Hubble snaps icy comet ISON
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture shows C/2012 S1, better known as Comet ISON, a high-profile celestial visitor to the Solar System. Hubble has already snapped this comet twice this year (opo1314a, opo1331a), but for some time it was temporarily blocked from view by the Sun. It...
Cosmic riches
This dazzling image shows the globular cluster Messier 69, or M 69 for short, as viewed through the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are dense collections of old stars. In this picture, foreground stars look big and golden when set against the backdrop of the thousands of...
Smoke without fire: a different view of the cigar galaxy
This image shows the most detailed view ever of the core of Messier 82 (M 82), also known as the Cigar Galaxy. Rich with dust, young stars and glowing gas, M 82 is both unusually bright and relatively close to Earth. The starburst galaxy is located around 12 million light-years away in the...
Hubble view of NGC 3314
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced an incredibly detailed image of a pair of overlapping galaxies called NGC 3314. While the two galaxies look as if they are in the midst of a collision, this is in fact a trick of perspective: the two are in chance alignment from our vantage point.
Hubble image of irregular galaxy Holmberg II
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II. The galaxy is dominated by huge bubbles of glowing gas, which are sites of ongoing star formation. As high-mass stars form in dense regions of gas and dust they expel strong stellar winds...
A star formation laboratory
Galaxy NGC 4214, pictured here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopes newest camera, is an ideal location to study star formation and evolution. Dominating much of the galaxy is a huge glowing cloud of hydrogen gas in which new stars are being born. A heart-shaped hollow ...
Galactic fountain of youth
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the edge-on profile of the slender spiral galaxy NGC 5775. Although the spiral is tilted away from us, with only a thin slither on view, such a perspective can be advantageous for astronomers because the regions above and below the galaxys disc...
Hubble watches a celestial prologue
The two billowing structures in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of IRAS 13208-6020 are formed from material that is shed by a central star. This is a relatively short-lived phenomenon that gives astronomers an opportunity to watch the early stages of planetary nebula formation, hence...
Hubble image of the Meathook Galaxy
This close-up Hubble view of the Meathook Galaxy (NGC 2442) focuses on the more compact of its two asymmetric spiral arms as well as the central regions. The spiral arm was the location of a supernova that exploded in 1999. These Hubble observations were made in 2006 in order to study the...
Messier 72, a celestial city from above
As the first in the new weekly series of spectacular images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Hubble Picture of the Week, ESA/Hubble presents a stunning image of an unfamiliar star cluster. This rich collection of scattered stars, known as Messier 72, looks like a city seen from an...
The two mysterious populations of NGC 2419
Globular clusters like NGC 2419, visible in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, are not only beautiful, but also fascinating. They are spherical groups of stars which orbit the centre of a galaxy; in the case of NGC 2419, that galaxy is the Milky Way. NGC 2419 can be...
Colliding galaxies make love, not war
This Hubble image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. As the two galaxies smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The brightest and most compact of these are called super star clusters.
The Egg Nebula
This image of the Egg Nebula, also known as CRL2688 and located roughly 3, 000 light-years from us, was taken in red light with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. This image sheds new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter which...
Hubbles Legacy
This Picture of the Week shows a dwarf galaxy named UGC 685. Such galaxies are small and contain just a tiny fraction of the number of stars in a galaxy like the Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies often show a hazy structure, an ill-defined shape, and an appearance somewhat akin to a swarm or cloud of...
Not So Dead After All
Many of the best-loved galaxies in the cosmos are remarkably large, close, massive, bright, or beautiful, often with an unusual or intriguing structure or history. However, it takes all kinds to make a Universe as demonstrated by this Hubble Picture of the Week of Messier 110. Messier 110 may...
A Passing Fancy
This Picture of the Week from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 5307, a planetary nebula which lies about 10000 light years from Earth. It can be seen in the constellation Centaurus (The Centaur), which can be seen primarily in the southern hemisphere. A planetary nebula is the...
Wide-field view of NGC 4889 (ground-based view)
This image shows a ground-based wide-field view of the region around NGC 4889 from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Infrared view of the Lagoon Nebula
To celebrate its 28th anniversary in space the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took this amazing and colourful image of the Lagoon Nebula. Using its infrared capabilities, the telescope was able to peer through the thick clouds of dust and gas. The most obvious difference between Hubbles...
Hubble illuminates cluster of diverse galaxies
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the diverse collection of galaxies in the cluster Abell S0740 that is over 450 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. The giant elliptical ESO 325-G004 looms large at the cluster's centre. Hubble...
Asteroids in Hubble Frontier Field Abell 370
As if this Hubble Space Telescope picture isn't cluttered enough with myriad galaxies, nearby asteroids photobomb the image, their trails sometimes mimicking background astronomical phenomena. The stunningly beautiful galaxy cluster Abell 370 contains an astounding assortment of several hundred...
Lensed quasar and its surroundings
HE0435-1223, located in the centre of this wide-field image, is among the five best lensed quasars discovered to date. The foreground galaxy creates four almost evenly distributed images of the distant quasar around it.
A galaxy fit to burst
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the vibrant core of the galaxy NGC 3125. Discovered by John Herschel in 1835, NGC 3125 is a great example of a starburst galaxy a galaxy in which unusually high numbers of new stars are forming, springing to life within intensely hot clouds...
Bursting at the seams
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the iridescent interior of one of the most active galaxies in our local neighbourhood NGC 1569, a small galaxy located about eleven million light-years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe). This galaxy is currently a...
A galactic maelstrom
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Messier 96, a spiral galaxy just over 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). It is of about the same mass and size as the Milky Way. It was first discovered by astronomer Pierre Mchain in 1781, and added to Charles...
One from many
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a peculiar galaxy known as NGC 1487, lying about 30 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Eridanus. Rather than viewing a celestial object, it is actually better to think of this as an event. Here, we are...
A galactic mega-merger
The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is known as NGC 3597. It is the product of a collision between two good-sized galaxies, and is slowly evolving to become a giant elliptical galaxy. This type of galaxy has grown more and more common as the Universe has evolved, with...
Two become one
This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the galaxy NGC 6052, located around 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules. It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was...
Waving goodbye
This planetary nebula is called PK 329-02.2 and is located in the constellation of Norma in the southern sky. It is also sometimes referred to as Menzel 2, or Mz 2, named after the astronomer Donald Menzel who discovered the nebula in 1922. When stars that are around the mass of the Sun reach...
Star-forming region Gum 29
This image shows the star-forming region Gum 29 which surrounds star cluster Westerlund 2. This is a section of the new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of Westerlund 2 and its surroundings, released to celebrate Hubbles 25th anniversary. Some of the heftiest stars in Westerlund 2 are...
The mysteries of UGC 8201
The galaxy UGC 8201, captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is a dwarf irregular galaxy, so called because of its small size and chaotic structure. It lies just under 15 million light-years away from us in the constellation of Draco (the Dragon). As with most dwarf galaxies it is...
New stars around Westerlund 2
The red dots scattered throughout the cosmic landscape captured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image are a rich population of forming stars that are still wrapped in their gas and dust cocoons. These stellar foetuses have not yet ignited the hydrogen in their cores to light-up as...
Pillars around Westerlund 2
This image shows an example of the pillars that surround the star cluster Westerlund 2. These pillars are composed of dense gas and dust are a few light-years tall and point to the central cluster. They are thought to be incubators for new stars. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, intense...
A slashing smudge across the sky
The galaxy cutting dramatically across the frame of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a slightly warped dwarf galaxy known as UGC 1281. Seen here from an edge-on perspective, this galaxy lies roughly 18 million light-years away in the constellation of Triangulum (The Triangle). The...
The polar ring of Arp 230
This Picture of the Week shows Arp 230, also known as IC 51, observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Arp 230 is a galaxy of an uncommon or peculiar shape, and is therefore part of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies produced by Halton Arp. Its irregular shape is thought to be the result of...
A smiling lens
In the centre of this image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, are two faint galaxies that seem to be smiling. You can make out two orange eyes and a white button nose. In the case of this happy face, the two eyes are the galaxies SDSSCGB 8842.3 and SDSSCGB 8842.4and the...
Globular cluster Fornax 3
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster Fornax 3 in the dwarf galaxy Fornax. New observations of this cluster and three others in the galaxy show that they are very similar to those found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The finding is at odds with leading theories on...
Globular cluster Fornax 1
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster Fornax 1 in the dwarf galaxy Fornax. New observations of this cluster and three others in the galaxy show that they are very similar to those found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The finding is at odds with leading theories on...
Globular cluster Fornax 5
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster Fornax 5 in the dwarf galaxy Fornax. New observations of this cluster and three others in the galaxy show that they are very similar to those found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The finding is at odds with leading theories on...
Galactic soup
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a whole host of colourful and differently shaped galaxies; some bright and nearby, some fuzzy, and some so far from us they appear as small specks in the background sky. The most prominent characters are the two galaxies on the left 2MASX...
Globular cluster Fornax 2
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster Fornax 2 in the dwarf galaxy Fornax. New observations of this cluster and three others in the galaxy show that they are very similar to those found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The finding is at odds with leading theories on...
Cosmic fairy lights
This sparkling jumble is Messier 5 a globular cluster consisting of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by their collective gravity. But Messier 5 is no normal globular cluster. At 13 billion years old it is incredibly old, dating back to close to the beginning of the Universe, which...
Violent birth announcement from an infant star
This new Hubble image shows IRAS 14568-6304, a young star that is cloaked in a haze of golden gas and dust. It appears to be embedded within an intriguing swoosh of dark sky, which curves through the image and obscures the sky behind. This dark region is known as the Circinus molecular cloud....
Magnifying the distant Universe
Galaxy clusters are some of the most massive structures that can be found in the Universe large groups of galaxies bound together by gravity. This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals one of these clusters, known as MACS J0454.1-0300. Each of the bright spots seen here is a...
It came from outer space
Named after its discoverer, the French-Armenian astronomer Agop Terzan, this is the globular cluster Terzan 7 a densely packed ball of stars bound together by gravity. It lies just over 75 000 light-years away from us on the other side of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is a peculiar cluster,...
Secrets at the heart of NGC 5793
This new Hubble image is centred on NGC 5793, a spiral galaxy over 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Libra. This galaxy has two particularly striking features: a beautiful dust lane and an intensely bright centre much brighter than that of our own galaxy, or indeed those...
Dark, dusty shells
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of PGC 10922, an example of a lenticular galaxy a galaxy type that lies on the border between ellipticals and spirals. Seen face-on, the image shows the disc and tightly-wound spiral structures of dark dust encircling the bright...
The remains of a star gone supernova
These delicate wisps of gas make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short. The thin, blood-red shells are actually the remnants from when an unstable progenitor star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago. There are several types of supernova, but for SNR 0519...
A nursery for unruly young stars
This striking new image, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, reveals a star in the process of forming within the Chamaeleon cloud. This young star is throwing off narrow streams of gas from its poles creating this ethereal object known as HH 909A. These speedy outflows collide...
Hubble image of Abell 68
Abell 68, pictured here in infrared light, is a galaxy cluster. The effect of its gravity on light means it boosts Hubbles power, greatly increasingthe telescopes ability to observe distant and faint objects. The fuzzy collection of blobs in the middle and upper left of the image is a swarm of...
A peculiar compact blue dwarf galaxy
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides us this week with an impressive image of the irregular galaxy NGC 5253. NGC 5253 is one of the nearest of the known Blue Compact Dwarf (BCD) galaxies, and is located at a distance of about 12 million light-years from Earth in the southern...
New Hubble infrared view of the Tarantula Nebula
This new Hubble image shows a cosmic creepy-crawly known as the Tarantula Nebula in infrared light. This region is full of star clusters, glowing gas, and thick dark dust. Created using observations taken as part of the Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project (HTTP), this image was snapped using...
A loose spiral galaxy
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the spiral galaxy ESO 499-G37, seen here against a backdrop of distant galaxies, scattered with nearby stars. The galaxy is viewed from an angle, allowing Hubble to reveal its spiral nature clearly. The faint, loose spiral arms can be...
Using the Moon as a mirror Hubble to watch transit of Venus in reflected light
This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. But astronomers didnt aim the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in this direction to study Tycho itself. The image was taken in preparation for the transit of Venus across the Suns face on...
The belly of the cosmic whale
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has peered deep into NGC 4631, better known as the Whale Galaxy. Here, a profusion of starbirth lights up the galactic centre, revealing bands of dark material between us and the starburst. The galaxys activity tapers off in its outer regions where there are...
Tight and bright
In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the brilliance of the compact centre of Messier 70, a globular cluster. Quarters are always tight in globular clusters, where the mutual hold of gravity binds together hundreds of thousands of stars in a small region of space....
Probing a super-giant shell of gas and stars
In one of the largest known star formation regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, lie young and bright stellar groupings known as OB associations. One of these associations, called LH 72, was captured in this dramatic NASA/ESA Hubble Space...
Perfect spiral overlaid with Milky Way gems
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this finely detailed image of the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6384. This galaxy lies in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), not far from the centre of the Milky Way on the sky. The positioning of NGC 6384 means that we have to...
Uncovering the Veil Nebula
This image shows a small portion of the Veil Nebula - the shattered remains of a supernova that exploded some 5-10,000 years ago. The intertwined rope-like filaments of gas result from the enormous amounts of energy released as the fast-moving debris from the explosion ploughs into its...
Ring around NGC 4650A
Space Telescope Science Institute astronomers are giving the public chances to decide where to aim the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Guided by 8, 000 Internet voters, Hubble has already been used to take a close-up, multi-color picture of the most popular object from a list of candidates,...
Io transit of Jupiter
The three snapshots of the volcanic moon rounding Jupiter were taken over a 1.8-hour time span. Io is roughly the size of Earth's moon but 2,000 times farther away. In two of the images, Io appears to be skimming Jupiter's cloud tops, but it's actually 310, 000 miles (500,000 kilometers) away....
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