Hubble's top ten gravitational lenses: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope serendipitous survey of the sky has uncovered exotic patterns, rings, arcs and crosses that are all optical mirages produced by a gravitational lens, nature's equivalent of having giant magnifying glass in space. Shown are the top 10 lens candidates uncovered in the deepest 100 Hubble fields. Hubble's sensitivity and high resolution allow it to see faint and distant lenses that cannot be detected with ground-based telescopes whose images are blurred by Earth's atmosphere.

Name: HST 01247+0352, HST 01248+0351, HST 12368+6212, HST 12531-2914, HST 14164+5215, HST 14176+5226, HST 15433+5352, HST 16302+8230, HST 16309+8230, HST 18078+4600
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Type : Gravitationally Lensed
Category: CosmologyGalaxies
Release date: 13 May 1999, 06:00
Credit: Kavan Ratnatunga (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) and NASA/ESA

Hubble finds variable stars in distant spiral galaxy: A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) view of the magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4603, the most distant galaxy in which a special class of pulsating stars called Cepheid variables have been found. It is associated with the Centaurus cluster, one of the most massive assemblages of galaxies in the nearby universe. The Local Group of galaxies, of which the Milky Way is a member, is moving in the direction of Centaurus at a speed of more than a million miles an hour (approx. 450 kilometres per second) under the influence of the gravitational pull of the matter in that direction.

Name: NGC 4603
Type: Local Universe : Star : Type : VariableLocal Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Centaurus
Distance: 120 million light years
Release date: 25 May 1999, 17:00
Credit: Jeffrey Newman (Univ. of California at Berkeley) and NASA/ESA

Supernova 1994D: Hubble Space Telescope image of supernova 1994D in galaxy NGC 4526.

Name: NGC 4526, SN 1994D
Type: Local Universe : Star : Evolutionary Stage : SupernovaLocal Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Virgo
Distance: 50 million light years
Release date: 25 May 1999, 17:00
Credit: NASA/ESA, The Hubble Key Project Team and The High-Z Supernova Search Team

Hubble snapshot captures life cycle of stars: The very energetic radiation from young hot stars in the star cluster NGC 3603 is bursting into colder gas and dust making the gas glow. The radiation from the stars has blown a 'bubble' around the cluster free from gas. In this stunning picture of the giant galactic nebula NGC 3603, the crisp resolution of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures various stages of the life cycle of stars in one single view.

Name: NGC 3603
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Open
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Carina
Distance: 20000 light years
Release date: 1 June 1999, 19:30
Credit: Wolfgang Brandner (JPL/IPAC), Eva K. Grebel (Univ. Washington), You-Hua Chu (Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and NASA/ESA

AB Aurigae disk (Hubble view): The Hubble telescope image on the right shows a windowpane-shaped occulting bar -- the dark bands running vertically through the middle of the image and horizontally across the upper part of it. The occulting bar covers the innermost part of the disk and star, about 7.1 billion miles (11.5 billion kilometers) or 1.4 times our solar system's diameter. The diagonal lines are the remnants of the diffraction spikes produced in Hubble telescope images of bright stars.

Name: AB Aurigae, IRAS 04525+3028
Type: Milky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Disk
Category: MiscellaneousStars
Distance: 450 light years
Release date: 2 June 1999, 19:30
Credit: C.A. Grady (National Optical Astronomy Observatories, NASA/ESA Goddard Space Flight Center), B. Woodgate (NASA/ESA Goddard Space Flight Center), F. Bruhweiler and A. Boggess (Catholic University of America), P. Plait and D. Lindler (ACC, Inc., Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Clampin ( Space Telescope Science Institute), and NASA/ESA, P. Kalas (SpaceTelescope Science Institute)

N159 in the Large Magellanic Cloud: A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope view of a turbulent cauldron of starbirth, called N159, taking place 170,000 light-years away in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Torrential stellar winds from hot newborn massive stars within the nebula sculpt ridges, arcs, and filaments in the vast cloud, which is over 150 light-years across.

Name: N159
Type: Local Universe : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Dorado
Distance: 170000 light years
Release date: 10 June 1999, 15:00
Credit: M. Heydari-Malayeri (Paris Observatory) and NASA/ESA

Magnificent details in a dusty spiral galaxy: This magnificent image of a spiral galaxy shows how these galaxies have central regions containing older and more red and yellow stars. In the spiral arms, stars are being born all the time, and therefore these arms contain more blue stars - and also large amounts of dust. In 1995, the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the HST Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale. An international team of astronomers, led by Dr. Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, observed this galaxy on 13 different occasions over the course of two months. Images were obtained with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) through three different colour filters. Based on their discovery and careful brightness measurements of variable stars in NGC 4414, the Key Project astronomers were able to make an accurate determination of the distance to the galaxy.

Name: IRAS 12239+3129, NGC 4414
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Distance: 60 million light years
Release date: 3 June 1999, 18:00
Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)

Hubble images a swarm of ancient stars: This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Located about 28,000 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters are particularly useful for studying stellar evolution, since all of the stars in the cluster have the same age (about 15 billion years), but cover a range of stellar masses. Every star visible in this image is either more highly evolved than, or in a few rare cases more massive than, our own Sun. Especially obvious are the bright red giants, which are stars similar to the Sun in mass that are nearing the ends of their lives.

Name: Messier 80, NGC 6093
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Globular
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Scorpius
Distance: 35000 light years
Release date: 1 July 1999, 18:00
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)

Mars at Opposition (the Acidalia Region): This image is centered near the location of the Pathfinder landing site. Dark sand dunes that surround the polar cap merge into a large, dark region called Acidalia. This area, as shown by images from the Hubble telescope and other spacecraft, is composed of dark, sand-sized grains of pulverized volcanic rock. Below and to the left of Acidalia are the massive Martian canyon systems of Valles Marineris, some of which form long linear markings that were once thought by some to be canals. Early morning clouds can be seen along the left limb of the planet, and a large cyclonic storm composed of water ice is churning near the polar cap.

Name: Acidalia, Mars
Type: Solar System : Planet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 30 June 1999, 15:00
Credit: Steve Lee (University of Colorado), Jim Bell (Cornell University), Mike Wolff (Space Science Institute), and NASA/ESA