The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicIn March 2001 a researcher from Cambridge (England) made a discovery by studying new images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). These Beautiful, detailed Hubble images are of the centre of the prototypical starburst galaxy M82 and point to a violent past. An ancient burst of star formation that gave bith to more than 100 super star clusters is linked to a violent encounter with the galaxy's large neighbour, M81. This video includes these images firstly with and then without explanatory slates and then the slated images are repeated after a timecode jump and are followed by 3-D graphics of the HST and the HST filmed by astronauts of the STS-103 mission (Dec 1999)
01:02:00:07 HST Images of huge clusters of stars formed by an ancient encounter, without slates
01:03:35:00 HST Images with explanatory slates
00:11:44:16 to 00:14:41:13 Short edited index of new images with slates and 3-D HST graphics and real footage.