Area Around UGC2885 (ground-based image)
This wide-field view of the night sky shows the region in which the giant galaxy UGC 2885, nicknamed the Godzilla Galaxy, is located.
Wide-field view of GRB 190114C (ground-based view)
This image shows a ground-based wide-field view of the region around GRB 190114C from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Disco lights from a galaxy cluster
In October of 2013 Hubble kicked off the Frontier Fields programme, a three-year series of observations aiming to produce the deepest ever views of the Universe. The projects targets comprise six massive galaxy clusters, enormous collections of hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. These...
Globular Cluster NGC 1466
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals an ancient, glimmering ball of stars called NGC 1466. It is a globular cluster a gathering of stars all held together by gravity that is slowly moving through space on the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of our closest...
Hubble Observation of the host galaxy of GRB 190114C
This image shows a recent observation made by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of GRB 190114C.
From microwaves to megamasers
Phenomena across the Universe emit radiation spanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum from high-energy gamma rays, which stream out from the most energetic events in the cosmos, to lower-energy microwaves and radio waves. Microwaves, the very same radiation that can heat up your dinner,...
Galaxy Cluster Travels Down an Intergalactic Highway
Researchers have found a galaxy cluster acting like a passenger on what astronomers are calling an "intergalactic highway."
A Scattering of Stars
This Picture of the Week depicts the open star cluster NGC 330, which lies around 180,000 light-years away inside the Small Magellanic Cloud. The cluster which is in the constellation Tucana (The Toucan) contains a multitude of stars, many of which are scattered across this striking image....
Hubble image of Messier 77
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of spiral galaxy Messier 77 a galaxy in the constellation of Cetus, some 45 million light-years away from us. The streaks of red and blue in the image highlight pockets of star formation along the pinwheeling arms, with dark...
Hubble image of MACS J0717
This enormous image shows Hubbles view of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745. The large field of view is a combination of 18 separate Hubble images. Studying the distorting effects of gravity on light from background galaxies, a team of astronomers has uncovered the presence of a filament...
Hubble image of MACS J0717 with mass overlay
This enormous image shows Hubbles view of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745. The large field of view is a combination of 18 separate Hubble images. Studying the distorting effects of gravity on light from background galaxies, a team of astronomers has uncovered the presence of a filament...
A Swiftly Rotating Brown Dwarf (Illustration)
This illustration depicts the fastest spinning brown dwarf found to date. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found 2MASS J0348-6022 rotates on its axis every 1.08 hours, about ten times faster than Jupiter and Saturn.
Spitzer Finds Clarity in the Inner Milky Way
More than 800,000 frames from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create this infrared portrait of dust and stars radiating in the inner Milky Way.
It's a Rocky World
This artist's concept show a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star the same age and size as our Sun. Evidence for this possible belt was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope when it spotted warm dust around the star, presumably from asteroids smashing together.
Inner Milky Way Raging with Star Formation
More than 444,580 frames from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create this portrait of the raging star-formation occurring in the inner Milky Way.
Artist Concept
Artist Concept of Spitzer
Chandra Clinches Case for Missing Link Black Hole
Mid-mass black hole found 600 light years from galaxy center.
Telescopes Unite in Unprecedented Observations of Famous Black Hole
In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told.
Telescopes Unite in Unprecedented Observations of Famous Black Hole
In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told.
Chandra Helps Put The Pieces Together On Gamma-Ray Bursts
Gamma Ray Burst observed on December 18, 1999. An international team of researchers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to detect never-before-seen properties in the X-ray afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). GRBs are mysterious blasts of high-energy radiation, believed to be the most powerful...
IC 443: What Spawned the Jellyfish Nebula?
A supernova remnant nicknamed the "Jellyfish Nebula" located about 5,000 light years from Earth.
Trigger-Happy Star Formation
Cepheus B: A cloud of molecular hydrogen in the Milky Way about 2,400 light years from Earth.
Where Alice in Wonderland Meets Albert Einstein
A group of galaxies nicknamed the "Cheshire Cat" about 4.6 billion light years from Earth.
Clash of the Titans
A cataclysmic cosmic collision takes centre stage in this Picture of the Week. The image features the interacting galaxy pair IC 1623, which lies around 275 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). The two galaxies are in the final stages of merging, and astronomers...
A Spiral Amongst Friends
This image, taken with Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), features the spiral galaxy NGC 4680. At 2 oclock and 7 oclock two other galaxies can be seen flanking NGC 4680. NGC 4680 enjoyed a wave of attention in 1997, as it played host to a supernova explosion known as SN 1997bp. Amazingly, the...
NGC 1275 in Perseus
This Seyfert galaxy is a source of radio noise as well as a strong X-ray source. An extensive system of long filaments is material exploding outwards into space at 1500 miles per second. Also known as Perseus A and 3C84, NGC1275 is in the constellation Perseus. KPNO 4-meter Mayall telescope.
A Minuet of Galaxies
This troupe of four galaxies, known as Hickson Compact Group 87 (HCG 87), is performing an intricate dance orchestrated by the mutual gravitational forces acting between them. The dance is a slow, graceful minuet, occurring over a time span of hundreds of millions of years.
Wide-Field View of the Supernova Remnant 1E 0102.2-7219
Pictured here is the region of sky around the supernova remnant 1E 0102.2-7219. Researchers have studied the Hubble archive looking for visible-light images of the supernova remnant and they have analysed the data to calculate a more accurate estimate of the age and centre of the supernova blast.
Hubble Captures the Supernova Remnant 1E 0102.2-7219
Featured in this Hubble image is an expanding, gaseous corpse a supernova remnant known as 1E 0102.2-7219. It is the remnant of a star that exploded long ago in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way located roughly 200 000 light-years away. Because the gaseous knots...
A Flash of Life
Located around 5000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), Abell 78 is an unusual type of planetary nebula. After exhausting the nuclear fuel in their cores, stars with a mass of around 0.8 to 8 times the mass of our Sun collapse to form dense and hot white dwarf stars. As...
The Modest Galaxy
A bright foreground star isnt enough to distract from the grandeur of the galaxy UGC 3855, captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. While this foreground star is incredibly bright to Hubbles eye, it does not outshine the details of the background galaxy. Many young blue stars are...
A Peculiar Sight
This weeks Hubble/ESA Picture of the Week features NGC 7678 a galaxy located approximately 164 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (The Winged Horse). With a diameter of around 115 000 light-years, this bright spiral galaxy is a similar size to our own galaxy (the Milky...
Wide-Field View of GJ 1132 bs Host Star
Pictured here is the region around the host star of the exoplanet GJ 1132 b.
A Cosmic Hourglass
This weeks NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features an impressive portrait of M1-63, a beautifully captured example of a bipolar planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scutum (the Shield). A nebula like this one is formed when the star at its centre sheds huge...
Hubble's view of dazzling globular cluster NGC 6397
This ancient stellar jewelry box, a globular cluster called NGC 6397, glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars. Astronomers used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to gauge the clusters distance at 7800 light-years away. NGC 6397 is one of the closest globular clusters to...
Ground-based Image of Globular Cluster NGC 6397
Ground-based Image of Globular Cluster NGC 6397
Big, Beautiful and Blue
NGC 2336 is the quintessential galaxy big, beautiful and blue and it is captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The barred spiral galaxy stretches an immense 200 000 light-years across and is located approximately 100 million light years away in the northern constellation of...
Tantrums of a Baby Star
Herbig-Haro objects are some of the rarer sights in the night sky, taking the form of thin spindly jets of matter floating amongst the surrounding gas and stars. The two Herbig-Haro objects catalogued as HH46 and HH47, seen in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, were...
Return to the Veil Nebula
This Picture of the Week revisits the Veil Nebula, a popular subject for Hubble images! This object was featured in a previous Hubble photo release, but now new processing techniques have been applied, bringing out fine details of the nebulas delicate threads and filaments of ionised gas. To...
Hubble spies cosmic dust bunnies
Like dust bunnies that lurk in corners and under beds, surprisingly complex loops and blobs of cosmic dust lie hidden in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. This image made from data obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals the dust lanes and star clusters of this giant...
Moving heart of the Crab Nebula
While many other images of the famous Crab Nebula have focused on the filaments in the outer part of the nebula, this image shows the very heart of the Crab Nebula including the central neutron star it is the rightmost of the two bright stars near the centre of this image. The rapid motion of...
Hubbles Spectacular Wide View of the Universe
Astronomers developed a mosaic of the distant Universe, called the Hubble Legacy Field, that documents 16 years of observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image contains 200,000 galaxies that stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the...
Cosmic Ripples image created with FITS Liberator
This image was liberated with the FITS Liberator from the FITS file from the Gemini North telescope. It captures the heart of Messier 1, the Crab Nebula. Formed by a colossal supernova explosion in the year 1054, the Crab Nebula consists of the outer layers of a now-dead massive star strewn...
Globular cluster NGC 4147
This globular cluster, NGC 4147, seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, was one of many which were used by astronomers to measure the total mass of the Milky Way. NGC 4147 is located about 60 000 light-years from Earth in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices (the Berenice's hair).
Southern Crab Nebula
A tempestuous relationship between an unlikely pair of stars may have created an oddly shaped, gaseous nebula that resembles an hourglass nestled within an hourglass. The possible creators of these shapes cannot be seen at all in this Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2image. It's a pair of aging...
LHA 120-N11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. As the Milky Ways gravity gently tugs on its neighbours gas clouds, they collapse to form new stars. In turn, these light up the...
The Hubble Deep Field
Several hundred never before seen galaxies are visible in this 'deepest-ever' view of the universe, called the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), made with the Hubble Space Telescope. Besides the classical spiral and elliptical shaped galaxies, there is a bewildering variety of other galaxy shapes and...
Distant view of a galactic crash NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 (ground-based image)
This ground-based image shows the large galaxy NGC 4490 and the irregular galaxy NGC 4485 above the larger galaxy in the centre of the image it is interacting with. Both galaxies are connected with each other through a stream of material about 25 000 light-years long. The stream is made up of...
On the verge
NGC 4485 has been involved in a dramatic gravitational interplay with its larger galactic neighbour NGC 4490 out of frame to the bottom right in this image. This ruined the original, ordered spiral structure of the galaxy and transformed it into an irregular one. The interaction also created a...
Ground-based view of the sky around the galaxy ESO 495-21
This image shows the sky around the galaxy ESO 495-21. It was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. Located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Pyxis (The Compass), ESO 495-21 is classified as a dwarf starburst galaxy.
Wide-field view of Arp-Madore 2026-424 (ground-based view)
This image shows a ground-based wide-field view of the region around NGC 6752 from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Cosmic Fireworks in Ultraviolet
Telescopes, including Hubble, have monitored the Eta Carinae star system for more than two decades. It has been prone to violent outbursts, including an episode in the 1840s during which ejected material formed the bipolar bubbles seen here. Now, using Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 to probe the...
3D Image of Eta Carinae
This is a unique three-dimensional image of the star Eta Carinae, with its twin lobes and equatorial disk of expanding dust and gas. To see the 3D structure the image must be viewed through colour 3D glasses with the left eye looking through a red filtered lens, and right eye looking through a...
Galaxy NGC 3147
The shape and structure of this Spiral galaxy are plainly visible thanks to this perspective. Galaxy NGC 3147 galaxy is relatively close by, at a distance of roughly 130 million light-years, and can be found in the constellation of Draco (The Dragon).
The Sunburst Arc
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a massive galaxy cluster, about 4.6 billion light years away. Along its borders four bright arcs are visible; these are copies of the same distant galaxy, nicknamed the Sunburst Arc. The Sunburst Arc galaxy is almost 11 billion...
Sunburst Arc 2
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows one of four arcs formed of the light from the galaxy nicknamed the Sunburst Arc. Created by strong gravitational lensing, this bright arc of light consists of at least four copies of the image of a single galaxy. The lensed...
Sunburst Arc 3
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows one of four arcs formed of the light from the galaxy nicknamed the Sunburst Arc. Created by strong gravitational lensing, this bright arc of light shows at least one copy of the image of the galaxy several more copies are...
Wide-field view of the Tarantula Nebula and its surroundings (ground-based image)
This ground-based view of the Tarantula Nebula shows the nebula in its entirety. It is the brightest region of star formation in the local Universe. Hubbles field of view covers just a tiny spot in the upper-right quadrant of this image, though it reveals detail invisible here, including a...
Sunburst Arc 1
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows one of four arcs formed of the light from the galaxy nicknamed the Sunburst Arc. Created by strong gravitational lensing, this bright arc of light consists of at least six copies of the image of a single galaxy.
DSS image of Fomalhaut (ground-based image)
This image shows Fomalhaut, the star around which the newly discovered planet orbits. Fomalhaut is much hotter than our Sun, 15 times as bright, and lies 25 light-years from Earth. It is blazing through hydrogen at such a furious rate that it will burn out in only one billion years, 10% the...
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