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AB Aurigae
VLT image of the protoplanetary disc around AB Aurigae (annotated)
This image, taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows a disc of material around the young star AB Aurigae, where planets might be forming. Similar observations taken over the course of four years show the disc rotating around the star. The image to the right has...
AB Aurigae
VLT image of the protoplanetary disc around AB Aurigae
This image, taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows a disc of material around the young star AB Aurigae, where planets might be forming. Similar observations taken over the course of four years show the disc rotating around the star. The image to the right has...
Messier 88
Journey to the centre of a galaxy cluster
The focus of today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month is an active spiral galaxy on a journey lasting hundreds of millions of years. The galaxy Messier 88 (M88), which is also known as NGC 4501, is located about 63 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair). ...
A beacon of light in swirls of dust
This latest Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Messier 77 (M77), a barred spiral galaxy famous and appreciated among astronomers for its combination of relative proximity and spectacular features to study. It is located 45 million light-years away in...
NGC 3137
Starry spiral in a familiar neighbourhood
In this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month, a spiral galaxy glittering with star clusters is the centre of attention. NGC 3137 is located 53 million light-years away in the constellation Antlia (The Air Pump). As a nearby spiral galaxy, this target offers astronomers an excellent opportunity to...
Trifid Nebula
Trifid Nebula (Wide Field Camera 3 Image)
The colours in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope tell a story about density in the Trifid Nebula, a star-forming region about 5000 light-years from Earth. The top left, where it is bright blue, has the smallest amount of dust. Here, powerful ultraviolet light stripped...
NASA's SPHEREx Observatory Maps Stars and Dust in Cygnus
An observation made by NASAs SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows a dusty infrared starfield in the Cygnus region of the sky.
NASA's SPHEREx Observatory Maps Interstellar Ice in Milky Way
An observation made by NASAs SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent...
Laser Guide Star
Aiming at a cosmic tarantula
It might look like we started a space war, but we didn't. This isn't a scene from Star Wars either. What we're looking at is the Tarantula Nebula. And those beams come from the lasers installed on the telescopes that comprise ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer. The VLTI combines the...
Pictor II
Pictor II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy
This image shows stars in the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, Pictor II. Pictor II is a satellite galaxy of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, and is located in the constellation Pictor. The system is made up of several thousand stars and is more than ten...
Pictor II
Star PicII-503 in Pictor II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy
This image shows the star PicII-503, with the lowest iron content ever measured outside of the Milky Way. With less than 1/40,000th the amount of iron as the Sun, PicII-503 is the clearest example of a star within a primordial system that preserves the chemical enrichment of the Universe’s...
Crab Nebula
Crab Nebula (2024 Hubble image)
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the intricate detail of the Crab Nebula with its Wide Field Camera 3. The colours in the image trace Hubble’s detection of oxygen and sulfur gases in the nebula at varying densities and energies. The blue areas are the hottest and lowest density....
Featured from the Archive
MACS J0416.1-2403
Hubble Frontier Field Galaxy Cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 (Parallel)
This is a Hubble Space Telescope view of a very massive cluster of galaxies, MACS J0416.1-2403, located roughly 4 billion light-years away and weighing as much as a million billion suns. The cluster's immense gravitational field magnifies the image of galaxies far behind it, in a phenomenon...
