NATIONWIDE — In celebration of 30 years of exploration of the Hubble telescope in orbit, NASA is giving the public a new look at the galaxies and stars above.

The collection of 30 photos show never-before-seen star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.

The Hubble telescope entered into orbit on April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery. The next day, astronauts released the telescope into space to begin its journey of discovery.

Over the past three decades, Hubble has helped scientists discover details of the shapes, structures and histories of galaxies, as well as black holes in galactic centers. The telescope has also helped uncover some of the universe’s earliest galaxies, explore enigmatic dark matter and helped with the discovery of the yet-unexplained dark energy.

The telescope orbits around the globe every 90 minutes and has two primary cameras that capture the cosmos in ways that cannot be seen with the naked eye. It can see ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light across different wavelengths.

The Hubble telescope has been repaired multiple times over its journey in space, each mission improving the ability for the next scientific discovery.

"There have been a number of Hubble servicing missions. Famously the first one was because the mirror was slightly the wrong curvature, it was a little bit out of focus, and that actually set us up for many additional missions that would replace cameras to keep the observatory young and replace things, like gyroscopes, which allow the telescope to point very very accurately," said Dr. Michelle Thaller, NASA Goddard Assistant Director for science communications.

The last Hubble servicing mission was in 2009 where a new spectrograph and a new camera were installed in the first ever on-orbit repair.

All the photos released by NASA today belong to the Caldwell Catalog. Not everything in the Caldwell has been captured, but as of August 2020, 98 objects have been documented by the telescope.