Happy 35th birthday, Hubble Telescope! 10 times the iconic observatory blew astronomers' minds (photos)

The school-bus-sized observatory launched on April 24, 1990 .

The telescope has sent home more than 1.6 million observations contributing to over 21,000 scientific papers.

Hubble's legacy lies not just in its iconic visuals, but in how science-packed they typically are.

Astronomers have found the age and expansion rate of the universe, witness the birth and death of stars.

Hubble's iconic " Pillars of Creation " image captures towering columns of interstellar gas and dust within the Eagle Nebula .

Images of Pluto's surface helped scientists chart a safe course for the New Horizons mission to explore the Kuiper Belt .

In 2010 , the Hubble Space Telescope captured the first direct images of a suspected asteroid collision in the asteroid belt.

In 2013 , Hubble captured never-before-seen comet-like tails emanating from a space rock in the main asteroid belt.

The leading explanation is that the asteroid itself is a fragment of a larger space rock that broke apart in a collision about 200 million years ago .

In 2025 , astronomers completed a decade -long effort to create the most detailed panoramic image of our neighboring galaxy.