The Hubble Space Telescope is a powerful orbiting telescope that provides sharper
images of heavenly bodies than other telescopes do. It is a reflecting telescope
with a light-gathering mirror 94 inches (240 centimeters) in diameter. The telescope
is named after American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who made fundamental contributions
to astronomy in the 1920's.
Astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to obtain images of celestial objects and phenomena in
detail never before observed. These include pictures of stars surrounded by dusty disks that might someday
evolve into planetary systems, images of galaxies on the edge of the observable universe, pictures of
galaxies colliding and tearing each other apart, and evidence suggesting that most galaxies have massive
black holes in their center.
