos..!

The light from a distant sun can take thousands of years to reach Earth. Looking at the night sky is like watching ghosts—some of the stars may have burnt out long ago. In 2004, Hubble captured a light burst from the star V838 Monocerotis, a red supergiant on the outer edge of our Milky Way. The light pulse, which illuminates the dust clouds surrounding the star, took place 20,000 years ago. Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Hubble-Space-Telescopes-Finest-Photos.html#ixzz2HqKLE4iN Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

Nice hubble telescope picture

What? The Ultra Deep Field did not make the "Top" list? I guess looking at the first galaxies and stars ever created has no significance within the scientific community...

The Hubble may actually be one of the most cost effective scientific tools developed to date. And such beautiful images!

I don't if Stephen Hawkings believes in God or not-- I care more that I believe in Him, that my Priest Elizabeth and her congragation believe... The universe we know as well as the infinite number (remember Georg cantor and math for sets larger than themselves etc)of universesI also believe that can circumvent the SPEED OF LIGHT, which is necessary to leave our solar system, period

I am as an art teacher I think in future we will overcome the speed of time and will be discover many alien planet in the universe . Some of them are very advenced to the magnatic technology than us and they are very hostile for the human civilisation.Though our mission will be continue by the magnatic force and element experiment progress.I Think Stephen W. Howking"s coment that "There is no God,But The Universe has create it self."It will be take a lots of time to proven for the human.

Just so amazing! I come to this website every week to look at the photos. I love just staring at them. These ones are very unique. We should give our thanks to the Hubble, the people who made it, the scientists who brought it to life, and the people who helped to repair it in space. The Hubble has helped us learn so much and see so much about our universe. We should give it a round of applause!

I am 10 years old and I like science.I want to be a scientist when I grow up.I like the pictures that the Hubble telescope has taken.I want to be a scientist that studies outer space.I want to discover a new planet and aliens and go into outer space.I want to learn about other galaxies

from, Hayley Jackson ... p.s. I am a creative young girl who wants to learn more.

Incredible images. Whether you believe in God as I do, or don't as some of the foul mouthed weed smokers don't, it has something for everyone. The images are beautiful enough, to mesmerize any who view them. So enjoy them minus the verbal warfare. I say that that only God is capable of creating these images. It's alright with me if you don't believe. Thank all the people who were involved in presenting this show for us, and thank you Lord for allowing us to view your artwok

...when i was in school we only had a picture of the moon taken from earth...Today we have so much and it overwhelms me in its complexity and beauty...Everything i see indicates a higher being is responsible for this....Thank you for the great photos and work...

What's with all the Bible-thumping in these comments? The photographs are beautiful, but let's get real, folks: they neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.

"The greatest error in philosophy consists of projecting our subjective beliefs onto the objective universe."

-Will Durant

who those photos are amazing! How the heck did they get those?

The universe breathes, sort of. That is, it expands outward for a billion years, then it breathes in for a billion years. So the universe expands for a billion years, and then it contracts for a billion years. We are presently about half-way out in the expanding phase.
I might add that the lines of gravity from the ends of creation converge on Paradise, the exact center of the Master Universe. It is these lines of converging gravity on Paradise that prevent our universe from tracking off wildly into outer space.
All aspects of creation are under the complete control of God the Father on Paradise.

Thanks for taking the time and shooting these pictures. From the Hubble Telescope to the woman or man who takes these pictures. It has widen my horizon. Like that woman from Portugal, I don't have a degree in these fields, however, I like reading and viewing the pictures that the photographers have taken. I hope to share these pictures with my friends.
Thanks, again!

love the photes

All my life I've looked to the stars in awe wondering just how this all could've happened so perfectly. I thought that I had seen all that there was to see, but now the Hubble is bringing the far far away closer, I gotta ask myself, what really is out there, and what is next, is there really infinity out there?

I go to this website to find out about hst and oh my god i am astonished i feel like i never knew that telescopes could take good picture

I want to extend my deepest apreciation for all of your beautiful efforts in sharing your wonderful talents with the world. This is truly what love and sharing is all about. You have expressed what God wants us all to see and to know, His unimaginable,incomprehensible works. I write poetry, please inform me as to how are whom might I ask how I might use some of these photos. They go perfect with my new venture.I want to do everything in the legal sense.I pray that you will continue in your worthy efforts.

WOW! WOWOWOW! I always LOVE seeing the Hubble photos. They are so awe-inspiring! However, I too would like more info in the captions, as to whether this is "visible" light, X-rays, or what. Maybe this is on the Hubble site? Either way, THANK YOU for gathering these togeher for us to see. Great work, all around! I'm proud to have been a taxpayer through the life of the Hubble, and I can't wait to see all the new telescopes' info.

Jeanne in Ohio

I know that the GOD who created this incredible Universe also gives us the DESIRE to see into where LIFE has evolved. It makes all of us realize that the petty wars we fight over GOD are meaningless--to the beauty of GOD in that eternal ever expanding UNIVERSE of "DARK MATTER" as only 5% of the Universe is VISIBLE--the rest--95% is INVISIBLE!!! This means that what we see is only a tiny portion of the Billions of Gallaxies--that number more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of earth and the sea--IT IS ALL EXTRODINARY as we all are here on this earthly plane. Each of us has billions of atoms in our bodies--much like the UNIVERSE. My father, worked to build the Hubble Telescope at Lockheed Martin--he would be 100 years old now-Born on the 4th of July in 1909 and I thank him for all that he did to make these photos possible--he died in 1999 and left this great gift behind. We are all so blessed for these FANTASTIC PICTURES!! Thank GOD for GOD!!!!!and my WONDERFUL DAD!!!

SETH,I liked your comment on being a self-confessed Luddite - a tongue-in-cheek touch of humour within your 'roundly' expressed opinions - which, thankfully, we're all entitled to.
As to the wonderful images (that we are the first generations able to see), I'm constantly blown away by their beauty and the mind-boggling distances involved.
When my grandparents were born, powered flight was in its earliest known stages, television was a luxury not afforded to my parents as children & penicillin was still a decade or so away from general use.
Such perspective makes me realize & appreciate the massive advances made during my lifetime - some of which have enabled me to see such amazing images. Hats off to our brilliant scientists - who enrich our lives in countless ways and thank goodness for them!

Enlightening
Entharling
Beautiful.

Thank You GOD and Hubble.

hello there. could it be that all the pictures found throuout the universe are really examples of abstract art. created by those who created the universe? could it be they are kind of like our 4th of july celebration but where the colors never deminish. could it be there is a celebration that existence occured? where it is celebrated that conscioouness came into existence from an enviroment that was here before the universe was created? celebrating their ability to think.learn, problem solve, and remember, as well as the fact that their ideas for existence got to actually happen.please feel free to share this information with the rest of the world.

My father was a prisoner of war from 1941 thru 1943. He had no childhood so his tollerance to children was limited to say the least. I moved out at age 16 lived beside a waterway and those lonley nights spent gassing into the sky are now complete with your view thank you from Riverton,Illinois,USA

The entire stock of photos taken by Hubble of The Milky Way are phenomenal, to say the least. I am only a Senior in High School and when i look at these photographs, it makes me think just how much of the world i have yet to see.

Today,9-11-09, I saw Images from the new alternate spectrum camera recently installed on Hubble. I don't have words to effectively describe anything about them. But there was a word I used alot back in the 60's that may work to some degree in this case...... WOW...WOOOOOOOOW. I hope that one day soon, I will find a site with live streaming from Hubble. If you guys can ignite public awareness with these images, you will surely get a higher priority in the budget allocations. You need active public support in this time of fiscal insanity. I'm not sure of the best way to accomplish this, but, you guys put men on the moon and toy trucks on Mars and lots of stuff that I probably don't know about; so I think that you are smart enough to dance again, in the spotlight. LOVE ETERNAL, Rory Darrow

Seth. People said the same thing about Magellon, Columbus, and others.

If people are not willing to risk material things in order to learn and discover, we, the human race, would be in a sad state indeed.

I pity you.

They're really good pictures and give me a great shock.
But it would be perfect if i could see a moving sence of all the photo(especially the 6'th one,the ring-shaped galaxy)

First, I'd like to thank the people at NASA who not only dreamed up the idea for the Hubble Telescope, but also made it a reality. The photos it has brought back are not only remarkably beautiful, but also provide us with a better understanding of this amazing universe in which we live.

And in response to the comments by Seth Haber, I would prefer my tax dollars to be spent on projects like this which benefit the entire human race rather than on bailing out rich bankers who have gotten themselves into financial trouble, or on government programs that destroy the lives of innocent unborn children, which demean the human race.

I REALLY THANK 2 THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE WHO SOLVE OUR PROBLEM.THANKS ONCE AGAIN.

I think it is absolutely fantastic that science can determine from observing stars over the past couple of decades with modern telescopes how hot they were billions of years ago, Of course anyone knows that it takes about 10 minutes to bring a two quart tin pan filled with water to a boil. Incredible as is might seem, science has recently discovered that the water needs 3 million years to cool down.

Joe Caputo, Hi!
You said in the event of our galaxy colliding (eaten by) with Andromeda and should the sun & earth be ejected it wouldn't effect life here..

..I submit life on earth is dependent on the moon's pull & cycles to sustain life on earth. So it would depend on whether or not the earth's field can hold onto the moon during & after such a wild event of being spun out of our galaxy! That would effect the spin of the earth as well as create an unstable gravitational pull the moon requires to stay in our orbit.
Plus, I wonder if this underestimates the interconnectedness of our solar system & how all our planets depend on one another.

Just sayin'.

I wanted to thank Scott Rivers for recommending HubbleSite.org for its wallpaper images! It's a great place for those of us who might have been inspired to have one of these wonderful photographs up on their computers after looking through the images in this article!

My father worked at Lockheed Martin, and was a part of a team that helped make the HST happen... my gratitude to him and all of the other people responsible for its conception!

Response to Seth Haber:

A few hundred years ago, Kepler continued to struggle with the fact that Tycho Brahe's meticulous observations of planetary orbits did not agree with his vision of how the universe worked. Then, he finally decided to try the equation of an Ellipse. What he found changed everything, on many different levels. Granted, the impact of his discovery did not immediately affect the life of earthbound taxpayers in the early 17th century, but this single event weaved repercussions across the centuries. If anything, it taught us the importance of accepting the facts, as Carl explains it: "When Keppler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science."

Now, the Hubble is not orbiting up there to simply take costly pretty pictures. This is just the beautiful tip of the iceberg. Just because this seems to be outside your field of understanding, you might find that you can not do much with these images. But the data collected today is drastically altering our understanding of the universe every day, we can only imagine the kind of understanding of the Cosmos that we will be able to reach in the future, all thanks to the efforts of science today. This alone, justifies the money spent, the going back to fix mechanics and optics, the continuing of a self-correcting process, and the dedication of lives to this endeavor.

Since you took the time to mention that you are a "Board Certified pathologist, a Luddite, and a full professor-academician", I will have to say that your comments about "the rat-hole of astronomy" seem very shortsighted for someone with your preparation.

these images are amazing makes you realize how large the universe really is....and how high the possibility for life elsewhere other than earth

response to LORI.

It said earthbound astronomers see it every 42 years, when the planet is at an angle so we on earth can see it. The scientist probably measured this cycle with the angle. They probably found the angle with the hubble, which can see the rings all the time because it can move and does not sit behind the earths atmosphere.

Patty Biller:
That’s quite a leap, but I shall bite my tongue.

Seth Haber:
I doubt there’s much appreciable utility in studying and preserving art and literature, but they inform and inspire. Likewise, the above photos are truly awe-inspiring. And if you really believe that these photos are the only product of the program, then I guess you might need to read further.

NASA and all involved in the HST:
I’m speechless. Well, almost. Thank you. Thank you.

Nice images, they really make you think that we have no idea what is going on :-)

A reply to Chris Varns.

"1. The exposure is always perfect
2. The Hubble looks like it is made out of aluminum foil
3. The Clarity of the pictures are phenomenal

The biggest problem I have believing that these photos are really sent from the Hubble...

4. We are getting crystal clear images from MILLIONS of miles away in deep space, yet I cant get Cell reception at my house?"

1. The exposures are perfect because the hubble sits and looks at its target for hours or even days to collect all the light it can get from a area. The longer it sits and looks in one area the more detail it gathers.

2. Not aluminim really. It has a reflective surface to reflect heat from the sun.

3. There is some sofware that smooths things out, but refer to answer 1. Though it wasnt so perfect in the beginning. The hubble did have a flawed mirror when it was sent up. Prictures would come back fuzzy or kinda distored, but thats been fixed along time ago.

4. Well your talkin about 2 different technologies. Taking a long exposure picture with a camera that could read the fine print of a newspaper from where it sits in space, to crappy cell phone towers. There are lots of reasons you cant get a good reception on your phone.

Some people say there is no God...they would be foolish to think so after seeing these pictures. Enough that they could think that anyway after looking at nature. Especially the Rockies...

Thanks to our great Astronomers.... Who made us also to view these spatial pics....

I loved the comment by Lori in regards to the 42yr. cycle of being able to see the rings of Uranus. Funny how no one has answered this yet. Also, in regards to the comment by Seth Haber, I believe that this is money well spent. It is allowing for research that may not seem like much today, but who knows what scientific advances will come from the knowledge we gain today later in the future. If we always worried about the here and now and not the future, things like the personal computer you are added your comment from would not exist. Oh, and you can also thank NASA for the microwave oven too. Funny how practical things come from places we can't even image right now.

Yes, the pictures are beautiful, however, if you were to look in the sky you would not see the nebula's as colorful as they are in the pictures, what you see is a representation of what is seen on a light wavelength other than what is in the physical spectrum, it is a computer that adds the magnificent color.

It is what you would see if you could see x-rays(or infrared, I'm not sure what they are pictures of) with the naked eye.

Men could not create such beauty and mysteries.

To all whoever was inspired in the idea of "Hubble" THANK U! And everyone who believed in the idea and participated in building it THANK U!

Magnificient pictures!

To Seth Haber. We are human beings. We must explore space.... "because it's there". Yes we screw up sometimes, especially when the government is involved. But then again, we're human beings.

After looking at these remarkable and beautiful pictures, how can we not believe in God?

Hubble has transformed astro-physics and observation of the universe from science to art to theology. As god invoked in those old scriptures- 'All was darkness, until Hubble opened its lenses, and all was light.'

I am glad to see you cover the Hubble telescope and make these images available to so many readers. I have visited HubbleSite.org frequently over the past years and enjoy as my PC's wallpaper one of the images downoaded from this great web site. Whenever I start up my PC I am greeted by a spectacular Hubble image. I hope that the US continues to pursue such valuable projects. I encourage other of your readers to visit the Hubble website.

as a science freak and educated in the field of science, it is great to see this "tin can" in working operation.space exploration is critical for so many reasons. hopefully we can all board a ship and "take off" to outer space in our future... that is where it all lies. zoom!

There is nothing more beautiful than the vastness of our universe. The Hubble enables an earth-bound creature to get a glimpse of it all.

I could look at these pictures for hours. They would be good for meditation as a wonderful expansion for the mind. Thank you for making them available!

This is the high water mark of our technical culture, so far. With this great instrument, we stare off into the beginning of time and the edge of our space, and we find it beautiful. That's actually our job as sentient blobs of matter, near as I can figure. I also love that this telescope was named for such a great astronomer. This whole project also shows the best side of government, the spending of public funds on an expression of the collective will. I'm glad I had a hand in it, if only as a taxpayer and astronomy enthusiast. Hooray for us all.

Seeing such far away places makes me feel very small indeed. It also makes all the days problems and politics seem to disappear in awe of greater things. Lets not forget that our own planet is also a beautiful gem in this never ending sea, and that saving it should be every human-beings number one priority! What could be more important than the cradle of life as we know it? Also, seeing infinite space has to raise the question: are WE the ONLY life as we know it? If so, what purpose were we put here for? What a gift we were given to be rulers of one of these magnificent balls in space!

Can't think of anything more beautiful than these pics.

Saving the Hubble one last time was well worth it. Kudos to the original designers (except for whoever flubbed the mirror!), and to the astronauts for their difficult work keeping HST going. Those pics are inquiringly beautiful and not just informative.

Our universe is so amazing and filled with such contrasts. I have an autographed picture of Cyndi Lauper on my dresser, and next to it the famous HST shot of a black hole released December 4, 1995. To think, a lovely creature that is a member of the most complex entities in the known universe - so vulnerable next to one of the universe's most extreme and dangerous objects. And both of them challenge our understanding of nature's laws; in different ways, at different frontiers.

i was wondering if it is at all possible to get these images in higher res? I don't mind a watermark on them, but something like 1680x1050 or higher would rule- i'm looking for the dead star, the supernova and the eagle nebula ones i'd love to make them my background thanks :)

As a grandmother of four beautiful young children, I cannot imagine what else they will see and experience long after me. I hope we're doing all we can to bring this information to their schools. My seven year old wants to be a scientist, as well as artist and he loves music! I'm thrilled! What are the best publications for these young inquisitive children?

Could you give some information on the Chinese Astronomers? Names, Their place in Chinese culture, Their Emperor ?

There is so much beauty surrounding us! What a beautiful universe we live in! Thank you NASA for being our eyes. I pray that the inhabitants of this planet will take aggressive action in cleaning up our planet and learning to use other ways to keep our planet clean and beautiful.

Thank you

Awesome! Makes me even wonder more of how "tiny" we are compared to the entire universe. And yet, up to now, we are the only ones we knew of that exist in it! Million years from now, maybe we can really reach one of those far away stars!

This is without a doubt one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen! And to think that we share the same universe! These images seem almost surreal.

These pictures truly show there is beauty everywhere. I find them very calming and give me an overwhelming sense of a greater being than man. While the world is in turmoil there is beauty if we are willing to look for it. Thank you to all that have "given" us the Hubble Telescope and it's incredible pictures.

It would be my guess that the visibility of the rings has to do with where the planet is in its orbit in relation to Earth and that it is only visible to us every half orbit around the Sun.

These are stunning photographs and I agree with others that it is a wonderful thing to have them available to us to see. Please do more to get the schools and educators to bring these into the classroom and ignite more interest with the kids about science and the unknown universe.

When I was a teenager a friend & I would lay down in a darken cemetery were there was limited reflective light and watch the heavens. We had many questions and now after after 60 some years a lot of them are being answered by hubble. Thank you hubble.

In a country and world that is learning to live more frugally, how can rational scientists support pouring more and more money down the rat-hole of astronomy. How many millions of dollars did each one of these (color-enhanced or added) pictures cost "us," what are we supposed to do with them? As a Board Certified pathologist, a Luddite, and a full professor-academician, I say challenge you to list the benefits accruing to earthbound taxpayers. All it's proven is that you can't seem to get the optics and mechanics right the first time, over and over again. So you have to go back to fix errors. All we have to show for the billions of dollars spent is yet a new round of theories that are just as poorly founded but well propounded, giving rise to nire grant applications, more "Hubbles" and more money down the rat-hole.

Our congratulations and gratitude to all those who had a hand in Hubble's conception and support for its on-going exploration.

I can now imagine something of what happened when God "spoke" light into being. I don't necessarily believe that Creation unfolded as is told in Genesis 1, but after seeing Hubble images for years I can believe that such stunningly beautiful light would have been an excellent beginning.

I don't always agree with government expenditures for space when so many humans lack basic necessities, especially peace, but such lovliness does lift the spirit. Hallelujah for the builders of Hubble!!

Rev. Barbara A. Cullom

For LORI: Go back and read the caption again. It says that earthbound astronomers see Uranus's "rings' edge" only once every 42 years. It should say "rings on edge" (no apostrophe) to make it clear. The rings are so thin that they would probably not be visible when viewed on edge. At other times they are tilted from our perspective so that we see one surface or the other. This is not math or science, just semantics.

I am, among other things, a landscape painter. When I see extraordinary images like this I think of it as a beautiful scene that I'd love to paint. I wonder if this still comes under the heading of 'landscape painting'- it's almost a dreamscape!! I've just GOT to try to make something of this! Thanks so much for such breathtaking beauty- there's no end of it in the universe, is there?

I LOVE the idea of space exploration and the thought that we are going to the deepest edges of the galaxy to capture glimpses of other galaxies... some much older, some in the infant stage. But there are a few things that trouble me to the point where I cant believe that these images are not from someones imagination and put together in a photo editing software...

1. The exposure is always perfect
2. The Hubble looks like it is made out of aluminum foil
3. The Clarity of the pictures are phenomenal

The biggest problem I have believing that these photos are really sent from the Hubble...

4. We are getting crystal clear images from MILLIONS of miles away in deep space, yet I cant get Cell reception at my house?

I'm not a math wiz or a scientist, but if the rings of Uranas can only be seen by Earthbound scientists every 42 years and the rings were only discovered in 1977...how do they know they can only see them every 42 years? Just wondering?

Hi Wayne,

There is an answer to your question about what happens when two galaxies collide. I asked Mark Reid, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, about that in January for the Around the Mall blog (http://tinyurl.com/oqzkh7)and here's what he said:

"If you’re sitting here on the Earth, you would never know it because there’s so much empty space between all the stars. If we have two populations of stars merging through each other, they won’t collide or things like that. But what will happen is the Milky Way and the other galaxy Andromeda will change dramatically. They might merge into one galaxy for example. So over very long time periods the entire sky would change. In fact, it’s possible that the sun and Earth could get ejected out of the galaxy in such a collision. That’s a distinct possibility. It wouldn’t affect life here, but it would certainly affect what we see when we look out into the universe."

PLEASE EXPLAIN THE CONSEQUENCES IF OUR GALAXY WERE TO COLLIDE INTO ANOTHER GALAXY AND IF THERE ARE ANY CURRENT POSSIBILITIES OF THAT HAPPENING IN THE NEAR FUTURE. THANK YOU

Many years ago, I was almost killed in a car accident. During the minutes when I was between life and death, I had what I later learned was a near death experience. People asked me to describe the feeling, but until I saw my first picture of the Eagle Nebula, I couldn't describe it. Now when asked to describe the experience, I tell them "I felt like you'll feel when you see your first image of this nebula" Thank you Hubble.

I'm a simple housewife, and I don't have any academic study of science, but I'm happy that I cold see, with my son and daughter (12&10 y. old), those images, that are soo wonderfull. I hope that you could show more of it. Thank you, Emily, (Portugal)