NASA launched the Hubble Spcae Telescope 21 years ago and since then it has taken tens of thousands of photographs. The images produced has enlightened astronomers on how our universe works, as well as dazzled anyone who looks at them.

The universe is a truly amazing, beautiful place, and Hubble has captured images as diverse and spectacular as galaxy collisions across space and time.

Scientists are continually learning new information about the cosmos, largely thanks to Hubble and similar initiatives. Recently, Hubble captured an image of the Necklace Nebula, a dying binary star 15,000 light-years away from Earth.

About 10,000 years ago one of the aging stars ballooned to the point where it engulfed its companion star, NASA said on its website. The smaller star continued orbiting inside its larger companion, increasing the giant's rotation rate.

The bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space. Due to centrifugal force, most of the gas escaped along the star's equator, producing a ring. The embedded bright knots are dense gas clumps in the ring.

Last week, astromers found a distant planet that is darker than any substance found on Earth. The Jupiter-sized gas giant reflects only one percent of the sunlight that hits it.

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Most spectacular Hubble images
The photo, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years (1690 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The turbulent gases in this photo of Gaseous Nebula in the Milky Way Galaxy shows roughly 1.9.arcminutes (3.1 light-years or 0.95 parsecs) across. The image is was released to commemorate the 13th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990. REUTERS
Hubble, NASA
Star dust. Reuters/NASA
Hubble, NASA
Hubble, NASA Reuters/NASA
Hubble, NASA
This image, released April 29, 2004, of the Bug Nebula (NGC 6302) taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows impressive walls of compressed gas, laced with trailing strands and bubbling outflows. Reuters/NASA
A Giant Mosaic
This mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers witnessed this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. NASA, ESA, J. Hester (Arizona
Bow Tie Nebula
Planetary nebula NGC 2440 has an intriguing bow-tie shape in this stunning view from space. The nebula is composed of material cast off by a dying sun-like star as it enters its white dwarf phase of evolution. Details of remarkably complex structures are revealed within NGC 2440, including dense ridges of material swept back from the nebula's central star.The star itself is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of about 200,000 kelvins. About 4,000 light-years from planet Earth toward the nautical constellation Puppis, the nebula spans more than a light-year and is energized by ultraviolet light from the central star. The false-color image was recorded using the Hubble's Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), demonstrating still impressive imaging capabilities following the failure of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. NASA, ESA, K. Noll (STScI)
Hubbles sharpest view of the Orion Nebula, part of the Orion region
This dramatic image offers a peek inside a 'cavern' of dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. More than 3000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light. The Orion Nebula is 1500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Astronomers used 520 Hubble images, taken in five colours, to make this picture. They also added ground-based photos to fill out the nebula. The ACS mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full Moon. Thes observations were taken between 2004 and 2005. Hubble Space Telescope Orion T
Aging Space NASA NASA