The Universe in More Detail Than Ever before

First awesome pictures from refurbished Hubble telescope shows the universe in more detail than ever before

Space has never looked more beautiful.

These stunning images - taken by the rejuvenated

Hubble space telescope - have captured the jewe

l-bright colours of colliding galaxies, exploding stars and glowing nebulae.

They are Hubble's first deep spac

e photos since its repair mission in May and are sharper than any images taken before by the orbiting satellite.

This celestial object - NGC 6302 - looks like a delicate butterfly but is far from serene: What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually boiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit

The new views include colourful far-flung galax

ies, a densely packed star cluster and a butter

fly-shaped nebula - the eruption of gas from a dying star.

Hubble's new suite of instruments, installed during five space walks, are more sensitive and allow it to see everything from ultraviolet light all the way to near-infrared light.

'This marks a new beginning for Hubble,' sai

d Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

'The telescope has been given an extreme makeover and is now significantly more powerful tha n ever - well equipped to last far into the next decade.'

Stars bursting to life in chaotic Carina Nebula: These two images of a huge pillar of star birth demonstrate how observations taken in visible and in infrared light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal dramatically different views

Closer to home: The planet, Jupiter. Its volume is equal to 1,317 Earths. Hubble snapped the impact zone after a collision with a possible comet. It is the dark blemish at the bottom

Since Hubble was launched in 1990, its images have become some of the most iconic in the his

tory of photogr

aphy. Nasa says the telescope-should keep wo

rking until at l

east 2014, when it will be replaced by a more powerful observatory to be called the James Webb Spa

ce Telescope.

The latest images show the Butterfly Nebula, an extraordinary cluster of gas released fro

m a dyi

ng star which li

es in our Milky Way galaxy around 3,8

00 light years awa

y.

Stephan's Quintet: A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide colour range, from young, blue stars to aging, red stars. Stephan’s Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, as the name implies, is a group of five galaxies

Omega Centauri: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this view of a colourful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster. The image reveals a small region inside the globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million s

tars

The butterfly stretches for two light ye

ars - about half the distance between the

Sun and our nearest star Alpha Centuri.

The wings of the butterfly are rolling waves of gas heated to more than 36,000F. The gas is tearing acros

s space at 600,000 mph - fast enough to

travel from the Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes.

Hubble has also captured the Carina Nebula - a pillar of gas and dust - and a group of five galaxies called Stephan's Quintet which were first spotted in 1877.

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217: This image is the first of a celestial object taken with the newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope

Gravitational Lensing in Galaxy Cluster Abell 370: The Hubble Space Telescope's ACS has peered nearly 5 billion light-years away to reveal intricate details in this galaxy cluster