Adam and Eve surely gazed into the heavens and wondered what was there and just as certainly our curiosity about the sky hasn't diminished over the eons. Today, giant leaps in knowledge of the cosmos provide excitement and joy to millions around the world but paradoxically each new piece of information brings dozens of new questions.

 
To solve some of the old mysteries NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) team interprets space photos and offers online access to thousands of images and descriptions. However, the sheer number of objects can be overwhelming. These pages are a collection of some of the most interesting discoveries but the Hubble Images' site is updated constantly so those interested in this subject should visit the Hubble Site on regular basis.

Astronomers have assembled the first definitive detection of a background infrared glow across the sky produced by dust warmed by all the stars that have existed since the beginning of time. For scientists, the discovery of this "fossil radiation" is akin to turning out all the lights in a bedroom only to find the walls, floor, and ceiling aglow with an eerie luminescence.

 
The telltale infrared radiation puts a limit on the total amount of energy released by all the stars in the universe. Astronomers say this will greatly improve development of models explaining how stars and galaxies were born and evolved after the Big Bang. These three pictures are maps of the full sky as seen in infrared light.

 
The top picture represents the brightness of the full sky as seen in infrared light. The middle picture is a view of the sky after the foreground glow of the solar system dust has been extracted. After the infrared light from our solar system and galaxy has been removed, what remains is a uniform, cosmic, infrared background. [Could the Universe really be a Big Mac? or perhaps husbands had it figured out long ago. ... It may be an old football.]

 
In Feb. 2003, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center posted new revelations from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Launched on June 30, 2001, WMAP maintains an orbit a million miles from Earth. During a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky, WMAP captured the infant Universe in sharp focus. One of the biggest surprises revealed is that the first generation of stars in the Universe first ignited only 200 million years after the Big Bang, much earlier than many scientists had expected. In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the Universe at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably small one percent margin of error. WMAP found that the Big Bang and Inflation theories continue to ring true. The contents of the Universe include 4% atoms (ordinary matter), 23% of an unknown type of dark matter, and 73% of a mysterious dark energy.

Planet Earth, is one of nine planets (if you count Pluto) that revolve around the small star, Sol, our own Sun. The Sun and it's planets make our Solar System. Sol is one of the millions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Scientist have determined that our medium-sized Milky Way galaxy is located on the outer edge of the Universe, at least as far as the Universe has been observed (see above). Within the observed universe there are billions upon billions of galaxies.

The Milky Way Galaxy belongs to the Local Group, a smaller group of 3 large and over 30 small galaxies, and is the second largest (after the Andromeda Galaxy M31) but perhaps the most massive member of this group. M31, at about 2.9 million light years, is the nearest large galaxy, but a number of faint galaxies are much closer: Many of the dwarf Local Group members are satellites or companions of the Milky Way. The closest of all is SagDEG at about 80,000 light years from us and some 50,000 light years from the Galactic Center, followed by the more conspicuous Large and Small Magellanic Cloud at 179,000 and 210,000 light years, respectively.

Many closeup views in the HST photos are of nebula, stars, star clusters, and dust clouds in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. However, Hubble has taken some striking distant shots, some to the center and far edge of the observable universe. All are amazing.