Cosmic Vistas

For as long as there have been people to look up, the night sky has been a source of wonder and mystery. In the quest to explore the universe, our greatest ally is the Hubble telescope.

In the beginning, there was light. So much light that when the universe formed, every corner of space blazed white-hot. But it didn't last... For 200 million years, darkness reined, then the light was reborn.

Color is essential to both art and astronomy. When measured, it can tell us the temperature, chemical composition, and motion of astronomical objects.

For most of human history, the night sky seemed two-dimensional. A marvelous canvas that stretched from horizon to horizon. To our ancestors, this perspective gave no hint to the universe's true depth.

The Hubble telescope finds design on a grand scale, especially when it zooms in on the spiral galaxies that populate the universe around us.

Like the vanishing point in a perspective drawing, the core of a neighboring galaxy attracts our eyes and makes up feel like we are gazing down a deep well, with a bright shining center. But this illusion conceals an even deeper truth.