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Hubble's Historic Shots

Brilliant Stars, Glowing Clouds

This image provided by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Tuesday Dec. 15, 2009 shows hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Hubble's Histori... Click through to see the coolest pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Hubble Space Nec... In this image taken July 2, 2011 provided by NASA Thursday Aug. 11, 2011 a giant cosmic necklace glows brightly in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The object, aptly named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, the glowing remains of an ordinary, Sun-like star. The Necklace Nebula is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Space Blob This handout photo provided by NASA, taken April 12, 2010 by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows an unusual, ghostly green blob of gas appears to float near a normal-looking spiral galaxy. NASA released Monday the Hubble Space Telescope’s first picture of the mysterious giant glowing green blob of gas called Hanny’s Voorwerp. The blob is the size of our Milky Way galaxy and is 650 million light years away. Each light year is about 6 trillion miles. The blob was discovered in 2007 by Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel.

(AP Photo/Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute)

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Supernova Blast This image provided by NASA Tuesday Dec. 14, 2010 shows a delicate sphere of gas, photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, floats serenely in the depths of space. The pristine shell, or bubble, is the result of gas that is being shocked by the expanding blast wave from a supernova. Called SNR 0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short), the bubble is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

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20th Anniversary In this image provided by NASA this craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" or a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your imagination. The NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is even more dramatic than fiction, captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth. Hubble was launched April 24, 1990.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Jupiter Hit This image provided by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope taken with it's Wide Field Camera 3 on Thursday July 23, 2009 shows the sharpest visible-light picture taken of the impact feature (dark spot) and "backsplash" of material from a small object that plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated. The only other time in history such a feature has been seen on Jupiter was in 1994 during the collision of fragments from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. This is a natural color image of Jupiter as seen in visible light.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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One Way to Mars This undated file photo taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planet Mars. Two scientists are proposing we send volunteers to Mars and leave them there. They say the mission would mark the beginning of long-term human colonization of Mars, with numerous follow-up trips. The colleagues contend one-way missions could happen a lot quicker and cheaper, and it is essential to begin colonizing another planet as a hedge against a catastrophe that makes Earth uninhabitable.

(AP Photo/NASA Hubble Space Telescope)

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Starry Night This photo provided by NASA, taken in 2006 by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a cluster of diverse galaxies. A new study led by a Yale University astronomer looks at elliptical galaxies, such as the bright one in the top middle of this 2006 Hubble Space Telescope photograph, and finds they have far more stars than initially thought. That means the universe may have three times more stars than astronomers previously figured. The bright part of the Hubble photo shows a cluster of galaxies 450 million light years with the giant elliptical galaxy ESO 325-G004 looming large at the cluster's center.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Spiral Galaxy NG... This image provided by NASA Tuesday Aug. 10, 2010 shows a long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image of the majestic face-on spiral galaxy NGC4911 located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Oldest Galaxy Ev... In the center of this Jan. 5, 2010 NASA handout image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is a hard-to-see galaxy that European astronomers say is the oldest seen in the universe so far. They used this image to focus a Chilean telescope to look for unique light signatures.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Brilliant Stars,... This image provided by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Tuesday Dec. 15, 2009 shows hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Dust in the Iris... This image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and provided by NASA shows a close-up of an area in the northwest region of the large Iris Nebula seems to be clogged with cosmic dust. With bright light from the nearby star HD 200775 illuminating it from above, the dust resembles thick mounds of billowing cotton. It is actually made up of tiny particles of solid matter, with sizes from ten to a hundred times smaller than those of the dust grains we find at home. Both background and foreground stars are dotted throughout the image. Researchers studying the object are particularly interested in the region to the left and slightly above center in the image, where dusty filaments appear redder than is expected.

(AP Photo/NASA Hubble Space Telescope)

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Crab Nebula This image provided by NASA Monday Nov. 23, 2009 shows the Crab Nebula that is one of the most studied objects in the sky, making it a cosmic icon. X-ray data from Chandra provide significant clues to the workings of this mighty cosmic "generator," which is producing energy at the rate of 100,000 suns. This composite image uses data from three of NASA's Great Observatories. The Chandra X-ray image is shown in blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical images are in yellow and red, and the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared image is in purple.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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A New View of Pl... This undated handout photo provided by NASA, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the dwarf planet Pluto. The image shows an icy, mottled, dark molasses-colored world undergoing seasonal surface color and brightness changes.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Mysterious Objec... This image provided by NASA Tuesday Feb. 2, 2010 shows a mystery object that was discovered on Jan. 6, 2010, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey. The object appears so unusual in ground-based telescopic images that discretionary time on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was used to take this close-up look. The observations show a bizarre X-pattern of filamentary structures near the point-like nucleus of the object and trailing streamers of dust. This complex structure suggests the object is not a comet but instead the product of a head-on collision between two asteroids traveling five times faster than a rifle bullet. Astronomers have long thought that the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never before been seen.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Heavenly Mysteri... Still an astrophysical mystery, the evolution of the bulges in spiral galaxies led astronomers to the edge-on galaxy NGC4710. When starring directly at the center of the galaxy, one can detect a faint, ethereal "X”-shaped structure. Such a feature, which astronomers call a "boxy" or "peanut-shaped" bulge, is due to the vertical motions of the stars in the galaxy's bar and is only evident when the galaxy is seen edge-on. This curiously shaped puff is often observed in spiral galaxies with small bulges and open arms, but is less common in spirals with arms tightly wrapped around a more prominent bulge, such as NGC4710.

(AP Photo/NASA/ESA)

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New Look of the ... This image provided by NASA Tuesday Nov. 11, 2009 shows observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory in a collaboration to produce an unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy using infrared light and X-ray light to see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Hubble Sees Neve... In this handout image provided by NASA taken in late August 2009, released Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made the deepest image of the universe ever taken in near-infrared light.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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Compass and Scal... In this handout image provided by NASA taken in late August 2009, released Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, this image was taken in the same region as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), which was taken in 2004 and is the deepest visible-light image of the universe.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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Ground Image and... In this handout image provided by NASA taken in late August 2009, released Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, this image was taken by the HUDF09 team, which was awarded the time for the observation and made it available for research by astronomers worldwide.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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HUDF Region from... This handout image provided by NASA, released Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, was taken with the new WFC3/IR camera on Hubble in late August 2009 during a total of four days of pointing for 173,000 seconds of total exposure time.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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Barred Spiral Ga... This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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The Globular Sta... This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows a panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster, Globular Star Cluster Omega Centauri.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Jupiter This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows the planet Jupiter.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Galaxy Cluster A... This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows Gravitational Lensing in Galaxy Cluster Abell 370.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Bursting Stars This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows stars bursting to life in the chaotic Carina Nebula.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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A Galaxy Quintet This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows a clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide color range, from young, blue stars to aging, red stars.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Butterflies in S... This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows a celestial object that looks like a delicate butterfly.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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NGC 2074 The Hubble Telescope is getting its fifth and final fix-up. Astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis will repair and replace broken instruments, add a new long-gazing camera, and then say goodbye forever to Hubble. If it all works, Hubble will get another five to seven years of life, before it is remote-control steered into a watery grave. This photo, released by NASA and the European Space Agency to commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074, top, on Sunday,Aug.10, 2008. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170 000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies. In this representative color image, red shows emission from sulphur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

(AP Photo/NASA-ESA)

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NGC 2818 This image provided by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the striking details of the famed planetary nebula designated NGC 2818, which lies in the southern constellation of Pyxis (the Compass). The spectacular structure of the planetary nebula contains the outer layers of a star that were expelled into interstellar space. The glowing gaseous shrouds in the nebula were shed by the central star after it ran out of fuel to sustain the nuclear reactions in its core. NGC 2818 is often heralded as one of the Galaxy’s few planetary nebulae to be discovered as a member of an open star cluster.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Supernova FILE - This 2008 image from the Hubble Space Telescope, provided by NASA, shows a remnant from a supernova or star explosion, which looks like its a giant ribbon.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Arp 147 This undated handout photo provided by NASA, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The Hubble Space Telescope is working again, taking stunning cosmic photos after a one-month breakdown. The Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said the $10 billion telescope is as good as it was before a shutdown in late September. That glitch scotched plans for spacewalking astronauts to upgrade the telescope this month.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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V838 Monocerotis This image provided by NASA shows the light echo around the variable star V838 Monocerotis taken by the Hubble Space Telescope released Saturday Oct. 27, 2006. The unusual variable star V838 Monocerotis continues to puzzle astronomers. This previously inconspicuous star underwent an outburst early in 2002, during which it temporarily increased in brightness to become 600 000 times more luminous than our Sun. Signs are promising for a repair of the aging but popular Hubble Space Telescope, once thought doomed because of worries over astronaut safety. The decision rests with NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who hasn't yet made up his mind, NASA spokesman Dean Acosta said Friday in an e-mail. An announcement on the decision is expected Tuesday.

(AP PHoto/NASA)

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NGC 6357 This photo from the Hubble Spadce Telescope, supplied by NASA and the European Space Agency on Monday Dec. 11, 2006, shows part of the constellation Scorpius centered on the large emission nebula NGC 6357 which has star cluster Pismis 24 in its center. Astronomers have reported this month that a star in the Pismis 24 cluster, which had been thought to be one of the heaviest stars in the Milky Way, is actually two stars and possible three. This image is a color composite taken by the Digitized Sky Survey.

(AP Photo/ ESA-NASA)

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NGC 2808 This photo supplied by NASA-ESA on Wednesday, May 2, 2007, shows a Hubble Space Telescope image of a dense swarm of stars in the central region of the globular cluster NGC 2808. Astronomers were surprised when Hubble spied three generations of cluster stars. For decades, astronomers thought that cluster stars formed at the same time, in the same place, and from the same material, and have co-evolved for billions of years. Scientists now believe that they can go through several periods of intense stellar formation rather than the previously accepted single burst. Globular clusters are among the earliest settlers of our Milky Way Galaxy, born during our galaxy's formation. The stars were born within 200 million years very early in the life of the 12.5-billion-year-old massive cluster. Clusters are compact swarms of typically hundreds of thousands of stars held together by gravity. Of the about 150 known globular clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy, NGC 2808 is one of the most massive, containing more than 1 million stars.

(AP Photo/NASA-ESA)

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Cassiopeia A An image provided by NASA is a false-color picture showing the many sides of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. It is made up of images taken by three of NASA's Great Observatories, using three different wavebands of light. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red; visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope are yellow; and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are green and blue. Astronomers have unearthed secrets from the grave of the star that blasted apart in a supernova explosion long ago. The discovery, represents the first time astronomers have been able to resurrect the life history of a supernova remnant in our own galaxy. Cassiopeia A is the burnt-out corpse of a massive star that ended its life in a fiery supernova about 11,300 years ago. Because it is 11,000 light-years from Earth, the light from its explosion would have reached Earth, sweeping right past it, about 300 years ago.

(AP Photo/HO/NASA)

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Omega/Swan nebul... This 2003 image from the Hubble telescope, provided by NASA, shows a storm of turbulent gases in the Omega/Swan nebula.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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NGC 3324 In this image provided by NASA Thursday Oct. 2, 2008 shows landscape' image from the cosmos to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's Hubble Heritage Project. Cutting across a nearby star-forming region, called NGC 3324, are the "hills and valleys" of gas and dust displayed in intricate detail. Set amid a backdrop of soft, glowing blue light are wispy tendrils of gas as well as dark trunks of dust that are light-years in height. NGC 3324 is located in the constellation Carina, about 7,200 light-years away from Earth. The abrupt, mysterious failure of the command and data-handling system for Hubble's science instruments Saturday Sept. 28, 2008 means that the telescope is unable to capture and beam down the data needed to produce its stunning deep space images.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Fomalhaut In this image released by NASA, a dust ring, seen in red, surround the star Fomalhaut, that resides at the center of the image, and not visible to the human eye in this image. The Hubble Telescope discovered the fuzzy image of the planet, known as Fomalhaut b, which is no more that a white speck in the lower right portion of the dust ring that surrounds the star.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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NGC 1569 This image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and released Thursday Nov. 20, 2008 showcases the brilliant core of NGC 1569 one of the most active star making galaxies in our local neighborhood. The entire core is 5,000 light-years wide. According to scientists a new analysis of NGC 1569 shows that it is one and a half times farther from Earth than astronomers previously thought. The extra distance places the galaxy in the middle of a group of about 10 galaxies centered on the spiral galaxy IC 342. Gravitational interactions among the group's galaxies may be compressing gas in NGC 1569 and igniting the star-birthing frenzy.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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NGC-4921 In this image provided by NASA shows the very deep image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and released Thursday Feb. 5, 2009 shows the spiral galaxy NGC-4921 along with a spectacular backdrop of more distant galaxies. It was created from a total of 80 separate pictures through yellow and near-infrared filters.

(AP Photo/NASA/JPL)

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Boomerang Nebula In this image provided by NASA Tuesday Sept. 13, 2005 the Hubble Space Telescope "caught" the Boomerang Nebula in these new images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes (or cones) of matter that are being ejected from a central star. Over the last 1,500 years, nearly one and a half times the mass of our Sun has been lost by the central star of the Boomerang Nebula in an ejection process known as a bipolar outflow. The nebula's name is derived from its symmetric structure as seen from ground-based telescopes. Hubble's sharp view is able to resolve patterns and ripples in the nebula very close to the central star that are not visible from the ground.

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MCG+12-02-001 MCG+12-02-001 consists of a pair of galaxies visibly affected by gravitational interaction as material is flung out in opposite directions. A large galaxy can be seen at the top of the frame and a smaller galaxy resembling an erupting volcano is at the bottom. The bright core of this galaxy emerges from the tip of the volcano . MCG+12-02-001 is a luminous infrared system that radiates with more than a hundred billion times the luminosity of our Sun. It is located some 200 million light-years away from Earth toward the constellation of Cassiopeia, the Seated Queen. (Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration)

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Messier 101 This image provided by NASA Tuesday Feb. 10, 2009 shows the spiral galaxy Messier 101 and is a composite of views from the Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The red color shows Spitzer's view in infrared light. It highlights the heat emitted by dust lanes in the galaxy where stars can form. The yellow color is Hubble's view in visible light. Most of this light comes from stars, and they trace the same spiral structure as the dust lanes. The blue color shows Chandra's view in X-ray light. Such composite images allow astronomers to see how features seen in one wavelength match up with those seen in another wavelength.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Cartwheel galaxy This false-color composite image provided by NASA Thursday April 2, 2009 shows the Cartwheel galaxy as seen by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's Far Ultraviolet detector (blue); the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera-2 in B-band visible light (green); the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) at 8 microns (red); and the Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer-S array instrument (purple). Approximately 100 million years ago, a smaller galaxy plunged through the heart of Cartwheel galaxy, creating ripples of brief star formation. In this image, the first ripple appears as an ultraviolet-bright blue outer ring. The blue outer ring is so powerful in the GALEX observations that it indicates the Cartwheel is one of the most powerful UV-emitting galaxies in the nearby universe. Although astronomers have not identified exactly which galaxy collided with the Cartwheel, two of three candidate galaxies can be seen in this image to the bottom left of the ring, one as a neon blob and the other as a green spiral.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Carina Nebula This 2007 image, released by NASA for the Hubble Space Telescope's 17th anniversary, shows a region of star birth and death in the Carina Nebula looking much like an abstract painting. The nebula contains at least a dozen brilliant stars that are 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun, according to the NASA description.

(AP Photo/NASA)v

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Hubble Ultra Dee... This 2004 image provided by NASA shows what the space agency scientists call the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. In this composite image, the Hubble Space Telescope looks the farthest we can into the universe, capturing light from 13 billion years ago when the universe was only 700 million years old.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Orion Nebula This 2006 composite image provided by NASA shows thousands of stars forming in the cloud of gas and dust known as the Orion nebula, as viewed by the Hubble Space Telescope. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image assembled from 100 different images sent back by the Hubble Space Telescope. The original Hubble pictures are black and white photos, which are then carefully colorized.

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Kohoutek 4-55 This image has been released by NASA as the last "pretty" image made by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The image made May 4, 2009 is of the planetary nebula known as Kohoutek 4-55. It is one of a series of planetary nebulae that were named after their discoverer, Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek. A planetary nebula contains the outer layers of a red giant star that were expelled into interstellar space when the star was in the late stages of its life. Ultraviolet radiation emitted from the remaining hot core of the star ionizes the ejected gas shells, causing them to glow. The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 will be replace during the space shuttle mission scheduled to launch Monday May 11, 2009.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Three-Way Tug of... This photo, supplied by NASA-ESA, is a new Hubble Space Telescope image of three galaxies locked in a gravitational tug-of-war that may result in the eventual demise of one of them. The three pictured galaxies -- NGC 7173, middle left, NCG 7174,middle right, and NGC 7176, lower right,-- are part of the Hickson Compact Group 90, named after astronomer Paul Hickson, who first catalogued these small clusters of galaxies in the 1980s. NGC 7173 and NGC 7176 appear to be smooth, normal elliptical galaxies without much gas and dust. In stark contrast, NGC 7174 is a mangled spiral galaxy, barely clinging to independent existence as it is ripped apart by its close neighbors. The strong tidal interaction surging through the galaxies has dragged a significant number of stars away from their home galaxies. These stars are now spread out, forming a tenuous luminous component in the galaxy group.

(AP Photo/ NASA, ESA - R. Sharples)

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Arp 148 This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008 shows Arp 148, the aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion. The collision between the two parent galaxies produced a shockwave effect that first drew matter into the center and then caused it to propagate outwards in a ring. The elongated companion perpendicular to the ring suggests that Arp 148 is a unique snapshot of an ongoing collision. Arp 148 is nicknamed "Mayall's object" and is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, approximately 500 million light-years away.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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NGC 6050 vs. IC ... NGC 6050/IC 1179 (Arp 272) is a remarkable collision between two spiral galaxies, NGC 6050 and IC 1179, and is part of the Hercules Galaxy Cluster, located in the constellation of Hercules. The galaxy cluster is part of the Great Wall of clusters and superclusters, the largest known structure in the universe. The two spiral galaxies are linked by their swirling arms. Arp 272 is located some 450 million light-years away from Earth and is the number 272 in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

(Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage)

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ESO 593-8 ESO 593-8 is an impressive pair of interacting galaxies with a feather-like galaxy crossing a companion galaxy. The two components will probably merge to form a single galaxy in the future. The pair is adorned with a number of bright blue star clusters. ESO 593-8 is located in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Archer, some 650 million light-years away from Earth.

(Photo: University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

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NGC 5331 This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008 shows NGC 5331, a pair of interacting galaxies beginning to "hold their arms". There is a blue trail which appears in the image flowing to the right of the system. NGC 5331 is very bright in the infrared, with about a hundred billion times the luminosity of the Sun. It is located in the constellation Virgo, the Maiden, about 450 million light-years away from Earth.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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UGC 8335 UGC 8335 is a strongly interacting pair of spiral galaxies resembling two ice skaters. The interaction has united the galaxies via a bridge of material and has yanked two strongly curved tails of gas and stars from the outer parts of their bodies . Both galaxies show dust lanes in their centers. UGC 8335 is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, about 400 million light-years from Earth. It is the 238th galaxy in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

(Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration)

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ESO 77-14 This Hubble image of ESO 77-14 is a stunning snapshot of a celestial dance performed by a pair of similar sized galaxies. Two clear signatures of the gravitational tug of war between the galaxies are the bridge of material that connects them and the disruption of their main bodies. The galaxy on the right has a long, bluish arm while its companion has a shorter, redder arm. This interacting pair is in the constellation of Indus, the Indian, some 550 million light-years away from Earth. The dust lanes between the two galaxy centers show the extent of the distortion to the originally flat disks that have been pulled into three-dimensional shapes.

(Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration)

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NGC 5754 vs. NGC... This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008 shows a pair of interacting galaxies consisting of NGC 5754, the large spiral on the top and NGC 5752, the smaller companion in the bottom left corner of the image. The contrasting reactions of the two galaxies to their interaction are due to their differing masses and sizes. The photos were released to mark the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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VV 340A vs. VV 3... This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008, shows Arp 302, which consists of a pair of very gas-rich spiral galaxies in their early stages of interaction: VV 340A is seen edge-on to the left and VV 340B face-on to the right. An enormous amount of infrared light is radiated by the gas from massive stars that are forming at a rate simila to the most vigorous giant star-forming regions in our own Milky Way.

(AP Photo/NASA; ESA)

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LEDA 62867 vs. N... This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008, displays a beautiful pair of interacting spiral galaxies with swirling arms. The smaller of the two, dubbed LEDA 62867 and positioned to the left of the frame, seems to be safe for now, but will probably be swallowed by the larger spiral galaxy; NGC 6786, right, eventually. There is already some disturbance visible in both components. A supernova was seen to explode in the large spiral in 2004. NGC 6786 is located in the constellation of Draco; the Dragon; about 350 million light-years away.

(AP Photo/ NASA, ESA)

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NGC 520 This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008 , shows NGC 520, the product of a collision between two disc galaxies that started 300 million years ago. It exemplifies the middle stages of the merging process: the discs of the parent galaxies have merged together, but the nuclei have not yet coalesced. NGC 520 is one of the brightest galaxy pairs on the sky, and can be observed with a small telescope toward the constellation of Pisces, the Fish, having the appearance of a comet. It is about 100 million light-years away and about 100,000 light-years across.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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Arp 272 This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008 , shows a Hubble view of Arp 272, a remarkable collision between two spiral galaxies, NGC 6050 and IC 1179, and is part of the Hercules Galaxy Cluster, located in the constellation of Hercules. The galaxy cluster is part of the Great Wall of clusters and superclusters, the largest known structure in the Universe. The two spiral galaxies are linked by their swirling arms. Arp 272 is located some 450 million light-years away from Earth.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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NGC 6621 vs. NGC... This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008 , shows a Hubble view of Arp 81 is a strongly interacting pair of galaxies, seen about 100 million years after their closest approach. It consists of NGC 6621, to the left, and NGC 6622, to the right. NGC 6621 is the larger of the two, and is a very disturbed spiral galaxy. The encounter has pulled a long tail out of NGC 6621 that has now wrapped behind its body. The collision has also triggered extensive star formation between the two galaxies. Scientists believe that Arp 81 has a richer collection of young massive star clusters than the notable Antennae galaxies, which are much closer than Arp 81. The pair is located in the constellation of Draco, approximately 300 million light-years away from Earth.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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NGC 6670 This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008 shows the NGC 6670 pair of overlapping edge-on galaxies. Scientists believe that NGC 6670 has already experienced at least one close encounter and is now in the early stages of a second. The nuclei of the two galaxies are approximately 50,000 light-years apart. NGC 6670 glows in the infrared with more than a hundred billion times the luminosity of our Sun and is thought to be entering a starburst phase. The pair is located some 400 million light-years away from Earth.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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IC 1623 This image made by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA Thursday, April 24, 2008, shows a Hubble view of IC 1623, an interacting galaxy system that is very bright when observed in the infrared. One of the two galaxies, the infrared-bright, but optically obscured galaxy VV 114E, has a substantial amount of warm and dense gas. Warm and dense gas is also found in the overlap region connecting the two nuclei. Observations further support the notion that IC 1623 is approaching the final stage of its merger, when a violent central inflow of gas will trigger intense starburst activity that could boost the infrared luminosity above the ultraluminous threshold. IC 1623 is located about 300 million light-years away from Earth.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

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