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Imagine that we could really have a time machine that would show us what happened in the early Universe. 

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A machine that would become more powerful and give us progressively clearer pictures, even as it aged. 

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Imagine that the machine could detect worlds beyond our Solar System, help map invisible dark matter and characterise the expansion of the Universe. 

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It may come as a surprise, but this time machine does exist and is silently floating above us. 

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Familiar enough to many to be taken for granted, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope celebrates two astonishing decades in orbit on the 24th of April.

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This is the Hubblecast! 

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News and images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

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Traveling through time and space with our host, Dr J, aka Dr Joe Liske.

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Wow, this thing travels over 28,000 kilometres per hour…

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930,000 observations... 570,000 images of 30,000 celestial objects…

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twenty years, two decades and 110,000 trips around our planet…

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Dr J, 30 seconds to showtime!

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OK

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After two decades of service to the scientific community and the public worldwide, 

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tonight we are recognising the achievements of what is, arguably, the most renowned and beloved space observatory in history. 

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Welcome to the show! 

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Maybe you know it for its awe-inspiring images, or, 

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maybe you know it for its fundamental scientific discoveries, but chances are, you do know it.

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Tonight we honour the Hubble Space Telescope with the Cosmic Lifetime Achievement Award.

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It is not just about pretty pictures, even though Hubble is famous for some of the most intriguing and coincidently artistic images in the Universe. 

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Astronomers — professional and amateur alike 

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have been translating the magnificent colours and poetic swirls of these images into hard-edged science. 

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Twenty years of observations have produced more than 45 terabytes of data, enough information to fill nearly 5800 DVDs. 

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Each month the orbiting observatory generates more than 360 gigabytes of data, which could fill the storage space of an average home computer.

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It is a real honour to be able to celebrate my dear friend Hubble. 

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Tonight we pay tribute to your venerable achievements and we look forward to the work that lies ahead of you. 

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We will look at some of your most outstanding accomplishments and your most loved images from the past twenty years. 

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One of your most recent achievements takes us back to the early days of the Universe. 

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Scientists and space enthusiasts worldwide were wowed by the deepest pictures of our Universe captured by Hubble. 

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The first Hubble Deep Field was taken in 1995 and opened a whole new field of research. 

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Hubble has since repeated the success and the latest Hubble Ultra Deep Field image lets us see back in time 13 billion years — just 600 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang! 

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This was one of the first and most spectacular datasets taken with Hubble’s brand-new  Wide Field Camera 3. 

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By studying galaxies at different epochs, astronomers can see how galaxies change over time.

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A staple of science fiction films for decades, black holes are among the Universe’s most elusive and intriguing enigmas. 

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Their existence was confirmed by Hubble in 1994 when Hubble’s high resolution made it possible to see the effects of a black hole’s gravitational attraction on its surroundings.

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Hubble has also proved that black holes are most likely present at the centres of all galaxies. 

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After this discovery, the orbiting observatory then began further examination of the relationship between supermassive black holes and their home galaxies 

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and found that a galaxy’s bulge and the mass of its black hole are closely interconnected.

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Hubble could also be honoured with a congeniality award for getting to know our neighbours in the Solar System. 

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Hubble has imaged most of the planets and has the advantage of being able to carry out long-term studies from its vantage point 600 kilometres above the Earth. 

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Have you ever been lucky enough to see the enchanting northern or southern lights? 

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Well, Hubble has captured the alluring aurorae that light up the poles of the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, 

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and it has caught glimpses of comet impacts on Jupiter. 

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Aside from the planets, Hubble has also studied asteroids like the 500-kilometre-sized Vesta. 

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The resulting map of its surface shows a strange world with a gigantic impact crater and, possibly, even ancient lava flows.

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But what is happening beyond our immediate cosmic neighbourhood? 

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This is a topic that fascinates many of us and Hubble has not only helped to detect worlds outside the confines of the Solar System,

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but it can also help to characterise them.

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In November 2001, Hubble made the first direct detection of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. 

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In this case, it was the Sun-like star HD 209458, located about 150 light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus. 

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Knowing the makeup of a planet’s atmosphere allows scientists to determine whether “life as we know it” could conceivably exist on the “alien world”. 

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In 2008, Hubble made the first visible-light image of an extrasolar planet. 

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It’s in orbit around the bright southern star Fomalhaut, which is about 25 light-years away in the constellation of Piscis Australis. 

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The star is surrounded by an immense debris disc measuring over 35 billion kilometres across.

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The planet is orbiting about 3 billion kilometres inside the disc’s sharp inner edge, which is about 10 times the distance between Saturn and the Sun.

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By measuring bright stars that vary predictably, known as Cepheids, Hubble has been able to use these stars as distance markers, 

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laying a firm foundation for subsequent measurements that led to the discovery of the accelerating Universe

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and a more precise determination of its age.

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Astronomers have used Hubble to observe Cepheids and to pin down their distances much more accurately. 

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These results were used as a stepping-stone to measure the distances to supernovae, which, in turn, told us about the scale of the Universe. 

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As  a result, today we know the age of the Universe with much more precision than before Hubble: it is about 13.7 billion years. 

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In the 1920s, Hubble’s namesake, the astronomer Edwin Hubble, discovered that the Universe was expanding. 

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The observatory that bears his name helped to determine the rate of this expansion and to show that, in fact, this expansion was accelerating. 

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This was the smoking gun that pointed to the existence of the elusive dark energy.

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When we look up at the night sky, it is easy to believe that space is just a giant void with some twinkling stars and a few recognisable planets. 

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However, we must remember that there are structures and matter that we cannot see. 

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Hubble is helping to define, in three dimensions, the distribution of ghostly and invisible dark matter in the Universe. 

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Studies completed in 2007 and earlier this year have given astronomers a clearer idea of the structures that lie between galaxies. 

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These structures do not contain any stars and they are made up mostly of dark matter, which makes them somewhat difficult to identify. 

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By analysing the COSMOS survey — which is the largest survey ever undertaken with Hubble —

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international teams of astronomers were able to obtain one of the most important results in cosmology: 

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a three-dimensional map which gave us a first and unique look at the web-like large-scale distribution of dark matter in the Universe. 

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The landmark result accurately confirmed our theory of structure formation. 

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Hubble has allowed for many comprehensive studies of the life and death of stars — 

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the way stars develop, live their lives, and eventually die. 

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Closely following the timeline of stars, we get a better idea of what is happening in our own galaxy and others. 

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Sensitive infrared instruments onboard Hubble allow us to peer through clouds and columns of interstellar dust to witness the birth of stars. 

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Many Hubble images feature blue, hot stars at the early stages of their lives. 

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At the other end of the stellar lifetime, Hubble lets us see remote supernovae and gamma ray bursts —

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the final, dramatic explosions that signal the end of a star’s life. 

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And now, I am proud to present Hubble’s 20th anniversary image. 

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Hubble captured the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust in the Carina Nebula, 

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located about 7500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. 

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The pillar is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby stars and it is also assaulted from within, 

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as infant stars buried inside fire off jets that can be seen streaming away from the towering peaks.

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Nestled inside this dense mountain are fledgling stars. 

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Long streamers of gas can be seen shooting in opposite directions from the pedestal at the top of the image. 

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Another pair of jets is visible at another peak at the centre of the image. 

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These jets are an indicator for the birth of new stars. 

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A jet like this is launched by a swirling disc around a star, and it is this disc that allows material to slowly accrete onto the surface of the star.

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What a fantastic image and what a great way to celebrate this amazing observatory’s capabilities. 

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Thanks for the past twenty years, Hubble, and here’s to many more! 

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This is Dr J signing off for the Hubblecast and wishing Hubble, and all those who admire it, a happy 20th anniversary!

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Hubblecast is produced by ESA/Hubble at the European Southern Observatory in Germany. 

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The Hubble mission is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. 

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Now that you've caught up with Hubble, make sure to get the latest from the ground too.

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The ESOcast highlights the best of the European Southern Observatory and its powerful telescopes,

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that observe from high in the Chilean Andes, at the southern hemisphere's best known sites for astronomical observations.