A 35-year view of space from Utah, via the Hubble Space Telescope

Why it matters: University of Utah astronomers have used Hubble's images to find new(ish) black holes.

How it works: When it launched on April 24, 1990, Hubble was the biggest telescope ever sent into space.

• It orbits the Earth, watching the cosmos from outside our atmosphere, which blurs the view from the ground.
• That has allowed it to produce many of the first — or clearest — images ever seen of space.

The big picture: Hubble has changed what we know about the size and age of the universe — 13.8 billion years is the latest estimate.

• Because the telescope amplifies and measures faraway light — which takes time to travel — we see what its subjects looked like long ago. The farthest image is of a galaxy as it appeared more than 13 billion years ago — just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

Catch up quick: The James Webb Telescope, which launched in 2021, is more advanced than Hubble — but there's a whoooooole lotta sky for both of them to see.

Zoom in: Hubble has been instrumental in identifying medium-sized black holes — a specialty of the U.'s astronomy program.

• Scientists there located the first confirmed "missing link" black hole last year, using Hubble images of the Omega Centauri star cluster.

The latest: Hubble's newest pic of the Eagle Nebula dropped Friday.

The bottom line: Yeah, yeah, you wanna see more of Hubble's pretty pictures.

• Here they are, courtesy of NASA.

Previously in Old News

• How Utah learned of Lincoln's assassination
• Utah vs. Polio
• Let there be light
• The great flapper debate
• Utah's naked hot-tubbing ovation