Hubble's planetary nebula gallery. A view of NGC 6826
NGC 6826's eye-like appearance is marred by two sets of blood-red 'fliers' that lie horizontally across the image. The surrounding faint green 'white' of the eye is believed to be gas that made up almost half of the star's mass for most of its life. The hot remnant star (in the centre of the...
Colliding gas in the Helix Nebula
This colourful image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the collision of two gases near a dying star. Astronomers have dubbed the tadpole-like objects in the upper right-hand corner 'cometary knots' because their glowing heads and gossamer tails resemble comets.
A mysterious hermit
The drizzle of stars scattered across this image forms a galaxy known as UGC 4879. UGC 4879 is an irregular dwarf galaxy as the name suggests, galaxies of this type are a little smaller and messier than their cosmic cousins, lacking the majestic swirl of aspiral or the coherence of...
Supermassive and super-hungry
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4845, located over 65 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin). The galaxys orientation clearly reveals the galaxys striking spiral structure: a flat and dust-mottled disc surrounding a bright...
A young elliptical
At the centre of this amazing image is the elliptical galaxy NGC 3610. Surrounding the galaxy are a wealth of other galaxies of all shapes. There are spiral galaxies, galaxies with a bar in their central regions, distorted galaxies and elliptical galaxies, all visible in the background. In...
At the centre of the tuning fork
This galaxy is known as Mrk 820 and is classified as a lenticular galaxy type S0 on the Hubble Tuning Fork. The Hubble Tuning Fork is used to classify galaxies according to their morphology. Elliptical galaxies look like smooth blobs in the sky and lie on the handle of the fork. They are...
NGC 6503
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows galaxy NGC 6503. The galaxy, which lies about 18 million light-years away is at the edge of a strangely empty patch of space called the Local Void. This new image shows a very rich set of colours, adding to the detail seen in previous images.
IC 4499: A globular clusters age revisited
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster IC 4499. Globular clusters are big balls of old stars that orbit around their host galaxy. It has long been believed that all the stars within a globular cluster form at the about same time, a property which can be used...
A galactic cloak for an exploding star
The galaxy pictured here is NGC 4424, located in the constellation of Virgo. It is not visible with the naked eye but has been captured here with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Although it may not be obvious from this image, NGC 4424 is in fact a spiral galaxy. In this image it is seen...
New view of Beta Pictoris
This is the most detailed picture to date of a large, edge-on, gas-and-dust disc encircling the 20 million year old star Beta Pictoris. It is compared with a previous image of the disc. Beta Pictoris remains the only directly imaged debris disc that has a giant planet (discovered in 2009) with...
Three moons and their shadows parade across Jupiter beginning of event
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a rare occurrence as three of Jupiters largest moons parade across the giant gas planets banded face. The image shows the Hubble observation at the beginning of the event. On the left is the moon Callisto and on the right, Io. The shadows...
Hubble weighs the fat one
When astronomical objects are named, astronomers like to pick out notable features for inspiration for example, the Whirlpool Galaxy with its pinwheeling arms, or the Needle Galaxy, which appears as a long, thin streak of silver across the sky. This image shows a galaxy cluster known as El...
Supermassive black hole at the heart of NGC 5548
This is the galaxy known as NGC 5548. At its heart, though not visible here, is a supermassive black hole behaving in a strange and unexpected manner. Researchers detected a clumpy gas stream flowing quickly outwards and blocking 90 percent of the X-rays emitted by the black hole. This activity...
New Hubble view of galaxy cluster Abell 1689
This new Hubble image shows galaxy cluster Abell 1689. It combines both visible and infrared data from Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) with a combined exposure time of over 34 hours (image on left over 13 hours, image on right over 20 hours) to reveal this patch of sky in greater and...
Stellar explosions in NGC 6984
Supernovae are intensely bright objects. They are formed when a star reaches the end of its life with a dramatic explosion, expelling most of its material out into space. The subject of this new Hubble image, spiral galaxy NGC 6984, played host to one of these explosions back in 2012, known as...
A pulsating stellar relic
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the planetary nebula NGC 2452, located in the southern constellation of Puppis. The blue haze across the frame is what remains of a star like our Sun after it has depleted all its fuel. When this happens, the core of the star becomes unstable and...
A multi-wavelength view of radio galaxy Hercules A
Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A illustrate the combined imaging power of two of astronomy's cutting-edge tools, the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, and the recently upgraded Karl G....
Light and dust in a nearby starburst galaxy
Visible as a small, sparkling hook in the dark sky, this beautiful object is known as J082354.96+280621.6, or J082354.96 for short. It is a starburst galaxy, so named because of the incredibly (and unusually) high rate of star formation occurring within it. One way in which astronomers...
Hubble portrays a dusty spiral galaxy
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided us with another outstanding image of a nearby galaxy. This week, we highlight the galaxy NGC 4183, seen here with a beautiful backdrop of distant galaxies and nearby stars. Located about 55 million light-years from the Sun and spanning about...
Compact blue dwarf cant hide
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this view of the dwarf galaxy UGC 5497, which looks a bit like salt dashed on black velvet in this image. The object is a compact blue dwarf galaxy that is infused with newly formed clusters of stars. The bright, blue stars that arise in these...
Crowded, but suspiciously quiet?
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged part of the Hickson Compact Group 7, or HCG 7 for short. This grouping is composed of one lenticular (lens-shaped) and three spiral galaxies in close proximity. In this image, one of the spirals dominates the foreground, with many more distant...
Engulfed by stars near the Milky Ways heart
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged an area so jam-packed with stars that they almost overwhelm the inky blackness of space. This includes the globular star cluster Djorgovski 1, which was only discovered in 1987 Djorgovski 1 is located close to the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy,...
Spiral spins both ways
In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 7479 created from observations at visible and near-infrared wavelengths the tightly wound arms of the spiral galaxy create an inverted S, as they spin in an anticlockwise direction. However, at radio wavelengths, this galaxy, sometimes...
Stellar powerhouses in the Eagle Nebula
A spectacular section of the well-known Eagle Nebula has been targeted by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This collection of dazzling stars is called NGC 6611, an open star cluster that formed about 5.5 million years ago and is found approximately 6500 light-years from the Earth. It is a...
Star-birth party almost over in NGC 2976
NGC 2976 does not look like a typical spiral galaxy, as this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows. In this view of the oddball galaxy's inner region, there are no obvious spiral arms. Dusty filaments running through the disc show no clear spiral structure. A raucous interaction with a...
A dazzling planetary nebula
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has turned its eagle eye to the planetary nebula NGC 6572, a very bright example of these strange but beautiful objects. Planetary nebulae are created during the late stages of the evolution of certain stars that eject gas into space and emit intense...
At the edge of the abyss
Fresh starbirth infuses the galaxy NGC 6503 with a vital pink glow in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, a smaller version of the Milky Way, is perched near a great void in space where few other galaxies reside. This new image from Hubbles Advanced Camera for...
Galaxy cluster MACS J0717
This composite image shows the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 (MACS J0717, for short), where four separate galaxy clusters have been involved in a collision the first time such a phenomenon has been documented. Hot gas is shown in an image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, and...
Globular cluster NGC 6397
Image of globular cluster NGC 6397 in the constellation Ara (the Altar). The cluster is home to a highly unusual system consisting of a fast spinning pulsar and a bloated red companion star.
Hubble scores a perfect ten
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting...
A bow shock near a young star
The Hubble Space Telescope continues to reveal various stunning and intricate treasures that reside within the nearby, intense star-forming region known as the Great Nebula in Orion. One such jewel is the bow shock around the very young star, LL Ori, featured in this Hubble Heritage image.
A frenzy of stars
Discovered in 1900 by astronomer DeLisle Stewart and here imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, IC 4710 is an undeniably spectacular sight. The galaxy is a busy cloud of bright stars, with bright pockets marking bursts of new star formation scattered around its edges. IC 4710 is a...
Dusty filaments in NGC 4696
This picture, taken by Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows NGC 4696, the largest galaxy in the Centaurus Cluster. The new images taken with Hubble show the dusty filaments surrounding the centre of this huge galaxy in greater detail than ever before. These filaments loop and curl inwards...
Busy bees
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows star clusters encircling a galaxy, like bees buzzing around a hive. The hive in question the an edge-on lenticular galaxy NGC 5308, located just under 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). Members of a...
Best image of Alpha Centauri A and B
The closest star system to the Earth is the famous Alpha Centauri group. Located in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), at a distance of 4.3 light-years, this system is made up of the binary formed by the stars Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, plus the faint red dwarf Alpha...
The stars of the Large Magellanic Cloud
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster NGC 1854, a gathering of white and blue stars in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish). NGC 1854 is located about 135 000 light-years away, in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of our closest cosmic...
Hiding in the night sky
This striking NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the galaxy UGC 477, located just over 110 million light-years away in the constellation of Pisces (The Fish). UGC 477 is a low surface brightness (LSB) galaxy. First proposed in 1976 by Mike Disney, the existence of LSB galaxies was...
A silver needle in the sky
This stunning new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows part of the sky in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Although this region of the sky is not home to any stellar heavyweights, being mostly filled with stars of average brightness, it does contain five...
A distinctly disorganised dwarf
Despite being less famous than their elliptical and spiral galactic cousins, irregular dwarf galaxies, such as the one captured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, are actually one of the most common types of galaxy in the Universe. Known as UGC 4459, this dwarf galaxy is located...
A cosmic kaleidoscope
At first glance, this cosmic kaleidoscope of purple, blue and pink offers a strikingly beautiful and serene snapshot of the cosmos. However, this multi-coloured haze actually marks the site of two colliding galaxy clusters, forming a single object known as MACS J0416.1-2403 (or MACS J0416 for...
A diamond in the dust
Surrounded by an envelope of dust, the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a young pre-main-sequence star known as HBC 1. The star is in an immature and adolescent phase of life, hence its classification most of a Sun-like stars life is spent in a stage comparable to human...
The icy blue wings of Hen 2-437
In this cosmic snapshot, the spectacularly symmetrical wings of Hen 2-437 show up in a magnificent icy blue hue. Hen 2-437 is a planetary nebula, one of around 3000 such objects known to reside within the Milky Way. Located within the faint northern constellation of Vulpecula (The Fox), Hen...
Galactic onion
The glowing object in this image is an elliptical galaxy called NGC 3923. It is located over 90 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra. NGC 3923 is an example of a shell galaxy where the stars in its halo are arranged in layers. Finding concentric shells of stars enclosing a...
Elliptical galaxy IC 2006
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows an elliptical galaxy known as IC 2006. Massive elliptical galaxies like these are common in the modern Universe, but how they quenched their once furious rates of star formation is an astrophysical mystery. Now, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space...
A young star takes centre stage
With its helical appearance resembling a snails shell, this reflection nebula seems to spiral out from a luminous central star in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The star in the centre, known as V1331 Cyg and located in the dark cloud LDN 981 or, more commonly, Lynds 981 had...
Dust filaments of NGC 4217
In this image the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope takes a close look at the spiral galaxy NGC 4217, 60 million light-years away. The galaxy is seen almost perfectly edge on and is a perfect candidate for studying the nature of extraplanar dust structures the patterns of gas and dust above and...
A changing fan
The Universe is rarely static, although the timescales involved can be very long. Since modern astronomical observations began we have been observing the birthplaces of new stars and planets, searching for and studying the subtle changes that help us to figure out what is happening within. The...
Hubble probes ghost galaxy
Astronomers used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to unmask the dim, star-starved dwarf galaxy Leo IV. This Hubble image demonstrates why astronomers had a tough time spotting this small-fry galaxy: it is practically invisible. The image shows how the handful of stars from the sparse galaxy...
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012
This image shows the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012, an improved version of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image featuring additional observation time. The new data have revealed for the first time a population of distant galaxies at redshifts between 9 and 12, including the most distant object...
The Needle Galaxy
Like finding a silver needle in the haystack of space, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the spiral galaxy IC 2233, one of the flattest galaxies known. Typical spiral galaxies like the Milky Way are usually made up of three principal visible components:...
A bright spark in a nearby spiral galaxy
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a detailed view of the spiral arms on one side of the galaxy Messier 99. Messier 99 is a so-called grand design spiral, with long, large and clearly defined spiral arms giving it a structure somewhat similar to the Milky Way....
Globular cluster M 10
Like many of the most famous objects in the sky, globular cluster Messier 10 was of little interest to its discoverer: Charles Messier, the 18th century French astronomer, catalogued over 100 galaxies and clusters, but was primarily interested in comets. Through the telescopes available at the...
Stars in the Andromeda Galaxys disc
This image shows NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images of a small part of the disc of the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. Hubbles position above the distorting effect of the atmosphere, combined with the galaxys relative proximity, means that the galaxy can be...
A spiral within a spiral
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the spiral galaxy known as ESO 498-G5. One interesting feature of this galaxy is that its spiral arms wind all the way into the centre, so that ESO 498-G5's core looks like a bit like a miniature spiral galaxy. This sort of structure is...
Star cluster surrounds wayward black hole in cannibal galaxy ESO 243-49 (unlabelled)
This spectacular edge-on galaxy, called ESO 243-49, is home to an intermediate-mass black hole that may have been purloined from a cannibalised dwarf galaxy. The black hole, with an estimated mass of 50 million Suns, lies above the galactic plane. This is an unlikely place for such a massive...
The calm after the galactic storm
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has caught sight of a soft, diffuse-looking galaxy that is probably the aftermath of a long-ago galactic collision. Two spiral galaxies, each perhaps much like the Milky Way, swirled together for millions of years. In such mergers, the original galaxies are...
Spot the difference Hubble spies another globular cluster, but with a secret
Thousands and thousands of brilliant stars make up this globular cluster, Messier 53, captured with crystal clarity in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Bound tightly by gravity, the cluster is roughly spherical and becomes denser towards its heart. These enormous...
Breathing new life into an old cluster
The globular cluster Messier 5, shown here in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, is one of the oldest belonging to the Milky Way. The majority of its stars formed more than 12 billion years ago, but there are some unexpected newcomers on the scene, adding some vitality to this aging...
A perfect spiral with an explosive secret
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is renowned for its breathtaking images and this snapshot of NGC 634 is definitely that the fine detail and exceptionally perfect spiral structure of the galaxy make it hard to believe that this is a real observation and not an artists impression or a...
Clusters deceptive serenity hides violent past
The high concentration of stars within globular clusters, like Messier 12, shown here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, makes them beautiful photographic targets. But the cramped living quarters in these clusters also makes them home to exotic binary star systems where two...
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