To get the answer, the scientists looked to supernovas - exploding stars so bright they can be seen all the way across the universe.
A region of gas and dust from exploding stars in the Milky Way galaxy starts to collapse under its own gravity, forming a small star surrounded by a disk of rocky material and gas.
Its intended purpose is to the study the extreme universe - exploding stars, cosmic jets, annihilating particles, and other stuff that we don't want happening near Earth.
Only a handful, like diamonds and olivine, could be found, having been formed far away in exploding stars.
The signature images from Hubble, which turns 20 in April, show careering galaxies, exploding stars, eerie nebulae.
And astronomers are planning a new observatory to study the individual exploding stars believed to be black holes.
They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate.
The idea was to compare the expansion rate today with the rate billions of years ago by gauging the speeds of exploding stars called supernovas.
