It seems like not too long ago we were all waiting for the first images from the newly launched Hubble Space Telescope. April 26, 1990 was a date that so many scientists and engineers had looked forward to for so long. HST was officially “started” in the late 1970s, when a group of scientists brought forward a proposal to build an orbiting observatory that would far outpace anything that had been flown. It wasn’t a new idea. The German rocket scientist Herman Oberth had written about an orbiting mirror back in the early decades of the 20th century. But, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the momentum to loft an observatory like HST really began to pick up. The Challenger disaster certainly delayed the launch of the telescope, so by the time it left the pad at Cape Canaveral, everybody in the astronomy community was ready for great things.

Of course, we all know what came after HST’s launch—the heartbreak of the discovery of spherical aberration in the optical system. That marked the beginning of many dark days for HST scientists and staffers. But, remarkably, they pulled through and the telescope has been transformed from what Barbara Mikulsky (D-Md) called a “technoturkey” to one that she and others have hailed for its many and varied discoveries.

The image posted here is one of the more than 700,000 photos taken with this incredibly productive telescope. It’s a view of another pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16), a starbirth nursery some 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.

Take a few moments to browse the Hubble Space Telescope outreach site and celebrate the amazing 15-year odyssey HST has taken us on across the cosmos.