Stephan's Quintet, one of the first images from the renovated Hubble Space Telescope.
On September 10, 2009, in the evening, the Hubble Space Telescope obtained its 900,000th exposure since its launch in April 1990!
Not all, of course, were exposures of celestial objects (some were taken for calibration purposes), but still, think about it for a moment ˇŞ Hubble has created an album of hundreds of thousands of images of the universe. I am reminded of the words of the American poet Jean Toomer, who wrote once:
Beyond plants are animals,
Beyond animals is man,
Beyond man is the universe.
Hubble has allowed us to actually see that cosmos which is beyond us, and has given us a chance to decipher the laws that govern its workings. With all the instruments on board Hubble now working, we can look forward to a period of great scientific productivity, and even more breathtaking images.