European Association for Astronomy Education

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1501

The Pillars of Creation.
Image credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured many breathtaking images of the Universe, but one snapshot stands out from the rest: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation. In 1995 Hubble’s iconic image revealed never-before-seen details in the giant columns and now the telescope is kickstarting its 25th year in orbit with an even clearer, and more stunning, image of these beautiful structures.

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1405

Asteroid P/2013 R3 breaks apart.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA).

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid, which has fragmented into as many as ten smaller pieces. Although fragile comet nuclei have been seen to fall apart as they approach the Sun, nothing like the breakup of this asteroid, P/2013 R3, has ever been observed before in the asteroid belt.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble-HEIC1404

New Hubble image of spiral galaxy ESO 137-001.
Image credits: NASA, ESA. Acknowledgements: Ming Sun (UAH), and Serge Meunier

This new Hubble image shows spiral galaxy ESO 137-001, framed against a bright background as it moves through the heart of galaxy cluster Abell 3627. This cluster is violently ripping the spiral’s entrails out into space, leaving bright blue streaks as telltale clues to this cosmic crime. (read more)

Source: Photo Release heic1402

New Hubble infrared view of the Tarantula Nebula.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, E. Sabbi (STScI)

his new Hubble image is the best-ever view of a cosmic creepy-crawly known as the Tarantula Nebula, a region full of star clusters, glowing gas, and dark dust. Astronomers are exploring and mapping this nebula as part of the Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project, in a bid to try to understand its starry anatomy.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1401

Hubble Frontier Fields view of Abell 2744.Image credits:NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer, and the HFF Team (STScI).

This image of Abell 2744 is the first to come from Hubble's Frontier Fields observing programme, which is using the magnifying power of enormous galaxy clusters to peer deep into the distant Universe. Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, is thought to have a very violent history, having formed from a cosmic pile-up of multiple galaxy clusters. (read more)

Credits: ESA/Hubble heic1323

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed the variable star RS Puppis over a period of five weeks, showing the star growing brighter and dimmer as it pulsates. These pulsations have created a stunning example of a phenomenon known as a light echo, where light appears to reverberate through the murky environment around the star.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble

New Hubble image of star cluster Messier 15.
Image credits:ESA and NASA

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best ever image of the globular cluster Messier 15, a gathering of very old stars that orbits the centre of the Milky Way. This glittering cluster contains over 100 000 stars, and could also hide a rare type of black hole at its centre.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a unique and baffling object in the asteroid belt that looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler or badminton shuttlecock. While this object is on an asteroid-like orbit, it looks like a comet, and is sending out tails of dust into space. (read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble

The most distant gravitational lens yet discovered
Image credits: NASA/ESA/A. van der Wel

An international team of astronomers has found the most distant gravitational lens yet — a galaxy that, as predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, deflects and intensifies the light of an even more distant object. The discovery provides a rare opportunity to directly measure the mass of a distant galaxy. But it also poses a mystery: lenses of this kind should be exceedingly rare. Given this and other recent finds, astronomers either have been phenomenally lucky — or, more likely, they have underestimated substantially the number of small, very young galaxies in the early Universe. (read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1317

New Hubble view of galaxy cluster Abell 1689.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Blakeslee
(NRC Herzberg Astrophysics Program, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory), and H. Ford (JHU)

This new image from Hubble is one of the best ever views of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689, and shows the phenomenon of gravitational lensing with unprecedented clarity. This cluster acts like a cosmic lens, magnifying the light from objects lying behind it and making it possible for astronomers to explore incredibly distant regions of space. As well as being packed with galaxies, Abell 1689 has been found to host a huge population of globular clusters.(read more)

Source:ESA/Hubble Science Release heic1315

Astronomers have used observations from Hubble’s CANDELS survey to explore the sizes, shapes, and colours of distant galaxies over the last 80% of the Universe’s history. In the Universe today galaxies come in a variety of different forms, and are classified via a system known as the Hubble Sequence — and it turns out that this sequence was already in place as early as 11 billion years ago.

Source: NASA-HubbleSite

A flash of light from a stellar outburst has provided a rare look at the 3-D structure of material ejected by an erupting nova.

Astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to observe the light emitted by the close double-star system T Pyxidis, or T Pyx, a recurring nova, during its latest outburst in April 2011.

A nova erupts when a white dwarf, the burned-out core of a sun-like star, has siphoned off enough hydrogen from a companion star to trigger a thermonuclear runaway. As hydrogen builds up on the surface of the white dwarf, it becomes hotter and denser until it detonates like a colossal hydrogen bomb, leading to a 10,000-fold increase in brightness in a little more than one day. Nova explosions are extremely powerful, equal to a blast of one million billion tons of dynamite. T Pyx erupts every 12 to 50 years.

Contrary to some predictions, the astronomers were surprised to find the ejecta from earlier outbursts stayed in the vicinity of the star and formed a disk of debris around the nova. The discovery suggests material continues expanding outward along the system's orbital plane, but it does not escape the system. (read more)

Source: ESA

Hubble presents the most detailed observations ever of the Ring Nebula.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, and C. Robert O'Dell (Vanderbilt University).

Source:ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1310

The Ring Nebula (M57).
Image credits: NASA, ESA, and C. Robert O’Dell (Vanderbilt University).

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced the most detailed observations ever of the Ring Nebula (Messier 57). This image reveals intricate structure only hinted at in previous observations, and has allowed scientists to construct a model of the nebula in 3D — showing the true shape of this striking object.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1303

Hubble image of LRLL 54361 and its surrounding.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Muzerolle (STScI).

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a time-lapse movie of a mysterious protostar that behaves like a flashing light. Every 25.34 days, the object, designated LRLL 54361, unleashes a burst of light which propagates through the surrounding dust and gas. This is only the third time this phenomenon has been observed, and it is the most powerful such beacon seen to date. It is also the first to be seen associated with a light echo.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1217

Hubble spots candidate for most distant known galaxy.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, and M. Postman and D. Coe (Space Telescope Science Institute), and the CLASH team.

By combining the power of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and one of nature’s zoom lenses, astronomers have found what is probably the most distant galaxy yet seen in the Universe. The object offers a peek back into a time when the Universe was only 3 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1216

Monster galaxy lacks a bright core.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA),
T. Lauer (National Optical Astronomy Observatory, USA), and the CLASH team.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a remarkable new view of a whopper of an elliptical galaxy, with a core bigger than any seen before. There are two intriguing explanations for the puffed up core, both related to the action of one or more black holes, and the researchers have not yet been able to determine which is correct. (read more)

Source: ESA News

Supernova remnant SNR1987A  in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Image credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA.

The first direct detection of radioactive titanium associated with supernova remnant 1987A has been made by ESA’s Integral space observatory. The radioactive decay has likely been powering the glowing remnant around the exploded star for the last 20 years.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1214

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field .
Image credits: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and
P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz),
R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team

 Like photographers assembling a portfolio of their best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of our deepest-ever view of the Universe. Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining ten years of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations taken of a patch of sky within the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full Moon.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. By collecting faint light over one million seconds of observation, the resulting image revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the Universe ever taken at that time.

The new full-colour XDF image is even more sensitive than the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, thanks to the additional observations, and contains about 5500 galaxies, even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness that the unaided human eye can see. (read more)

Source: ESA

The galaxy NGC4183.
Image credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA.

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
80 000 light-years, NGC 4183 is a little smaller than the Milky Way. This galaxy, which belongs to the Ursa Major Group, lies in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs).

NGC 4183 is a spiral galaxy with a faint core and an open spiral structure. Unfortunately, this galaxy is viewed edge-on from Earth, and we cannot fully appreciate its spiral arms. But we can admire its galactic disc. (read more)