The radio galaxy PKS 0521-36: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has obtained the most detailed and highest resolution optical images of the radio galaxy PKS 0521-36. The observations were made with the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera. The galaxy PKS 0521-36, which is at a distance of about one billion light years from us, is known to be a source of powerful radio emission. It has a quasar-like nucleus that is very bright, both at optical and radio wavelengths. This galaxy belongs to a small group of radio sources which have "jets" that have been seen at both radio and at optical wavelengths. These jets show that high energy material is streaming out from the nuclei at high velocity, often close to the speed of light.

Name: IRAS F05212-3630, QSO B0521-365
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=0.05 (redshift)
Release date: 4 October 1990, 05:00
Credit: NASA/ESA

Radio galaxy PKS 0521-36 - ground-based view: In this ground-based image taken with the European Southern Observatory 3.6-meter telescope, the whole optical jet is embedded within the galaxy. To see the jet, star light from the galaxy is subtracted by computer processing.

Name: IRAS F05212-3630, QSO B0521-365
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=0.05 (redshift)
Release date: 4 October 1990, 05:00
Credit: NASA & ESA

Supernova 1987A: The European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera on board NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided a fascinating close-up view of Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Since they first saw the initial explosion in February 1987, astronomers world-wide have been monitoring closely the evolution of SN 1987A using both ground-based and space instrumentation. During the three and a half years following its discovery, the supernova initially increased its brightness by a factor of 100 and has since dimmed one million times in brightness from its peak intensity. This dimming has enabled astronomers to take a closer look at the supernova proper and its surroundings.

Name: SN 1987A
Type: Local Universe : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Supernova
Category: Stars
Distance: 170000 light years
Release date: 13 September 1990, 06:00
Credit: NASA/ESA

Comet levy: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed the inner core surrounding the icy nucleus of Comet Levy more clearly than can be done with ground-based telescopes The image was taken September 27th with the HST's Wide Field and PlanetaryCamera, when the comet was at a distance of about 160,000,000 kilometers (100,000,000 miles) from Earth.

Name: Comet Levy
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 October 1990, 05:00
Credit: NASA/ESA

The Gravitational Lens G2237 + 0305: The European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera on board NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with the most detailed image ever taken of the gravitational lens G2237 + 0305, sometimes referred to as the "Einstein Cross". The photograph shows four images of a very distant quasar which has been multiple-imaged by a relatively nearby galaxy acting as a gravitational lens. The angular separation between the upper and lower images is 1.6 arc seconds. The quasar seen here is at a distance of approximately 8 billion light years, whereas the galaxy at a distance of 400 million light years is 20 times closer. The light from the quasar is bent in its path by the gravitational field of the galaxy. This bending has produced the four bright outer images seen in the photograph. The bright central region of the galaxy is seen as the diffuse central object.

Name: G2237 + 0305
Type: Local Universe : Cosmology : Phenomenon : Lensing
Category: Cosmology
Release date: 13 September 1990, 06:00
Credit: NASA & ESA

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Discovers Jet Structure in the Orion Nebula: This photograph, made with the Wide Field Camera on NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, reveals the detailed structure of a newly discovered jet of material streaming away from a young star in the Orion Nebula. While similar jets have been seen from the ground, the new observations reveal the structure of this jet with unprecedented clarity. Of particular significance is the fact that the jet is bright along its edges in the light of gaseous sulfur atoms (shown here in red). Experts believe this structure to be due to shock fronts at the boundary between the jet and the surrounding gas of the Orion Nebula. Astronomers say that jets such as this are of interest because they provide clues about how stars form and how young stars affect their environment. The field shown is only a very small portion of the "Great Nebula" in Orion, which is a tremendous "stellar nursery" about 7 light years in size and located approximately 1500 light years from the Earth. The nebula glows in a number of distinct colors, each due to atoms of a different chemical element. In the picture, emission from ionised sulfur items are shown in red, light from ionised oxygen atoms is shown in blue, and light from hydrogen atoms is shown in green. The Orion Nebula glows because of the intense ultraviolet light from a cluster of hot young stars within it. The detailed structural information in these images, which show features that are smaller than our solar system (about 6 light hours across), is possible thanks to the high spatial resolution (sharpness) of images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers say that despite the spherical aberration of the telescope's main mirror, about 15% of the light from an object is still focussed into a very tight image, and that allows the small scale structure of objects to be seen better than in ground based images which are blurred by the earth's atmosphere. The images shown here have been computer processed to partially correct for the effect of the mirror's flaw. The Wide Field/Planetary Camera was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology.

Name: M 42, Messier 42, NGC 1976, Orion Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 4 October 1990, 05:00
Credit: NASA/ESA

M15 globular cluster core: This picture shows the central region of the globular cluster M15 as imaged by the Planetary Camera of the Hubble Space Telescope. M15 is a tightly bound cluster of about a million stars contained within our own galaxy. At the center of the image, the density of stars is roughly a million times what it is in our own part of the galaxy. Analysis of this image shows that M15 is now recovering from an implosion in which the stars in the cluster center collapsed into a dense aggregate. This image has been processed to remove the effects of spherical aberration. At the distance of M15, the region shown is 2.26 light years on a side.

Name: M 15, Messier 15, NGC 7078
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Globular
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Pegasus
Distance: 3500 light years
Release date: 16 January 1991, 06:00
Credit: NASA/ESA

Orion Nebula HST view versus ground-based view: This composite image shows the location of a one light-year square region in the Orion Nebula, which was imaged by WFPC. The area is near the edge of a cavity of ionized hydrogen, which is heated by ultraviolet radiation from a star cluster at the center of the nebula. (Ground-based Orion Nebula photo copyright David Malin/Anglo-Australian Southern Observatory)

Name: M 42, Messier 42, NGC 1976, Orion Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 4 October 1990, 05:00
Credit: NASA/ESA & Anglo-Austrailian Observatory