Reflection Nebula GN 04.32.8

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The subject of this picture is a reflection nebula, identified as GN 04.32.8. Reflection nebulae are clouds of dust in space that don't emit their own light, as other nebulae do. Instead, the light from nearby stars hits and scatters off their dust, lighting them up. Because of the way the light scatters, many reflection nebulae tend to appear blue, GN 04.32.8 included.

GN 04.32.8 is a small part of the stellar nursery known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud. At only roughly 480 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, it's one of the best locations for studying newly forming stars. This reflection nebula is illuminated by the system of three bright stars in the center of this image, mainly the variable star V1025 Tauri in the very center. One of those stars overlaps with part of the nebula: this is another variable star that is named HP Tauri, but is classified as a T Tauri star, for its similarity to yet another variable star elsewhere in the Taurus Molecular Complex. T Tauri stars are very active, chaotic stars at an early stage of their evolution, so it's no surprise that they appear in a prolific stellar nursery like this one! The three stars are also named HP Tau, HP Tau G2 and HP Tau G3; they're believed to be gravitationally bound to each other, forming a triple system.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice the small, squashed, orange spot, just left of centre below the clouds of the nebula, that's crossed by a dark line. This is a newly-formed protostar, hidden in a protoplanetary disc that obstructs some of its light. Because the disc is edge-on to us, it's an ideal candidate for study. Astronomers are using Hubble here to examine it closely, seeking to learn about the kinds of exoplanets that might be formed in discs like it.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, G. Duchêne

Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure

Galaxy Cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 as seen by Webb

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This image shows a portion of the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223, as seen by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). With Webb's excellent sensitivity to infrared light and the hours of exposure time combined in this image, distant galaxies (red colours) are brought out of the darkness. Other galaxies glow strongly from the abundance of light they radiate.

These observations come from the CANUCS survey (#1208, PI: C. J. Willott). The survey employed Webb's advanced instruments, including NIRCam, NIRISS and NIRSpec, to capture detailed images and spectra of massive galaxy clusters in infrared light. Astronomers could then study low-mass galaxies in these early clusters at early stages of evolution. Because of how Webb's instruments work, for each cluster the survey targeted both the cluster's center, where the brightest and largest galaxies are gathered, and a "parallel field" of a neighbouring area within the cluster. This image features one of these parallel fields.

Researchers studying the data from the CANUCS survey uncovered a distant galaxy, named CANUCS-LRD-z8.6, in this parallel field. The galaxy is extremely distant (seen only 570 million years after the Big Bang) and the team’s research revealed that it hosts a supermassive black hole that is unusually large for such an early stage in the Universe. This result challenges existing theories about the formation of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe.

Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA and CSA, G. Rihtaršič (University of Ljubljana, FMF), R. Tripodi (University of Ljubljana, FMF)

Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure

Globular Cluster NGC 1786

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For this Hubble picture, we gaze upon the field of stars that is NGC 1786. This object is a globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way Galaxy that is approximately 160 000 light-years away from Earth. NGC 1786 itself is in the constellation Dorado. It was discovered in the year 1835 by John Herschel.

The data for this image comes from an observing programme comparing old globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies – the LMC, the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy – to the globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy contains over 150 of these old, spherical collections of tightly-bound stars, which have been studied in depth – especially with Hubble Space Telescope images like this one, which show them in previously-unattainable detail. Being very stable and long-lived, they act as galactic time capsules, preserving stars from the earliest stages of a galaxy's formation.

Astronomers once thought that the stars in a globular cluster all formed together at about the same time, but study of the old globular clusters in our galaxy has uncovered multiple populations of stars with different ages. In order to use globular clusters as historical markers, we must understand how they form and where these stars of varying ages come from. This observing programme examined old globular clusters like NGC 1786 in these external galaxies to see if they, too, contain multiple populations of stars. This research can tell us more not only about how the LMC was originally formed, but the Milky Way Galaxy, too.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, M. Monelli

Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure

The Trifid Nebula as seen by Rubin

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The star-forming Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20 (M20), as imaged by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The Trifid Nebula is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the pink region), a reflection nebula (the blue region), and a dark nebula (the dark regions).

Image Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA

Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure

Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae as seen by Rubin

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In this immense image NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory offers a brand new view of two old friends: the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae. The image provides a demonstration of what makes Rubin unique: its combination of an extremely wide field of view and the speed that allows it to take lots of big images in a very short time. Combining images reveals subtle details in the clouds of gas and dust. The more images we can combine, the more detail we see!

This almost 5-gigapixel image combines 678 exposures taken in just 7.2 hours of observing time, and was composed from about two trillion pixels of data in total. No other observatory is capable of producing an image of such a wide area so quickly and with this much depth.

The Trifid Nebula (also referred to as Messier 20) is a standout in the sky. It's a bright, colorful cloud of gas and dust about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. What makes it especially striking is the combination of features packed into one place: a glowing pink emission nebula, a cool blue reflection nebula, and dark dust lanes that split it into three sections – hence the name "Trifid". Inside, new stars are forming and blasting out strong winds and radiation, carving up the gas around them. It gives us a dramatic glimpse at how massive stars shape their surroundings even as they're being born.

Below the Trifid Nebula in this image is the Lagoon Nebula (or Messier 8), another vibrant stellar nursery glowing about 4,000 light-years away. You can actually spot the Lagoon with just a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. At its heart is a cluster of young, massive stars – their intense radiation lights up the surrounding gas and shapes the swirling clouds into intricate patterns. The Lagoon nebula provides scientists with a great place to study the earliest stages of star formation – how giant clouds collapse, how star clusters take shape, and how newborn stars start to reshape their environment.

This expansive image of Trifid and Lagoon together exposes an intricate web of dust lanes and star clusters that make this part of the Milky Way come alive with cosmic activity. The exquisite detail in the structure of the nebulosity shown here demonstrates the exceptional quality of Rubin's entire system – from its light-collecting power, to its sensitive camera, to its efficient data transfer and processing system. Over ten years, Rubin Observatory will take millions of images and will image each place in the sky, including this one, about 800 times.

Every time we look at the Universe in a new way, we discover new things we never could have predicted – and with Rubin we will see more than we ever have before.

The image was captured by Rubin Observatory using the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera – the largest digital camera in the world.

Image Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA

Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure

Edge-On Spiral Galaxy UGC 10043

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What kind of astronomical object is this? It doesn’t look quite like the kinds of galaxies, nebulae, star clusters or galaxy clusters which Hubble normally brings us images of. In fact, this is a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043 – we just happen to be seeing it directly from the side! Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on.What kind of astronomical object is this? It doesn’t look quite like the kinds of galaxies, nebulae, star clusters or galaxy clusters which Hubble normally brings us images of. In fact, this is a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043 — we just happen to be seeing it directly from the side! Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on.

From this point of view, we see the galaxy's disc as a sharp line through space, overlain with a prominent dust lane. This dust is spread across the spiral arms of UGC 10043, but it looks very thick and cloudy when viewed from the side. You can even see the lights of some active star-forming regions in the arms, shining out from behind the dust. Strikingly, we can also see that the centre of the galaxy sports a glowing, almost egg-shaped "bulge", rising far above and below the disc. All spiral galaxies have a bulge like this one as part of their structure, containing stars that orbit the galactic center on paths above and below the whirling disc; it's a feature that isn't normally obvious in pictures of galaxies. The unusually large size of this bulge compared to the galaxy's disc is possibly thanks to UGC 10043 siphoning material from a nearby dwarf galaxy. This may also be why the disc is warped, bending up at one end and down at the other.

Like most of the full-colour Hubble images released by Hubble, this image is a composite, made up of several individual snapshots taken by Hubble at different times and capturing different wavelengths of light. You can see the exact images used in the sidebar on this page. A notable aspect of this image is that the two sets of Hubble data used were collected 23 years apart, in 2000 and 2023! Hubble's longevity doesn't just afford us the ability to produce new and better images of old targets; it also provides a long-term archive of data which only becomes more and more useful to astronomers.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, R. Windhorst, W. Keel

Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672

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This Hubble picture features NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy located 49 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado. This galaxy is a multi-talented light show, showing off an impressive array of different celestial lights. Like any spiral galaxy, its disc is filled with billions of shining stars that give it a beautiful glow. Along its two large arms, bubbles of hydrogen gas are made to shine a striking red light by the powerful radiation of newly-forming stars within. Near to the centre lie some particularly spectacular stars; newly-formed and extremely hot, they are embedded in a ring of hot gas and are emitting powerful X-rays. And in the very centre sits an even more brilliant source of X-rays, an active galactic nucleus created by the heated accretion disc around NGC 1672's supermassive black hole; this makes NGC 1672 a Seyfert galaxy.

But a highlight of this image is the most fleeting and temporary of these lights: supernova SN 2017GAX, visible in just one of the six Hubble images that make up this composite image. This was a Type I supernova caused by the core-collapse and subsequent explosion of a giant star, going from invisibility to a new light in the sky in just a matter of days. In that image from later that year, the supernova is already fading, and so is only just visible here as a small green dot, just below the crook of the spiral arm on the right side. In fact this was on purpose, as astronomers wanted to look for any companion star that the supernova progenitor may have had – something impossible to spot beside a live supernova! For a closer look at the supernova's appearance, you can compare the two images with this slider tool.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A. Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)

Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure