NGC 2210
Cluster in the Cloud
This striking image shows the densely packed globular cluster known as NGC 2210, which is situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC lies about 157 000 light-years from Earth, and is a so-called satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, meaning that the two galaxies are gravitationally...
NGC 3628
NGC 3628 and an example of an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy (no annotations)
NGC 3628, sometimes nicknamed the Hamburger Galaxy or Sarah's Galaxy, is an unbarred spiral galaxy about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. Extending to the left of NGC 3628 for around 300,000 light-years is a ‘tidal tail’ — an elongated region of stars that arises as a...
NGC 34
Beauty From Chaos
Appearing within the boundless darkness of space, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s snapshot of NGC 34 looks more like an otherworldly, bioluminescent creature from the deep oceans than a galaxy. Lying in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster), the galaxy’s outer region appears almost...
NGC 6240
NGC 6240 taken by the Dark Energy Camera
A detailed image of NGC 6240 taken by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). DECam was made by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and is mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab.
NGC 7727
Gemini South Reveals Tangled Spiral Arms of the Peculiar Galaxy NGC 7727
Gemini South, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, captures the billion-year-old aftermath of a double spiral galaxy collision. At the heart of this chaotic interaction, entwined and caught in the midst of the chaos, is a pair of supermassive black holes —...
IC 2220
Gemini South Captures Toby Jug Nebula
A billowing pair of nearly symmetrical loops of dust and gas mark the death throes of an ancient red-giant star, as captured by Gemini South, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab. The resulting structure, said to resemble an old style of English jug, is a...
LHA 120-N 180B
Digitized Sky Survey image around the HII region LHA 120-N 180B
The image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2, and shows the region surrounding LHA 120-N 180B, visible at the centre of the image.
LHA 120-N 180B
Bubbles of Brand New Stars
This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be...
NGC 1385
Same galaxy, different filters
This luminous tangle of stars and dust is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1385, that lies about 30 million light-years from Earth. The same galaxy was the subject of another Hubble Picture of the Week, but the two images are notably different. This more recent image has far more pinkish-red and...
Abell 3192
One cluster or two?
This Hubble Picture of the Week features a massive cluster of brightly glowing galaxies, first identified as Abell 3192. Like all galaxy clusters, this one is suffused with hot gas that emits powerful X-rays, and it is enveloped in a halo of invisible dark matter. All this unseen material — not...
NGC 2814
“Late-type” galaxy?
This Hubble Picture of the Week features NGC 2814, an irregular galaxy that lies about 85 million light years from Earth. In this image, which was captured using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), the galaxy appears to be quite isolated: visually, it looks a little like a loose stroke...
eMACS J1353.7+4329
Galactic monster mash
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a monster in the making in this observation of the exceptional galaxy cluster eMACS J1353.7+4329, which lies about eight billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. This disturbed collection of at least two galaxy clusters...
eMACS J1823.1+7822
Cosmic leviathan
A vast galaxy cluster lurks in the centre of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Like a submerged sea monster causing waves on the surface, this cosmic leviathan can be identified by the distortions in spacetime around it. The mass of the cluster has caused the images of...
Extended Groth Strip
Extended Groth Strip
Extended Groth Strip.
NGC 253
Can You Spot It?
Right in the middle of this image, nestled amongst a smattering of distant stars and even more distant galaxies, lies the newly discovered dwarf galaxy known as Donatiello II. If you cannot quite distinguish the clump of faint stars that is all we can see of Donatiello II in this image, then...
Stellar Evolution
Leaving on a jet
This spectacular image shows a region called G35.2-0.7N, which is known as a hotbed of high-mass star formation. The kind of stars that form here are so massive that they will end their lives as destructive supernovae. However, even as they form they greatly impact their surroundings. At least...
Galaxy
Hubble galaxy at redshift z = 0.65
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a galaxy similar in mass to the Milky Way. The galaxy is seen as it was 6.1 billion years ago. Links: NASA press release A firestorm of star birth (artist’s illustration) The growth of Milky Way-like galaxies over time Hubble...
Galaxy
Ghostly galactic jellyfish
The jellyfish galaxy JO175 appears to hang suspended in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies over 650 million light-years from Earth in the appropriately-named constellation Telescopium, and was captured in crystal-clear detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. A...
Galaxies
One Galaxy, Three Times
This star- and galaxy-studded image was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), using data that were collected for scientific purposes. The object of interest was a galaxy that is visible in the bottom right corner of the image, named SGAS 0033+02. What makes this particular galaxy...
Galaxy
Hubble galaxy at redshift z = 2.4
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a galaxy similar in mass to the Milky Way. The galaxy is seen as it was 10.9 billion years ago. Links: NASA press release A firestorm of star birth (artist’s illustration) The growth of Milky Way-like galaxies over time Hubble...
Galaxy
Hubble galaxy at redshift z = 1.3
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a galaxy similar in mass to the Milky Way. The galaxy is seen as it was 8.9 billion years ago. Links: NASA press release A firestorm of star birth (artist’s illustration) The growth of Milky Way-like galaxies over time Hubble...
Galaxy
Hubble galaxy at redshift z = 2.8
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a galaxy similar in mass to the Milky Way. The galaxy is seen as it was 11.3 billion years ago. Links: NASA press release A firestorm of star birth (artist’s illustration) The growth of Milky Way-like galaxies over time Hubble...
Galaxy
Hubble galaxy at redshift z = 0.26
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a galaxy similar in mass to the Milky Way. The galaxy is seen as it was 3.1 billion years ago. Links: NASA press release A firestorm of star birth (artist’s illustration) The growth of Milky Way-like galaxies over time Hubble...
Galaxy
Hubble galaxy at redshift z = 2.0
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a galaxy similar in mass to the Milky Way. The galaxy is seen as it was 10.3 billion years ago. Links: NASA press release A firestorm of star birth (artist’s illustration) The growth of Milky Way-like galaxies over time Hubble...
Crab Nebula
Hubble Space Telescope (visible) Image of the Crab Nebula
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6500 light-years from Earth, in optical wavelengths.
Stars
Hubble captures glittering crowded hub of our Milky Way
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a sparkling jewel box full of stars captured the heart of our Milky Way. Aging red giant stars coexist with their more plentiful younger cousins, the smaller, white, Sun-like stars, in this crowded region of our galaxy’s ancient central...
Galaxies
Hubble Spies a Galactic Gem
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observation has captured the galaxy CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger which lies around 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. This observation is a gem from the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project in which...
Fornax Cluster
The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field
This image, called the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), combines Hubble observations taken over the past decade of a small patch of sky in the constellation of Fornax. With a total of over two million seconds of exposure time, it is the deepest image of the Universe ever made, combining data...
Galaxies
Seeing Quintuple
Clustered at the centre of this image are six luminous spots of light, four of them forming a circle around a central pair. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this formation is not composed of six individual galaxies, but only three: to be precise, a pair of galaxies and one distant...
Stars
Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image)
By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, the Universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new...
Distant Star
Hubble Finds the Most Distant Star Ever Seen
With this observation, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the Universe’s birth in the Big Bang (at a redshift of 6.2) — the most distant individual star ever seen....
Galaxy
Lens Flair
This intriguing observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a gravitationally lensed galaxy with the long-winded identification SGAS J143845+145407. Gravitational lensing has resulted in a mirror image of the galaxy at the centre of this image, creating a captivating centrepiece....
NGC 6397
Wide-Field View of Globular Cluster NGC 6397
Pictured here is the region around the globular cluster NGC 6397.
NGC 4633
Wide-field view of NGC 4634 and NGC 4633 (ground-based image)
This wide-field view from the Digitized Sky Survey shows NGC 4634 and NGC 4633, a pair of interacting galaxies in the constellation Coma Berenices.
Sagittarius (The Archer)
A slice of Sagittarius
This stunning image, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), shows part of the sky in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The region is rendered in exquisite detail — deep red and bright blue stars are scattered across the frame, set...
NGC 2655
Stuck in the middle
This pretty, cloud-like object may not look much like a galaxy — it lacks the well-defined arms of a spiral galaxy, or the reddish bulge of an elliptical — but it is in fact something known as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies sit somewhere between the spiral and elliptical types; they...
IRAS 16399-0937
A cosmic megamaser
This galaxy has a far more exciting and futuristic classification than most — it is a megamaser. Megamasers are intensely bright, around 100 million times brighter than the masers found in galaxies like the Milky Way. The entire galaxy essentially acts as an astronomical laser that beams out...
UZC J224030.2+032131
Seeing quadruple
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture may trick you into thinking that the galaxy in it — known as UZC J224030.2+032131 — has not one but five different nuclei. In fact, the core of the galaxy is only the faint and diffuse object seen at the centre of the cross-like structure formed by...
M 106
Hubble view of M 106
This image combines Hubble observations of M 106 with additional information captured by amateur astronomers Robert Gendler and Jay GaBany. Gendler combined Hubble data with his own observations to produce this stunning colour image. M 106 is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, a little over 20...
MACS J1149.5+2223
A galactic gathering
Nearly as deep as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which contains approximately 10 000 galaxies, this incredible image from the NASA/ESA Space Telescope reveals thousands of colourful galaxies in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). This vibrant view of the early Universe was captured as part of...
Abell 2744
One of three magnified images of a distant galaxy (2)
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows one of three images of the same very distant galaxy whose light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The galaxy has been magnified and multiply imaged by the lensing effect of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. By measuring the...
Abell 2744
One of three magnified images of a distant galaxy (1)
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows one of three images of the same very distant galaxy whose light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The galaxy has been magnified and multiply imaged by the lensing effect of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. By measuring the...
HUDF/GOODS Galaxies from the CANDELS Survey
The CANDELS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS)
This image shows the field covered by the CANDELS Ultra Deep Survey.
Abell S1063
Parallel field of Abell S1063
This part of the sky was observed in parallel with the galaxy cluster Abell S1063 and is also part of the Frontier Fields programme. While one of Hubble’s cameras observed the galaxy cluster itself, another simultaneously captured the spectacular scene pictured above, of an “unremarkable” patch...
Abell 2744
One of three magnified images of a distant galaxy (3)
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows one of three images of the same very distant galaxy whose light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The galaxy has been magnified and multiply imaged by the lensing effect of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. By measuring the...
NGC 4298
A sea of galaxies
While one instrument of Hubble observed the target for its 27th anniversary — the galaxies NGC 4302 and NGC 4298 — another instrument simultaneously observed a nearby patch of the sky. These so-called parallel field observations increase the efficiency of how the telescope is used when making...
LEDA 36252
Ground-based view of LEDA 36252
This ground-based image shows the tadpole galaxy LEDA 36252 and its surroundings.
GRB990712
Gamma-ray burst host galaxy GRB990712
This is an image of Gamma-ray Burst Host Galaxy GRB990712. Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are powerful flashes of high-energy radiation that are sometimes seen coming from supernovae — the explosions of extremely massive stars. This image is one of a set of images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space...
GRB000926
Gamma-ray burst host galaxy GRB000926
This is an image of Gamma-ray Burst Host Galaxy GRB000926. Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are powerful flashes of high-energy radiation that are sometimes seen coming from supernovae — the explosions of extremely massive stars. This image is one of a set of images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space...
GRB980703
Gamma-ray burst host galaxy GRB980703
This is an image of Gamma-ray Burst Host Galaxy GRB980703. Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are powerful flashes of high-energy radiation that are sometimes seen coming from supernovae — the explosions of extremely massive stars. This image is one of a set of images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space...
GRB030329
Gamma-ray burst host galaxy GRB030329
This image shows a long duration gamma burst, as taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
GRB990705
Gamma-ray burst host galaxy GRB990705
This is an image of Gamma-ray Burst Host Galaxy GRB990705. Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are powerful flashes of high-energy radiation that are sometimes seen coming from supernovae — the explosions of extremely massive stars. This image is one of a set of images, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space...
Merging Galaxies
Merging galaxies — 2.4 billion light-years from Earth
Merging galaxies — 2.4 billion light-years from Earth.
Merging Galaxies
Merging galaxies — 3 billion light-years from Earth
Merging galaxies — 3 billion light-years from Earth.
Merging Galaxies
Merging galaxies — 6.2 billion light-years from Earth
Merging galaxies — 6.2 billion light-years from Earth.
Merging Galaxies
Merging galaxies — 5.3 billion light-years from Earth
Merging galaxies — 5.3 billion light-years from Earth.
Cepheid
Cepheid variable star in galaxy M100
The interval it takes for the Cepheid to complete one pulsation is a direct indication of the stars's intrinsic brightness. This value can be used to make a precise measurement of the galaxy's distance, which turns out to be 56 million light-years from Earth. This image was taken on April 23,...
NGC 1140
A galactic nursery
This dramatic image shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s view of dwarf galaxy known as NGC 1140, which lies 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus. As can be seen in this image NGC 1140 has an irregular form, much like the Large Magellanic Cloud — a small galaxy...
Quasars
Sample galaxy 25783
Quasars are the brilliant beacons of light that are powered by black holes feasting on captured material, and in the process, heating some of the matter to millions of degrees. The brightest quasars reside in galaxies distorted by collisions with other galaxies. These encounters send lots of...
Quasars
Sample galaxy 36721
Black holes in the early universe needed a few snacks rather than one giant meal to fuel their quasars and help them grow, a new study shows. Quasars are the brilliant beacons of light that are powered by black holes feasting on captured material, and in the process, heating some of the matter...
