Fourth of July Through Hubble’s Eyes

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The Fourth of July Through Hubble’s Eyes

Hubble Shares 13 Images for the Nation’s 13 Original Colonies

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope commemorates the nation’s 250th birthday with a fireworks display in the colors of the cosmos. Enjoy this collection of images captured on July 4th over Hubble’s 36-year history.

As one of the most iconic and historic missions of the United States’ space program, Hubble’s story is woven into the fabric of American life. Hubble images populate movies and television shows, the pages of science textbooks and classroom posters, and even items of daily life like coffee mugs and socks.

Each of the 13 images below, ranging from 1990-2025, contain data taken on a Fourth of July. But these pictures represent an extremely small portion of Hubble’s more than 1.7 million observations. From these observations, astronomers have published more than 23,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers on Hubble discoveries, making Hubble one of the most prolific astronomical instruments in history.

Now in its 37th year in orbit, Hubble has far exceeded its 15 year expected lifespan and continues to spur our imaginations with beautiful images and groundbreaking science, further inspiring our desire to explore and learn more.

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Images with data obtained on July 4th

Hubble SWEEPS Field

Peering deep into the Milky Way’s crowded central hub of stars, Hubble researchers uncovered a population of ancient white dwarfs, smoldering remnants of once-vibrant stars that inhabited the core. Finding these relics can yield clues to how our galaxy was built, long before Earth and our Sun formed.

NASA, ESA, A. Calamida and K. Sahu (STScI), and the SWEEPS Science Team

Andromeda Galaxy

This is the largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope observations. It is a panoramic view of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. It took more than 10 years to make, requiring over 600 Hubble overlapping snapshots that were stitched together. The mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars, a fraction of Andromeda’s population, spread across about 2.5 billion pixels.

NASA, ESA, Benjamin Williams (UWashington), Zhuo Chen (UWashington), L. Clifton Johnson (Northwestern); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Saturn

This Hubble snapshot of Saturn, taken on July 4, 2020, reveals the giant world when it was 839 million miles from Earth and Saturn’s northern hemisphere was experiencing summer. Hubble found several small, transient atmospheric storms that come and go with each yearly Hubble observation.

NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL Team

NGC 460

NGC 460 is an open cluster of stars within a greater collection of nebulae and star clusters known as the N83-84-85 complex.

NASA, ESA, and C. Lindberg (The Johns Hopkins University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

NGC 7678

The spiral galaxy NGC 7678 holds one particularly prominent arm. The galaxy has a diameter of around 115,000 light-years and is located approximately 164 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse).

ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.

Ruprecht 106

Hubble captured this star-studded image using one of its most versatile instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Dotter

Comet 9P/Tempel 1

Hubble captured the dramatic effects of the collision early on July 4th, 2005 between an 820-pound projectile released by NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft and comet 9P/Tempel 1.

NASA, ESA, P. Feldman (Johns Hopkins University), and H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)

47 Tucanae

Hubble observations of 47 Tucanae provided astronomers with observational evidence that globular clusters sort stars according to their mass and are governed by a gravitational game of billiards between stars. Heavier stars slow down and sink to the cluster’s core, while lighter stars pick up speed and move across the cluster to its periphery.

NASA, ESA, and G. Meylan (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne)

NGC 3314

Hubble shows a rare view of a pair of overlapping galaxies, called NGC 3314. The two galaxies look as if they are colliding, but they are actually separated by tens of millions of light-years, or about ten times the distance between our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. The chance alignment of the two galaxies, as seen from Earth, gives a unique look at the silhouetted spiral arms in the closer face-on spiral, NGC 3314A.

NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and W. Keel (University of Alabama)

Abell 1689

Astronomers used Hubble’s sharp eye and the magnification power of the gravitational lens formed by this giant cluster of galaxies to find 58 remote galaxies. They are some of the smallest, faintest, and most numerous galaxies ever seen in the remote universe.

NASA, ESA, and B. Siana and A. Alavi (University of California, Riverside)

NGC 613

NGC 613 is classified as a barred spiral galaxy for the bar-shaped band of stars and dust crossing its intensely glowing center. Its core looks bright and uniformly white in this image as a result of the combined light shining from the high concentration of stars packed into the core, but a monstrous black hole about 10 times that of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole resides at its heart.

ESA/Hubble & NASA and S. Smartt (Queen’s University Belfast); Acknowledgement: Robert Gendler

GOODS South Field

This Hubble view reveals thousands of galaxies stretching back into time across billions of light-years of space. The image covers a portion of a large galaxy census called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). Besides the myriad of galaxies visible in this image, only 10 percent of the total number of galaxies in the universe are observable for the current generation of telescopes, according to a new analysis of the GOODS and other Hubble deep-field surveys. The study’s researchers concluded that at least 10 times more galaxies exist in the observable universe than previously thought. According to the research, about 90 percent of galaxies in the observable universe are too faint and too far away to be seen with present-day telescopes.

NASA, ESA, the GOODS Team, and M. Giavalisco (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Messier 109

The brightest member of a group of roughly 80 galaxies known as the Ursa Major Galaxy Cluster, Messier 109 is a barred spiral galaxy that is home to a trillion stars. Astronomers believe M109’s structure may be influenced by interactions with three satellite galaxies (not shown in this image).

NASA, ESA, and J. Walsh (Texas A&M University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

The image collection you see here represents a small sample of nearly 3,500 Hubble data sets captured on July 4th for the first 36 years of Hubble’s time in orbit. These data sets include more than 2,500 scientific observations and nearly 1,000 instrument calibrations that allow astronomers to correct the raw data for electrical and thermal noise, non-uniform sensitivity across its detectors, and other random signals that can skew the data. Of the scientific observations, nearly 2,000 are images taken with Hubble’s cameras and roughly 500 are spectra taken with Hubble’s spectrographs. Note that three of Hubble’s cameras, Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, also have spectrographic capabilities that allow astronomers to capture an image along with detailed data about the object’s light.

For more details on these images, click the links below.

Hubble SWEEPS Field

Peering deep into the Milky Way’s crowded central hub of stars, Hubble researchers uncovered a population of ancient white dwarfs, smoldering remnants of once-vibrant stars that inhabited the core.

Read More

Andromeda Galaxy

This Hubble panoramic view of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away, took over 10 years to make, requiring over 600 Hubble overlapping snapshots.

Read More

Saturn

Our solar system’s “Lord of the Rings” was 839 million miles from Earth when Hubble took this image during summer in its northern hemisphere.

Read More

NGC 460

This cocoon of gas and dust is an open cluster of stars within a greater collection of nebulae and star clusters known as the N83-84-85 complex, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Read More

NGC 7678

This galaxy has one particularly prominent spiral arm. The galaxy is located approximately 164 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse).

Read More

Ruprecht 106

Unlike most globular clusters, enigmatic Ruprecht 106 may be what astronomers call a single population globular cluster.

Read More

Comet 9P/Tempel 1

Hubble captured the dramatic effects of the collision between an 820-pound projectile released by the Deep Impact spacecraft and comet 9P/Tempel 1.

Read More

47 Tucanae

Multiple photos of this globular cluster’s core allowed astronomers to track the “beehive swarm” motion of stars. Precise velocities were obtained for nearly 15,000 stars in this cluster.

Read More

NGC 3314

Hubble revealed a rare view of a pair of overlapping galaxies, called NGC 3314. The two galaxies look as if they are colliding, but they are actually separated by tens of millions of light-years, or about ten times the distance between our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

Read More

Abell 1689

Astronomers used Hubble’s sharp eye and the magnification power of Abell 1689’s gravitational lens to find 58 remote galaxies.

Read More

NGC 613

Studies have shown that bars in spiral galaxies, like the one we see in NGC 613, are more common in galaxies now than they were in the past, which gives us important clues about galaxy formation and evolution.

Read More

GOODS South Field

This Hubble view reveals thousands of galaxies stretching back into time across billions of light-years of space. The image covers a portion of a large galaxy census called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS).

Read More

Messier 109

This barred spiral is the brightest member of the Ursa Major Galaxy Group of roughly 80 galaxies.

Read More

Hubble and the Declaration of Independence

Although the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights are protected in argon-filled glass casings, they can still suffer damage from light, vibration, and humidity, and their ink may fade, flake, or wear off.

The Charters of Freedom Monitoring System was designed to scan these documents using detector technology developed for Hubble. The system revealed degradation invisible to the human eye, allowing conservators to act early to halt the deterioration.

Learn More: Document Monitor about Hubble and the Declaration of Independence

This false-color image, generated by the Charters of Freedom Monitoring System, shows where ink began flaking on a historic document.

NASA

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