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See what picture NASA's Space Telescope took on your birthday - and the Queen's

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Carla Challis
Commerce Partnerships Editor
April 21, 2020
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NASA is opening up its amazing picture archive and allowing you to see what photo the Hubble Space Telescope took on your birthday. The new tool, created to celebrate the Hubble's 30th year in orbit, lets users search 365 days of pictures from the Hubble's endless bank of snaps by entering the day and month of your birthday into an online tool – yours could throw up an amazing array of young stars flaring to life, a crystal clear snapshot of Saturn or even the centre of a spiral galaxy. The Hubble orbits the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, sending snapshots constantly.

mystic© NASA

Mystic Mountain, taken by the Hubble in 2010

"In 2020, the Hubble Space Telescope achieves its 30th year in orbit," NASA wrote on a blog dedicated to the Hubble. "Hubble's unique design, allowing it to be repaired and upgraded with advanced technology by astronauts, has made it one of NASA's longest-living and most valuable observatories, beaming transformational astronomical images to Earth for decades. Hubble has fundamentally changed our understanding of the cosmos." 

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Named after American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who provided the foundation for the Big Bang Theory, the Hubble was launched in April 1990 and has sent over a million images back to base. Its pictures have helped scientists learn how galaxies and planets form.

hubble

The Hubble has been orbiting for 30 years

How to find what picture the NASA Hubble Space Telescope took on your birthday

Simply enter the day and month of your birthday or special date into NASA's online tool and it'll show you an image from the archives that was taken on your special day. It also has an explainer on the image, giving you a bit of background as to what you're seeing. NASA is encouraging users to share their birthday images on social media, using #Hubble30.

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And to celebrate the Queen's 94th birthday today, April 21, we took a look to see what picture the Hubble Space Telescope took on the Queen's birthday – and it was a picture of Jupiter in 2014.

queennasa© NASA

The Hubble captured an amazing shot of Jupiter on the Queen's birthday

The caption reads: "This image of Jupiter was taken by the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) programme, a long-term project that uses Hubble to capture global maps of the outer planets every year. The Great Red Spot appears in the lower right."

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