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The Best NASA

Photographs of
2010
By Caroline Hirsch
December 13, 2010

As a science geek married to someone

who attended both Space Camp and
Space Academy (and who introduced
me to the wonders of astronaut ice
cream), it wasn’t lost on me that this
year was the twentieth anniversary of
the Hubble Space Telescope, nasa’s
longest-lived and most productive
space observatory. Hubble has brought
us visions of space that are wondrously
sharp and clear; though their purpose
is scienti$c, the images have more
than a touch of the sublime. Here are
my favorites from among the Hubble
photographs NASA released this year;
more can be seen in the Abrams book
“Hubble: A Journey Through Space
and Time,” created in collaboration
with the Space Telescope Science
Institute (STScI). Captions courtesy
nasa and STScI.

2/9

This image shows a majestic face-on spiral

galaxy located deep within the Coma
Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million
light-years away, in the northern
constellation Coma Berenices. The galaxy,
known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes
of dust and gas near its center. These are
silhouetted against glowing newborn star
clusters and iridescent pink clouds of
hydrogen, the existence of which indicates
ongoing star formation. This natural-color
Hubble image, which combines data
obtained in 2006, 2007, and 2009 from
the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and
the Advanced Camera for Surveys, required
28 hours of exposure time. Credit: NASA,
ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: K. Cook
(Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory)

More: Hubble Space Telescope NASA

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