HUBBLE

Official @ESA feed for #Hubble Space Telescope — the space-based observatory which has revolutionised modern astronomy. #BFFinSpace with @ESA_Webb

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Messier 88 does have a supermassive black hole at its centre, but its path towards the centre of the Virgo Cluster is more determined by the entirety of its mass interacting with the massive galaxies at the centre of the cluster all taken together, rather than just its black hole.

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Spiralling towards the innermost reaches of the Virgo Cluster! ↩️

Access more space-themed .gifs at our giphy page: https://t.co/IVbbmd1EOs

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Our #HubbleTopImage features a galaxy 😈 which rules the neighbourhood!

ESO 306-17 is a large, bright elliptical galaxy in the southern sky of a type known as a ‘fossil group’ due to their isolation. But are they really like fossils – what is left of a once-active community – or do they have a more sinister history?

Did this galaxy ‘gobble up’ its neighbours? 🍴

Fossil groups may be the most extreme examples of galaxy cannibalism – hungry systems that don’t stop eating until they have devoured all of their neighbours.

Read more: https://t.co/9XAQL0fBFI

📷 @NASA , @ESA , and Michael West (ESO)

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In the 2026 ESA/Hubble and ESA/Webb calendar, the month of June features the young star cluster Pismis 24, which is found in the Lobster Nebula 🦞✨ approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth. This is one of the nearest sites of massive star birth!

Ready to print .pdf here: https://t.co/VMLirVGwqu

📷 @NASA , @ESA , @csa_asc , @stsci , A. Pagan (STScI)

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Read more here: https://t.co/fy1GsjHrOf

📷 @ESA / @Hubble_Space & @NASA , D. Thilker and the MAUVE-HST Team, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
🎶 Stellardrone - Billions and Billions 3/3

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Messier 88 (M88) is on a journey to the innermost reaches of the Virgo Cluster, a collection of more than 1000 galaxies bound by gravity, orbiting the massive elliptical galaxy at the centre 👹🌌 1/3

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As M88 approaches, it will experience ram pressure stripping (its gas will be swept away as it pushes through the gas between galaxies in the cluster). This will affect its ability to form stars, and change the course of its evolution! 2/3

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M88 will be changed by its journey thanks to ram pressure stripping – a process in which a galaxy’s gas is swept away as it pushes through the gas between galaxies in a cluster. This will affect its ability to form stars, and change the course of its evolution.

Read more: https://t.co/DsUWVwQwJq

📷 @ESA / @Hubble_Space & @NASA , D. Thilker and the MAUVE-HST Team 3/3

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Our ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month takes a journey to the centre of a galaxy cluster!

Messier 88 (M88) is located about 63 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair). It is a member of the Virgo Cluster, a collection of more than 1000 galaxies linked by fate! 1/3

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As they move through space, they also orbit the cluster’s centre of gravity. M88 is on a long, perilous cosmic journey that will bring it into the innermost reaches of the cluster – and draw close to the monstrous galaxy at the centre 👹🌌 2/3

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The study involved Hubble photographing hundreds of overlapping views of the same part of the Universe over nearly 1000 hours of observations!

Read more: https://t.co/sP8VGGje4b

📷 @NASA , @ESA , P. Simon (University of Bonn) and T. Schrabback (Leiden Observatory) 2/2

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Our #HubbleTopImage weighs up the COSMOS field ⚖️

This image shows the (mostly dark) matter distribution in the COSMOS field, created from data taken by Hubble and ground-based telescopes. 1/2

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Read more: https://t.co/rzZTLGsTn8

📷 @NASA , @ESA , and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgement: J. Hughes (Rutgers University) 2/2

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Our #HubbleTopImage features a celestial bauble 🪩

This sphere of gas appears to float serenely through space. Its apparent calm, however, hides an inner turmoil – it formed as a supernova’s expanding blast wave and ejected material tore through the nearby interstellar medium! 1/2

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📷 @NASA , @ESA , @csa_asc , @stsci , Ricardo Hueso (UPV), Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Thierry Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), J. Nichols (University of Leicester), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) 2/2

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In the 2026 ESA/Hubble and ESA/Webb calendar, the month of May puts the spotlight on Jupiter’s auroras. These auroras, captured here by @esa_webb , are hundreds of times brighter than those on Earth.

Ready to print .pdf here: https://t.co/6DLswkCLFf 1/2

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Spiralling around through space with NGC 3137! 🫨

Access more space-themed .gifs at our giphy page: https://t.co/hXQ4amdmRE

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It was still possible to do useful science with the telescope as launched, before its optics were corrected to give it its intended resolution. You can look in our image archive to see photos released before 1993: for example, here are Pluto (https://t.co/O5Gk6irXVf), Saturn (https://t.co/Czq9mhTjhy) and the Orion Nebula (https://t.co/pCzuyGPh2F).

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Happy Anniversary! 🎊

Hubble was launched #onthisday in 1990 and, every year since, it has been surprising us with its cosmic views 📸🌌 

Check out the best images Hubble had to offer in its 36th year in our latest #SpaceSparks episode! 1/2

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@annsnyu It wouldn’t sound like much — even the most dense nebulae have fewer particles than the vacuums we can create on Earth. A nebula is best appreciated from afar, fortunately for us!

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Flying through the Trifid Nebula!

This video ‘floats’ through the ridges of gas and dust in this distinctive nebula, captured anew by Hubble in an image as a gift for you to mark its 36th anniversary today. 1/3

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These gravitational lenses are one tool astronomers can use to extend Hubble’s vision beyond what it would normally be capable of observing. This way some of the very first galaxies in the Universe can be studied by astronomers!

Read more: https://t.co/h22ELVeZTi

📷 @NASA , @ESA , J. Richard (CRAL) and J.-P. Kneib (LAM). Acknowledgement: Marc Postman (STScI) 2/2

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Our #HubbleTopImage features a lensing cluster 🔎

The giant galaxy cluster in the centre of this image contains so much dark matter that its gravity bends the light of more distant objects. This means that for very distant galaxies in the background, the cluster’s gravitational field acts as a sort of magnifying glass, bending and concentrating the distant object’s light towards Hubble. 1/2