Hubble telescope celebrates 21st birthday with awe-inspiring vision of colliding galaxies

Add to My Stories When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, scientists waited in eager anticipation of what galactic images would be sent back to Earth. They weren't to be disappointed.
The telescope has sent back hundreds of thousands of images back to Earth, from detailed pictures of our own planet to far flung galaxies billions of light years away.The latest, released to mark Hubble's 21st birthday, is of this glorious pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 that lie in the constellation Andromeda, roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth.

Rose without a thorn: This image released today by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the complex interaction between two galaxies known as UGC 1810 and UGC 1813The large spiral galaxy, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewel-like points across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light.

The smaller, nearly edge-on companion shows distinct signs of intense star formation at its nucleus, perhaps triggered by the encounter with the companion galaxy.

The image shows a tenuous tidal bridge of material between the two galaxies that are separated from each other by tens of thousands of light-years.

HUBBLE AT A GLANCE

Named after American astronomer Edwin P Hubble, the telescope was launched into space on April 24th, 1990.

It was the first optical telescope ever to leave Earth's atmosphere.

It orbits our Earth once every 97minutes at an altitude of 353miles traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph.

It weighs 24,500 pounds and is 43.5ft long.

The telescope transmits 120 gigabytes of information each week and its most frequent im! age of E arth.

It gets its energy from the Sun through 2 solar panels and uses about 28 light bulbs worth of energy in one orbit.The telescope's mission was originally set for up to 20 years. It has been serviced five times - the last was in May 2009.
Aseries of uncommon spiral patterns in the large galaxy are a tell-tale sign of interaction. The large, outer arm appears partially as a ring, afeature seen when interacting galaxies actually pass through one another.
This suggests the smaller companion dived deep, but off-centre,through UGC 1810. The inner set of spiral arms is highly warped out of the plane, with one of the arms going behind the bulge and coming back out the other side. How these two spiral patterns connect is not precisely known.The larger galaxy of the pair has a mass about five times that of the smaller galaxy. In unequal pairs such as this, the relatively rapid passage of a companion galaxy produces the lopsided or asymmetric structure in the main spiral.

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The image was taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in December 2010. The picture is a composite of data taken with three separate filters on WFC3 that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.Hubble's discoveries have transformedthe way scientists look at the universe, providing the basis for 6,000 scientific articles.
It revealed the universe is between 13 and 14 billion years old and played a key role in discovering 'dark energy' - a mysterious force that causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
Hubble has shown scientists galaxies in all stages of evolution, including toddler galaxies that were around when the universe was still young, helping them understand how galaxies form.
It found p! rotoplan etary disks, clumpsof gas and dust around young stars that likely function as birthing grounds for new planets. It also discovered that gamma-ray bursts - strange, incredibly powerful explosions of energy - occur in far-distantgalaxies when massive stars collapse. 'For 21 years, Hubble has profoundly changed our view of the universe, allowing us to see deep into the past while opening our eyes to the majesty and wonders around us,' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.
'I was privileged to pilot space shuttle Discovery as it deployed Hubble. After all this time, new Hubbleimages still inspire awe and are a testament to the extraordinary work of the many people behind the world's most famous observatory.'The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency.NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations.