Deep-Space Photos: Hubble's Greatest Hits

Black Hole
On April 24, 1990, the telescope named after the great astronomer Edwin Hubble burst through earth's atmosphere and it has been taking photos of the edges of the known Universe ever since. Shortly after its launch, the Hubble snapped a photo of NGC 4261, an elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. Although the telescope had a flawed mirror at the time, astronomers nevertheless were able to detect a super massive black hole at least half a billion times larger than the sun at the center of this galaxy.

• A Brief History of the Hubble Space Telescope
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