What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday, Carina Nebula with title overlay

What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday? (And How to Turn It Into a Print)

Since 1990, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been photographing the universe around the clock. Galaxies colliding, stars being born, nebulae glowing thousands of light-years away. It never takes a day off, which means it was working on the day you were born, the day you got married, and the day your kids arrived.

NASA catalogued this archive into a wildly popular tool called "What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday?" Enter a month and day, and you get a real Hubble photograph taken on that date. The current expanded edition includes five images for every day of the year, more than 1,830 images in total.

Whirlpool Galaxy photographed by Hubble on January 19, an example Hubble birthday image
The Whirlpool Galaxy, photographed January 19. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI

There's just one problem: NASA doesn't print them. Your birthday image lives on a screen, and that's where the experience ends.

That's why we built the Hubble Birthday Print builder.

How it works

  1. Pick your date. Any date that matters. A birthday, an anniversary, the day your daughter was born. No year needed, just month and day.
  2. Choose your image. Browse up to five real Hubble photographs taken on your date. Spiral galaxies, stellar nurseries, planetary nebulae, deep fields.
  3. Make it yours. Add a custom caption, pick from 12 sizes, toggle a matte border, and preview the finished poster in real time. Choose framed or print only.
Hubble birthday print builder showing custom caption and size options
Enter your date, pick your image, customize your print

Every print is produced on museum-grade matte paper with archival inks, made to order, starting at $10.99.

What kinds of images will I find?

The archive covers essentially everything Hubble is famous for. Depending on your date, you might land on:

  • A spiral galaxy like the Whirlpool Galaxy, photographed January 19
  • A stellar nursery like the Carina Nebula, photographed July 17
  • A deep field, like the legendary Hubble Deep Field, first exposed on December 18, 1995, which revealed roughly 3,000 galaxies in a patch of sky smaller than a grain of sand held at arm's length
  • Planets in our own solar system, including Hubble's Fourth of July portrait of Saturn
Saturn photographed by Hubble on July 4, from NASA's birthday image archive
Saturn on the Fourth of July. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI

Some observations span multiple days because Hubble collects light over long exposures, so you may find the same iconic image on neighboring dates. That's not a glitch, that's how deep-space photography works.

Why the real photo beats a generic space poster

A generic nebula poster is decoration. A Hubble photograph taken on your date is a story. It says: while this was happening down here, this is what was happening out there. That's the difference between wall art people scroll past and wall art guests ask about.

Every image is credited to NASA, ESA, and STScI, and printed from the highest-resolution source files available.

Personalized What Did Hubble See On Your Birthday framed NASA print
Your date, printed. Framed or print only

Find your date

Ready to see what the universe was doing on your day? Find your birthday image here and turn it into a print you can hang.

Image credits: NASA, ESA, STScI. Swell Scenes is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA.

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