Hubble Heritage Project

The Hubble Heritage Project was founded in 1998 by a team of astronomers. The aim was to create from the raw footage from the Hubble Space Telescope images with high scientific and artistic value.

Every month, the project published photographs of planets, stars, galaxies and clusters of individual groups. The project's success is largely due to the cooperation between experts of different scientific disciplines such as astronomy, computer and image editing.

Objectives and approach

The astronomers and image processing specialists select from the foundation of your images from the Public Records of the Hubble Space Telescope. Since the raw images were usually taken for scientific purposes, they are often under-exposed for publication. The team then tries to produce a high quality picture from the various archival footage. The image of the Sombreronebels was put together, for example, of six individual shots.

The Hubble Heritage Project was made available if images need to be supplemented with a certain observation time of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The project has received several awards for creating outstanding astronomical images. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific awarded the project in 2003, the Klumpke - Roberts Award for outstanding contributions to the general understanding and appreciation of astronomy.

Some pictures of the project are shown on American and British stamps.