Astronomers Select Top Ten Most Amazing Pictures Taken
by Hubble Space Telescope in Last 16 Years

The Hubble Space Telescope was first launched in 1990, the floating observatory
began to relay back to Earth, incredible snapshots of the "final frontier".

Astronomers voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, in its 16-year
journey so far.   The photos "illustrate that our universe is not only deeply
strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."


Hubble telescope's top ten greatest photographs



The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best
picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy,
officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has
800,000,000,000 (800 billion) suns and is 293,500,000,000,000,000
(50 thousand light years) miles across

The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3,
resembles an ant when observed using ground-based telescopes.
The nebula lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years
from Earth.





In third place is Nebula NGC 2392, called Eskimo because it looks
like a face surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a
ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star.
Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth.




At four is the Cat's Eye Nebula




The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a pinched-in-the-middle
look because the winds that shape it are weaker at the centre.




In sixth place is the Coe Nebua. The part pictured here is 2.5 light
years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon).




The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500
light years away, described as 'a bubbly ocean of hydrogen
and small amounts of oxygen, sulphur and other elements'.




Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the
Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way.





The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the
swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and
IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation.




The Trifid Nebula. A 'stellar nursery', 9,000 light years from here.
It is where new stars are being born  .