This year, NASA’s workhorse Hubble Space Telescope marks its 35th anniversary, celebrating over three decades of transforming humanity’s understanding of the cosmos. Launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24th, 1990, Hubble was named in honor of astronomer Edwin Hubble, whose groundbreaking work in the 1920s provided definitive evidence that our universe is expanding—a discovery that reshaped astronomy and cosmology. 

Upon its initial deployment, Hubble encountered optical issues due to a flawed primary mirror. NASA swiftly organized five servicing missions by space shuttle crews between 1993 and 2009, dramatically upgrading its instruments and optics to full potential, stretching its ultimate lifespan, and enabling Hubble to become the greatest photographer that ever lived.

Throughout its storied career, Hubble has revealed the universe in profound ways, uncovering insights like the precise rate of cosmic expansion, finding evidence of supermassive black holes in galaxy centers, and capturing views of star formation in distant nebulae. Some of its most breathtaking images include the famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, a stellar nursery where new stars are born amidst spectacular clouds of gas and dust, and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, an image revealing thousands of galaxies dating back to within a billion years after the Big Bang. These photographs have not only advanced scientific knowledge but have stirred public imagination.

Who hasn't had Hubble wallpaper on their computer at some point?

Today, Hubble continues its mission of exploration, capturing stunning images and data that astronomers around the world use to investigate phenomena from nearby solar system objects to distant galaxies. Although its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, now operates alongside it, Hubble remains invaluable due to its unique capabilities in visible and ultraviolet light.

Even after 35 years, NASA’s beloved telescope endures as an indispensable tool for discovery, inspiring generations of astronomers and stargazers alike to look up and ponder our cosmic origins. Supercluster is celebrating the life of Hubble with our sponsors at Space Camper Cosmic IPA, offering hop-lovers an exhilarating ride through the cosmos of flavor and innovation. Our team curated striking photos shot by Hubble, arguably the greatest images ever seen. And we even found images of the workhorse telescope itself, being deployed and serviced over its years of loyal service.

This photograph shows Hubble being deployed on April 25th, 1990. The photograph was taken by the IMAX Cargo Bay Camera (ICBC) mounted in a container on the port side of the Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-31 mission.

This deep, detailed image is the result of Hubble's observations for the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). The image displays approximately 30,000 galaxies across 9 billion years of time and space in a fascinating visual study of galaxy evolution.The oldest and most distant galaxies depicted appear red, because as the universe expands their light has been stretched or “redshifted” to longer wavelengths. Red is the longest wavelength our eyes can see; beyond it are longer infrared wavelengths, which some telescopes, including Hubble, can detect for us.

Hubble's Extreme Deep Field (XDF) combines 10 years of Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a small patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

About 5,500 galaxies are visible in this image in various stages of evolution. Since light takes time to travel across the vast cosmos, many of these galaxies are seen as they were in the early history of the universe. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, and this image spans 13.2 billion years of galaxy development. The farthest galaxy found in the Hubble Extreme Deep Field existed just 450 million years after the Big Bang.

While not an actual photo, this artist's impression depicts Jupiter and its moon Europa using actual Jupiter and Europa images taken by Hubble. As you know, Europa Clipper is heading toward the Jupiter system at the moment. But Why? The Hubble Space Telescope discovered water vapor erupting from the frigid surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, in one or more plumes near its south pole. Europa is already thought to harbor a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, making the moon one of the main targets in the search for a habitable world.

Hubble's finding was the first observational evidence of water vapor being ejected off the moon's surface.

This image from Hubble shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. The Great Red Spot appears red to the human eye, however in this ultraviolet image it appears darker because high altitude haze particles absorb light at these wavelengths. The reddish, wavy polar hazes are absorbing slightly less of this light due to differences in either particle size, composition, or altitude.

A huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds are captured in this Hubble image of the supermassive star Eta Carinae. Even though Eta Carinae is more than 8,000 light-years away, structures only 10 billion miles across (about the diameter of our solar system) can be distinguished. Dust lanes, tiny condensations, and strange radial streaks all appear with unprecedented clarity. Eta Carinae was the site of a giant outburst about 150 years ago, when it became one of the brightest stars in the southern sky.

Hubble captures the red giant star CW Leonis. The orange-red "cobwebs" are dusty clouds of sooty carbon engulfing the dying star. They were created when CW Leonis threw out its outer layers into the inky black void.

The carbon, cooked up through nuclear fusion in the star's interior, gives it a carbon-rich atmosphere. Blasting the carbon back into space provides raw material for the formation of future stars and planets. All known life on Earth is built around the carbon atom. Complex biological molecules consist of carbon atoms bonded with other common elements in the universe.

A trio of dazzling stars blaze from the hollowed-out cavity of a reflection nebula in this image from Hubble. The triple-star system is made up of the variable star HP Tau, HP Tau G2, and HP Tau G3. HP Tau is known as a T Tauri star, a type of young variable star that hasn’t begun nuclear fusion yet but is beginning to evolve into a hydrogen-fueled star similar to our Sun. T Tauri stars tend to be younger than 10 million years old ― in comparison, our Sun is around 4.6 billion years old ― and are often found still swaddled in the clouds of dust and gas from which they formed.

Hubble's shot of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) was taken on April 20th, 2020, showing the comet's solid, icy nucleus breaking apart into as many as 30 pieces that are each roughly the size of a house. The comet was discovered on December 29, 2019 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) robotic astronomical survey system based in Hawaii. ATLAS' fragmentation was confirmed by amateur astronomer Jose de Queiroz, who was able to photograph around three pieces of the comet on April 11. Hubble has a front row seat, with its sharp resolution, to go looking for more pieces.

This composite Hubble Space Telescope image captures the positions of Comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1) and Mars in a never-before-seen close passage of a comet by the Red Planet, which happened at 2:28 p.m. EDT October 19th, 2014. On that date the comet passed by Mars at approximately 87,000 miles (about one-third the distance between Earth and the Moon). The Mars and comet images have been added together to create a single picture to illustrate the angular separation between the comet and Mars at closest approach.

While photographing Mars on May 12th, 2016, Hubble captured a cameo appearance of the tiny moon Phobos on its trek around the Red Planet. Discovered in 1877, the diminutive, potato-shaped moon is so small that it appears star-like in this time-lapsed Hubble picture.

Phobos orbits Mars in just 7 hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates. The moon’s orbit is very slowly shrinking, meaning it will eventually shatter under Mars’ gravitational pull, or crash into the planet.

These GIF-ed Hubble images taken in 1999 was one of several shot when Mars was 54 million miles (87 million km) from Earth, is centered near the location of the Pathfinder landing site. Dark sand dunes that surround the polar cap merge into a large, dark region called Acidalia. This area, as shown by images from the Hubble telescope and other spacecraft, is composed of dark, sand-sized grains of pulverized volcanic rock. Below and to the left of Acidalia are the massive Martian canyon systems of Valles Marineris, some of which form long, linear markings that were once thought by some to be canals.

Early morning clouds can be seen along the left limb of the planet, and a large cyclonic storm composed of water ice is churning near the polar cap.

Johnson Space Center Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas is captured during the first spacewalk of the STS-103 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). A large television screen seen in the front-right of the control room provided flight controllers with live downlink from Discovery. The flight director's console and that of the spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM) appear at the center of the frame.

Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-103 moves closer and closer to Hubble to begin the third servicing mission on the observatory since it was launched in 1990. This image was taken from Discovery on December 21st, 1999.

NASA astronauts James H. Newman and Mike Massimino participate in the fourth spacewalk of the STS-109 mission, the fourth servicing mission to Hubble. The two, with Newman on Columbia's Remote Manipulator System robotic arm, removed the Faint Object Camera to make room for the new Advanced Camera for Surveys.

The STS-109 crew members are photographed during a preflight news conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). From the left are astronauts Michael J. Massimino, James H. Newman, Richard M. Linnehan, John M. Grunsfeld, Nancy J. Currie, Duane G. Carey, and Scott D. Altman. Altman and Carey were mission commander and pilot, respectively. Grunsfeld was payload commander and Currie, Linnehan, Newman and Massimino were mission specialists.

One of the STS-109 crew members photographed the newly serviced and upgraded Hubble as it neared Earth in March of 2002. The Space Shuttle Columbia was located over the Atlantic Ocean southwest of the Cape Verde Islands when this image was taken.

Hubble captured galaxy Arp 184 or NGC 1961 which sits about 190 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

The name Arp 184 comes from the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies compiled by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. It holds 338 galaxies that are oddly shaped and tend to be neither entirely elliptical nor entirely spiral-shaped. Many of the galaxies are in the process of interacting with other galaxies, while others are dwarf galaxies without well-defined structures. Arp 184 earned its spot in the catalog thanks to its single broad, star-speckled spiral arm that appears to stretch toward us. The galaxy’s far side sports a few wisps of gas and stars, but it lacks a similarly impressive spiral arm.

In this image, Hubble peers into the spiral galaxy NGC 1317 in the constellation Fornax, located more than 50 million light-years from Earth. Visible in this galaxy image is a bright blue ring that hosts hot, young stars. NGC 1317 is one of a pair, but its rowdy larger neighbor, NGC 1316, lies outside Hubble’s field of view.

Despite the absence of its neighboring galaxy, this image finds NGC 1317 accompanied by two objects from very different parts of the universe. The bright point ringed with a crisscross pattern is a star from our own galaxy surrounded by diffraction spikes, whereas the redder elongated smudge is a distant galaxy lying far beyond NGC 1317.

In this Hubble image, an uncanny pair of glowing eyes glares menacingly in our direction. The piercing "eyes" are the most prominent feature of what resembles the face of an otherworldly creature. But this is no ghostly apparition. Hubble is looking at a titanic head-on collision between two galaxies.

Each "eye" is the bright core of a galaxy, one of which slammed into another. The outline of the face is a ring of young blue stars. Other clumps of new stars form a nose and mouth.

Hubble witnessed a grouping of galaxies engaging in a slow dance of destruction that will last for billions of years. The galaxies are so tightly packed together that gravitational forces are beginning to rip stars from them and distort their shapes. Those same gravitational forces eventually could bring the galaxies together to form one large galaxy.

Who doesn't know Hubble and its work?

The machine that has given humans many gifts of wonder and will live eternally through the bounty of science that it continues to collect in 2025. And forever live rent-free in our hearts and minds, where Hubble has often transported us to a hidden universe. Hubble's legacy is as rich and far-reaching as its most famous photos and the proof isn't hard to find: lunch boxes, bookmarks, iphone wallpapers, drink coasters, half of all Etsy products, and of course, instagram.

Special thanks to the folks across all NASA centers, especially Johnson in Houston, that contribute to the upkeep of Hubble, for the curation and preservation of these historic images. And a hat tip to the scientists and researchers from around the world that keep Hubble busy.