Best of Hubble and Webb – SpaceWeekly.com

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced its 2025 calendar, featuring the best images from the Hubble and Webb telescopes from the past year. And it’s free for you to download! Via ESA/Hubble, ESA/Webb.

Reposted from ESA.

ESA announces free Hubble and Webb 2025 calendar

To celebrate another year of exciting images and discoveries from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, the European Space Agency (ESA) has released a 2025 calendar showcasing beautiful imagery from both missions.

The 2025 calendar features a selection of images published in 2024, including shots of planets, star clusters, galaxies, and more. And it’s free! It can now be accessed electronically for anyone to print, share and enjoy. Find download links here, and see the calendar’s contents below.

Speaking of calendars … the 2025 EarthSky Lunar Calendar is now available. Get yours today!

January: Hubble revisits giant planet Jupiter

Jupiter is banded with stripes of brownish orange, light grey, soft yellow, and shades of cream, with many large storms and small white clouds punctuating the planet. At upper right of centre, a pair of storms appear next to each other: a deep-red, triangle-shaped cyclone and a reddish anticyclone. Toward the far-left edge of this view is Jupiter’s tiny orange-coloured moon Io. — The giant planet Jupiter, in all its banded glory, is revisited by Hubble in this image taken on January 6, 2024. A pair of battling storms are visible right of center: a deep red cyclone and a reddish anticyclone. To the left of the planet its volcanic moon Io appears. Via NASA/ ESA, J. DePasquale (STScI)/ A. Simon (NASA-GSFC).

February: Horsehead Nebula from Webb, Hubble and Euclid

A collage of three images of the Horsehead Nebula. In the left image labelled “Euclid (Visible-Infrared)”, the Nebula is seen amongst its surroundings. A small box around it connects to the second image labelled “Hubble (Infrared)”, where the Nebula is zoomed in on. A portion of the Nebula’s head has another box, which leads with a callout to the third image, labelled “Webb (Infrared)”, of that area. — This sharpest-ever infrared view of the famous Horsehead Nebula from Webb shows the depth and complexity of the thick clumps of material like never before. Also featured are Hubble’s 23rd anniversary image, and one of the first images from ESA’s Euclid telescope. Via ESA/ Euclid/ Euclid Consortium/ NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), ESA/Webb, CSA, K. Misselt (University of Arizona) and A. Abergel (IAS/University Paris-Saclay, CNRS), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb).

March: Webb’s view of galaxy pair Arp 107

A pair of interacting galaxies. The larger of the two galaxies is slightly right of centre, and is composed of a hazy, bright, white center and a ring of gaseous filaments, which are different shades of red and orange. Toward the bottom left and bottom right of the ring are filaments of gas spiraling inward toward the core. At the top left of the ring is a noticeable gap, bordered by two large, orange pockets of dust and gas. The smaller galaxy is made of hazy and white gas and dust, which become more diffuse further away from its center. To this galaxy’s bottom left, there is a smaller, more diffuse gas cloud that wafts outward toward the edges of the image. Many red, orange, and white galaxies are spread throughout, with some being hazier in appearance and others having more defined spiral patterns. — The two bright ‘eyes’ and semicircular ‘smile’ in the Webb image of this spiral galaxy are the result of an off-center collision with the elliptical galaxy now seen here to its left. A tenuous gas bridge runs between the galaxies, together known as Arp 107. Via NASA/ ESA/ CSA/ STScI.

April: Hubble captures the Little Dumbbell Nebula

A Hubble image of the Little Dumbbell Nebula. The name comes from its shape, which is a two-lobed structure of colourful, mottled glowing gases that resemble a balloon that has been pinched around a middle waist. Like an inflating balloon, the lobes are expanding into space from a dying star seen as a white dot in the centre. Blistering ultraviolet radiation from the super-hot star is causing the gases to glow. The red colour is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen. — M76, the colorful Little Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula created by a collapsing red giant star. Hot, vibrant gases are propelled outwards by the now white dwarf’s stellar winds; the red color is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen. Hubble turned to this favorite target of amateur astronomers for its 34th anniversary in April 2024. Via NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI).

May: Starburst galaxy NGC 5253, from Hubble

An oval-shaped galaxy, made up of many point-like stars. It is softly lit from the centre, brightest and slightly blue at the very centre and fading to darkness at the edges. Surrounding the galaxy’s core are reddish clouds of gas and dust, most around or behind the core, but a few wisps are in front of it and block some light. Some faraway galaxies and two foreground stars can be seen around the galaxy — This is NGC 5253, a starburst galaxy filled with extraordinary star clusters and continually forming stars. Hubble’s image reveals super star clusters lurking in its core among dark dust clouds. As a dwarf galaxy, it resembles ancient galaxies and is a laboratory to study star and galaxy evolution. Via ESA/Hubble/ NASA, A. Zezas, D. Calzetti.

June: Webb images the cosmic gems arc

A field of galaxies on the black background of space. In the middle is a collection of dozens of yellowish galaxies that form a foreground galaxy cluster. Among them are distorted linear features, which mostly appear to follow invisible concentric circles curving around the centre of the image. The linear features are created when the light of a background galaxy is bent and magnified through gravitational lensing. A variety of brightly coloured, red and blue galaxies of various shapes are scattered across the image, making it feel densely populated. — Among the many massive galaxies of the lensing galaxy cluster shown here, SPT-CL J0615-5746, lies the Cosmic Gems arc. An infant galaxy from just 460 million years after the Big Bang, it is visible thanks to strong gravitational lensing by the cluster. Astronomers are using Webb to map its inner workings. Via ESA/Webb/ NASA/ CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration.

July: Binary star R Aquarii from Hubble

A bright binary star surrounded by a nebula. The star, in the centre, is a large white spot surrounded by a circular glow. It has a large, X-shaped set of diffraction spikes around it. The nebula extends far above, below, left and right of the star in long, arcing shapes made of thin, multicoloured filaments — mostly red and greenish colours, but lit in a bright cyan near the star where its light illuminates the gas. — R Aquarii is a binary star system surrounded by a large, dynamic nebula. Outbursts eject powerful jets, forming loops and trails as plasma emerges in streamers. They are energized by blistering radiation from the stellar duo to glow in visible light. Via NASA/ ESA/ M. Stute, M. Karovska, D. de Martin & M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble).

August: Webb reveals star cluster in Perseus

A nebula made up of cloudy gas and dust in the form of soft and wispy clouds and, in the centre, thin and highly detailed layers pressed close together. Large, bright stars surrounded by six long points of light are dotted over the image, as well as some small, point-like stars embedded in the clouds. The clouds are lit up in blue close to the stars; orange colours show clouds that glow in infrared light. — A stunning mosaic of images from Webb showcases the nearby star-forming cluster NGC 1333 in the Perseus molecular cloud. Large patches of orange represent gas glowing in the infrared as ionized material ejected from young stars collides with the surrounding cloud. They are hallmarks of a very active site of star formation. Via ESA/Webb/ NASA/ CSA, A. Scholz, K. Muzic, A. Langeveld, R. Jayawardhana.

September: Hubble probes Omega Centauri star cluster

A globular cluster, appearing as a highly dense and numerous collection of shining stars. Some appear a bit larger and brighter than others, with the majority of stars appearing blue and orange. They are scattered mostly uniformly, but in the centre they crowd together more and more densely, and merge into a stronger glow at the cluster’s core. — Omega Centauri is the brightest, largest, and most massive Milky Way globular cluster known. This image shows the depth and extent of its population of stars. In 2024, astronomers found new evidence in Hubble data that it hides an intermediate-mass black hole at its centre. Via ESA/Hubble/ NASA, M. Häberle (MPIA).

October: Serpens Nebula, captured by Webb

A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust and within that orange dust are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. The centre of the image is filled with mostly blue gas. At the centre, there is one particularly bright star that has an hourglass shadow above and below it. To the right of that is what looks like a vertical eye-shaped crevice with a bright star at the centre. The gas to the right of the crevice is a darker orange. — The Serpens Nebula is home to a particularly dense cluster of newly forming stars. This Webb image shows the nebula’s center. Filaments and wisps of different hues represent reflected starlight from still-forming protostars within the cloud. Dust in front of that reflection appears in an orange, diffuse shade. Via NASA/ ESA/ CSA/ STScI, K. Pontoppidan (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory), J. Green (Space Telescope Science Institute).

November: 4 spiral galaxies from Hubble

4 square images of 4 different spiral galaxies, with bright, cream centers and wispy blue spirals surrounding them, against a black starry backdrop. — Hubble continued its long run of capturing beautiful celestial objects in fine color and detail in 2024. And this year, as ever, many were spiral galaxies. Seen here are NGC 4951, NGC 3810, NGC 3783 and Messier 90, gems from a treasure trove of new Hubble observations. Via ESA/ Hubble.

December: Wonderful Westerlund 1 from Webb

A dense cluster of bright stars, each with six large and two small diffraction spikes, due to the telescope’s optics. They have a variety of sizes depending on their brightness and distance from us in the cluster, and different colours reflecting different types of star. Patches of billowing red gas can be seen in and around the cluster, lit up by the stars. Small stars in the cluster blend into a background of distant stars and galaxies on black. — Westerlund 1 is one of our galaxy’s few remaining super star clusters. Its large, dense, and diverse population of massive stars is unrivalled in the Milky Way galaxy. Webb can pierce the dense dust surrounding it and study its population of lower-mass stars. Via ESA/Webb/ NASA/ CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), M. G. Guarcello (INAF-OAPA) and the EWOCS team.

Bottom line: The European Space Agency has announced its 2025 calendar, featuring the best images from the Hubble and Webb telescopes from the past year. And it’s free for you to download!

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