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MXPlank Picture Of The Day Archive



YEAR - 2021




**** Extremely sorry for some of the missing dates in the year. We will try to keep it as continuous as possible****





Image Of The Day 2021-12-30 : This dazzling image shows the globular cluster Messier 69, or M 69 for short, as viewed through the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are dense collections of old stars


Image Of The Day 2021-12-27 : 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


Image Of The Day 2021-12-26 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a sharp image of NGC 4634, a spiral galaxy seen exactly side-on. Its disc is slightly warped by ongoing interactions with a nearby galaxy, and it is crisscrossed by clearly defined dust lanes and bright nebulae


Image Of The Day 2021-12-25 : This image portrays a beautiful view of the galaxy NGC 7090, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is viewed edge-on from the Earth, meaning we cannot easily see the spiral arms, which are full of young, hot stars


Image Of The Day 2021-12-24 : This sparkling picture taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the centre of globular cluster M 4. The power of Hubble has resolved the cluster into a multitude of glowing orbs, each a colossal nuclear furnace


Image Of The Day 2021-12-23 : A new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 5806, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo (the Virgin). It lies around 80 million light years from Earth


Image Of The Day 2021-12-22 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the globular cluster Messier 56 (also known as M 56 or NGC 6779), which is located about 33 000 light years away from the Earth in the constellation of Lyra (The Lyre). The cluster is composed of a large number of stars, tightly bound to each other by gravity


Image Of The Day 2021-12-20 : In terms of intergalactic real estate, our Solar System has a plumb location as part of a big, spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. Numerous, less glamorous dwarf galaxies, keep the Milky Way company


Image Of The Day 2021-12-17 : Turning its 2.4-metre eye to the Tarantula Nebula, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken this close-up of the outskirts of the main cloud of the Nebula


Image Of The Day 2021-12-17 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a globular cluster. Mutual gravitational attraction amongst a cluster’s hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars keeps stellar members in check, allowing globular clusters to hang together for many billions of years


Image Of The Day 2021-12-16 : The galaxy NGC 4700 bears the signs of the vigorous birth of many new stars in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The many bright, pinkish clouds in NGC 4700 are known as H II regions, where intense ultraviolet light from hot young stars is causing nearby hydrogen gas to glow


Image Of The Day 2021-12-15 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a show, lit only by the flashbulbs of the audience’s cameras. Yet the many stars of this object, known as Messier 107, are not a fleeting phenomenon, at least by human reckoning of time — these ancient stars have gleamed for many billions of years


Image Of The Day 2021-12-14 : This image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals an exquisitely detailed view of part of the disc of the spiral galaxy NGC 4565. This bright galaxy is one of the most famous examples of an edge-on spiral galaxy, oriented perpendicularly to our line of sight so that we see right into its luminous disc


Image Of The Day 2021-12-13 : A bright star is surrounded by a tenuous shell of gas in this unusual image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. U Camelopardalis, or U Cam for short, is a star nearing the end of its life


Image Of The Day 2021-12-12 : Relatively few galaxies possess the sweeping, luminous spiral arms or brightly glowing centre of our home galaxy the Milky Way. In fact, most of the Universe's galaxies look like small, amorphous clouds of vapour


Image Of The Day 2021-12-11 : Like many of the most famous objects in the sky, globular cluster Messier 10 was of little interest to its discoverer: Charles Messier, the 18th century French astronomer, catalogued over 100 galaxies and clusters, but was primarily interested in comets. Through the telescopes available at the time, comets, nebulae, globular clusters and galaxies appeared just as faint, diffuse blobs and could easily be confused for one another


Image Of The Day 2021-12-10 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this view of the dwarf galaxy UGC 5497, which looks a bit like salt dashed on black velvet in this image. The object is a compact blue dwarf galaxy that is infused with newly formed clusters of stars


Image Of The Day 2021-12-09 : This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a detailed view of the spiral arms on one side of the galaxy Messier 99. Messier 99 is a so-called grand design spiral, with long, large and clearly defined spiral arms — giving it a structure somewhat similar to the Milky Way


Image Of The Day 2021-12-08 : This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 7026, a planetary nebula. Located just beyond the tip of the tail of the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), this butterfly-shaped cloud of glowing gas and dust is the wreckage of a star similar to the Sun


Image Of The Day 2021-12-07 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the spiral galaxy known as ESO 498-G5. One interesting feature of this galaxy is that its spiral arms wind all the way into the centre, so that ESO 498-G5's core looks like a bit like a miniature spiral galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-12-06 : Visible in the constellation of Andromeda, NGC 891 is located approximately 30 million light-years away from Earth. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful wide field Advanced Camera for Surveys towards this spiral galaxy and took this close-up of its northern half


Image Of The Day 2021-12-05 : This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. But astronomers didn’t aim the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in this direction to study Tycho itself


Image Of The Day 2021-12-04 : This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope could seem like a quiet patch of sky at first glance. But zooming into the central part of a galaxy cluster — one of the largest structures of the Universe — is rather like looking at the eye of the storm


Image Of The Day 2021-12-03 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been at the cutting edge of research into what happens to stars like our Sun at the ends of their lives (see for example Hubblecast 51). One stage that stars pass through as they run out of nuclear fuel is the preplanetary, or protoplanetary nebula


Image Of The Day 2021-12-02 : These bright stars shining through what looks like a haze in the night sky are part of a young stellar grouping in one of the largest known star formation regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The image was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2


Image Of The Day 2021-12-01 : In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the brilliance of the compact centre of Messier 70, a globular cluster. Quarters are always tight in globular clusters, where the mutual hold of gravity binds together hundreds of thousands of stars in a small region of space


Image Of The Day 2021-11-30 : This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 4980, a spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Hydra. The shape of NGC 4980 appears slightly deformed, something which is often a sign of recent tidal interactions with another galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-11-29 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a UFO — well, the UFO Galaxy, to be precise. NGC 2683 is a spiral galaxy seen almost edge-on, giving it the shape of a classic science fiction spaceship


Image Of The Day 2021-11-28 : Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have made images of several galaxies containing quasars, which act as gravitational lenses to amplify and distort images of the galaxies aligned behind them. Quasars are among the brightest objects in the Universe, far outshining the total output of their host galaxies


Image Of The Day 2021-11-27 : The breathtaking butterfly-like planetary nebula NGC 6881 is visible here in an image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Cygnus, it is formed of an inner nebula, estimated to be about one fifth of a light-year across, and symmetrical “wings” that spread out about one light-year from one tip to the other


Image Of The Day 2021-11-26 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the galaxy NGC 1483. NGC 1483 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the southern constellation of Dorado — the dolphinfish in Spanish


Image Of The Day 2021-11-17 : The myriad faint stars that comprise the Antlia Dwarf galaxy are more than four million light-years from Earth, but this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image offers such clarity that they could be mistaken for much closer stars in our own Milky Way. This very faint and sparsely populated small galaxy was only discovered in 1997


Image Of The Day 2021-11-15 : At the turn of the 19th century, the binary star system Eta Carinae was faint and undistinguished. In the first decades of the century, it became brighter and brighter, until, by April 1843, it was the second brightest star in the sky, outshone only by Sirius (which is almost a thousand times closer to Earth)


Image Of The Day 2021-11-13 : It’s well known that the Universe is changeable: even the stars that appear static and predictable every night are subject to change. This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows planetary nebula Hen 3-1333


Image Of The Day 2021-11-04 : Many of the Universe’s galaxies are like our own, displaying beautiful spiral arms wrapping around a bright nucleus. Examples in this stunning image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, include the tilted galaxy at the bottom of the frame, shining behind a Milky Way star, and the small spiral at the top centre


Image Of The Day 2021-11-03 : Looking like a hoard of gems fit for an emperor’s collection, this deep sky object called NGC 6752 is in fact far more worthy of admiration. It is a globular cluster, and at over 10 billion years old is one the most ancient collections of stars known


Image Of The Day 2021-11-01 : 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


Image Of The Day 2021-10-30 : Messier 100 is a perfect example of a grand design spiral galaxy, a type of galaxy with prominent and very well-defined spiral arms. These dusty structures swirl around the galaxy’s nucleus, and are marked by a flurry of star formation activity that dots Messier 100 with bright blue, high-mass stars



Image Of The Day 2021-10-29 : This classic shot of a galaxy in the constellation of Ursa Major was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 3259 is a bright barred spiral galaxy located approximately 110 million light-years from Earth


Image Of The Day 2021-10-28 : This image shows the most detailed view ever of the core of Messier 82 (M 82), also known as the Cigar Galaxy. Rich with dust, young stars and glowing gas, M 82 is both unusually bright and relatively close to Earth


Image Of The Day 2021-10-27 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a region of space containing the intriguing object IC 2574. Pink bubbles blown by supernova explosions abound in this faint galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-10-26 : An interesting galaxy has been circled in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy — one of a group of galaxies called Luminous Red Galaxies — has an unusually large mass, containing about ten times the mass of the Milky Way


Image Of The Day 2021-10-25 : The compact nature of globular clusters is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, having so many stars of a similar age in one bundle gives astronomers insights into the chemical makeup of our galaxy in its early history


Image Of The Day 2021-10-24 : Three thousand light-years from Earth lies the strange protoplanetary nebula IRAS 09371+1212, nicknamed the Frosty Leo Nebula. Despite their name, protoplanetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets: they are formed from material shed from their aging central star


Image Of The Day 2021-10-22 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has caught sight of a soft, diffuse-looking galaxy that is probably the aftermath of a long-ago galactic collision. Two spiral galaxies, each perhaps much like the Milky Way, swirled together for millions of years


Image Of The Day 2021-10-21 : In one of the largest known star formation regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, lie young and bright stellar groupings known as OB associations. One of these associations, called LH 72, was captured in this dramatic NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image


Image Of The Day 2021-10-20 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has peered deep into NGC 4631, better known as the Whale Galaxy. Here, a profusion of starbirth lights up the galactic centre, revealing bands of dark material between us and the starburst


Image Of The Day 2021-10-19 : The object shown in this beautiful Hubble image, dubbed Messier 54, could be just another globular cluster, but this dense and faint group of stars was in fact the first globular cluster found that is outside our galaxy. Discovered by the famous astronomer Charles Messier in 1778, Messier 54 belongs to a satellite of the Milky Way called the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-10-18 : The pearly wisps surrounding the central star IRAS 10082-5647 in this Hubble image certainly draw the eye towards the heavens. The divine-looking cloud is a reflection nebula, made up of gas and dust glowing softly by the reflected light of nearby stars, in this case a young Herbig Ae/Be star


Image Of The Day 2021-10-17 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken this image of the Phoenix Dwarf Galaxy, which is located 1.4 million light-years away from Earth


Image Of The Day 2021-10-16 : Supernova SN 1987A, one of the brightest stellar explosions since the invention of the telescope more than 400 years ago, is no stranger to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The observatory has been on the frontline of studies into this brilliant dying star since its launch in 1990, three years after the supernova exploded on 23 February 1987


Image Of The Day 2021-10-15 : Galaxies come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and these features change as they evolve. Some, like the galaxy in the centre of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, are beautiful spirals with graceful curved arms, while others are fuzzy oval-shaped blobs like the large object showing up near the bottom right of the frame


Image Of The Day 2021-10-14 : Thousands and thousands of brilliant stars make up this globular cluster, Messier 53, captured with crystal clarity in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Bound tightly by gravity, the cluster is roughly spherical and becomes denser towards its heart


Image Of The Day 2021-10-13 : This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows remarkable structures in a galaxy cluster around an object called LRG-4-606. LRG stands for Luminous Red Galaxy, and is the acronym given to a large collection of bright red galaxies found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)


Image Of The Day 2021-10-12 : In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, NGC 4874 is the brightest object, located to the right of the frame and seen as a bright star-like core surrounded by a hazy halo. A few of the other galaxies of the cluster are also visible, looking like flying saucers dancing around NGC 4874


Image Of The Day 2021-10-11 : This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a compact and distant globular star cluster that lies in one of the smallest constellations in the night sky, Delphinus (The Dolphin). Due to its modest size, great distance and relatively low brightness, NGC 7006 is often ignored by amateur astronomers


Image Of The Day 2021-10-10 : Protoplanetary nebulae offer glimpses of how stars similar to the Sun end their lives and how they make the transition to white dwarfs surrounded by planetary nebulae. As it ages, a Sun-like star eventually sheds its outer layers into space, creating a beautiful and often intricately shaped cloud of gas and dust around it


Image Of The Day 2021-10-09 : Peering into the depths of space, the sharp-eyed NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the nearby but faint dwarf galaxy ESO 540-030. This object itself appears as a huge swarm of dim stars, but ESO 540-030 is actually just one point of interest in the picture


Image Of The Day 2021-10-08 : NGC 2146 is classified as a barred spiral due to its shape, but the most distinctive feature is the dusty spiral arm that has looped in front of the galaxy's core as seen from our perspective. The forces required to pull this structure out of its natural shape and twist it up to 45 degrees are colossal


Image Of The Day 2021-10-07 : A giant cosmic necklace glows brightly in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.

The object, aptly named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, the glowing remains of an ordinary, Sun-like star


Image Of The Day 2021-10-06 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged part of the Hickson Compact Group 7, or HCG 7 for short. This grouping is composed of one lenticular (lens-shaped) and three spiral galaxies in close proximity


Image Of The Day 2021-10-05 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has used its powerful optics to separate the globular cluster NGC 6401 into its constituent stars. What was once only visible as a ghostly mist in the eyepieces of astronomical instruments has been transformed into a stunning stellar landscape


Image Of The Day 2021-10-04 : NGC 2023 surrounds a massive young B-type star. These stars are large, bright and blue-white in colour, and have a high surface temperature, being several times hotter than the Sun


Image Of The Day 2021-10-03 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged an elongated stream of stars, gas and dust called IC 755, which is actually a spiral galaxy that we are seeing edge-on.In 1999 a star within IC 755 was seen to explode as a supernova and named SN 1999an


Image Of The Day 2021-10-02 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been used to capture a striking image of a rare astronomical phenomenon called a protoplanetary nebula. This particular example, called Minkowski’s Footprint, also known as Minkowski 92, features two vast onion-shaped structures either side of an ageing star, giving it a very distinctive shape


Image Of The Day 2021-10-01 : Looking like an elegant abstract art piece painted by talented hands, this picture is actually a NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a small section of the Carina Nebula. Part of this huge nebula was documented in the well-known Mystic Mountain picture and this picture takes an even closer look at another piece of this bizarre astronomical landscape


Image Of The Day 2021-09-30 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged an area so jam-packed with stars that they almost overwhelm the inky blackness of space. This includes the globular star cluster Djorgovski 1, which was only discovered in 1987


Image Of The Day 2021-09-29 : In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 7479 — created from observations at visible and near-infrared wavelengths — the tightly wound arms of the spiral galaxy create an inverted ‘S’, as they spin in an anticlockwise direction. However, at radio wavelengths, this galaxy, sometimes nicknamed the Propeller Galaxy, spins the other way, with a jet of radiation that bends in the opposite direction to the stars and dust in the arms of the galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-09-28 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made a rare celestial catch. Close to a bright, nearby star in this image, the bizarre, whorl-shaped object known as IRAS 22036+5306 has been captured during a brief tumultuous period late in a star's life


Image Of The Day 2021-09-27 : The two billowing structures in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of IRAS 13208-6020 are formed from material that is shed by a central star. This is a relatively short-lived phenomenon that gives astronomers an opportunity to watch the early stages of planetary nebula formation, hence the name protoplanetary, or preplanetary nebula


Image Of The Day 2021-09-26 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is renowned for its breathtaking images and this snapshot of NGC 634 is definitely that — the fine detail and exceptionally perfect spiral structure of the galaxy make it hard to believe that this is a real observation and not an artist’s impression or a screenshot taken straight from Star Wars. This spiral galaxy was discovered back in the nineteenth century by French astronomer Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan, but in 2008 it became a prime target for observations thanks to the violent demise of a white dwarf star


Image Of The Day 2021-09-25 : Deep within the Milky Way lies the ancient globular cluster Terzan 5. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the cluster in wonderful detail, but it is the chaotic motions of its stars that make it particularly interesting to astronomers


Image Of The Day 2021-09-24 : Like a Dali masterpiece, this image of Messier 8 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is both intensely colourful and distinctly surreal. Located in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), this giant cloud of glowing interstellar gas is a stellar nursery that is also known as the Lagoon Nebula


Image Of The Day 2021-09-23 : This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the edge-on profile of the slender spiral galaxy NGC 5775. Although the spiral is tilted away from us, with only a thin slither on view, such a perspective can be advantageous for astronomers because the regions above and below the galaxy’s disc can be seen much more clearly


Image Of The Day 2021-09-22 : The globular cluster Messier 5, shown here in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, is one of the oldest belonging to the Milky Way. The majority of its stars formed more than 12 billion years ago, but there are some unexpected newcomers on the scene, adding some vitality to this aging population


Image Of The Day 2021-09-21 : Galaxies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with most being classed as either elliptical or spiral. However, some fall into the miscellaneous category known as irregulars, such as UGC 9128 shown here in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image


Image Of The Day 2021-09-20 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope usually works as a solo artist to capture awe-inspiring images of the distant Universe. For this picture, though, Hubble had a helping hand from the subject of the image, a galaxy cluster called LCDCS-0829, as the huge mass of the galaxies in the cluster acted like a giant magnifying glass


Image Of The Day 2021-09-19 : Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study the young open star cluster IC 1590, which is found within the star formation region NGC 281 — nicknamed the Pacman Nebula due to its resemblance to the famous arcade game character. This image only shows the central part of the nebula, where the brightest stars at the core of the cluster are found, with part of the Pacman’s hungry mouth visible as the dark region below


Image Of The Day 2021-09-18 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a planetary nebula with unconventional good looks. Planetary nebulae signal the demise of mid-sized stars (up to about eight times the mass of the Sun); when the star’s hydrogen fuel supply is exhausted, its outer layers expand and cool, creating a cocoon of gas and dust


Image Of The Day 2021-09-17 : The high concentration of stars within globular clusters, like Messier 12, shown here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, makes them beautiful photographic targets. But the cramped living quarters in these clusters also makes them home to exotic binary star systems where two stars are locked in tight orbits around each other and matter from one is gobbled up by its companion, releasing X-rays


Image Of The Day 2021-09-16 : This view from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 5584. This galaxy has played a key role in a new study that measures the expansion rate of the Universe to greater accuracy than ever before


Image Of The Day 2021-09-15 : Most of the rich globular star clusters that orbit the Milky Way have cores that are tightly packed with stars, but NGC 288 is one of a minority of low-concentration globulars, with its stars more loosely bound together. This new image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope completely resolves the old stars at the core of the cluster


Image Of The Day 2021-09-14 : The strange and irregular bundle of jets and clouds in this curious image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the result of a burst of activity late in the life of a star. As its core runs out of nuclear fuel, the star’s unstable outer layers are puffing out a toxic concoction of gases including carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide


Image Of The Day 2021-09-13 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a close-up view of an outer part of the Orion Nebula’s little brother, Messier 43. This nebula, which is sometimes referred to as De Mairan’s Nebula after its discoverer, is separated from the famous Orion Nebula (Messier 42) by only a dark lane of dust


Image Of The Day 2021-09-12 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this finely detailed image of the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6384. This galaxy lies in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), not far from the centre of the Milky Way on the sky


Image Of The Day 2021-09-11 : The dazzling stars in Messier 15 look fresh and new in this image from the NASA/Hubble Space Telescope, but they are actually all roughly 13 billion years old, making them some of the most ancient objects in the Universe. Unlike another recent Hubble Picture of the Week, which featured the unusually sparse cluster Palomar 1, Messier 15 is rich and bright despite its age


Image Of The Day 2021-09-10 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a violent stellar nursery called NGC 2174, in which stars are born in a first-come-first-served feeding frenzy for survival. The problem is that star formation is a very inefficient process; most of the ingredients to make stars are wasted as the cloud of gas and dust, or nebula, gradually disperses


Image Of The Day 2021-09-09 : Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has captured this moment in the ever-changing life of a spiral galaxy called IC 391. Although these massive star cities appear static and unchanging, their stellar inhabitants are constantly moving and evolving, with new stars being born and old stars reaching the ends of their lives —often in spectacular fashion, with an immense supernova explosion that can be viewed from Earth


Image Of The Day 2021-09-08 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a clear view of the unusual globular cluster Palomar 1, whose youthful beauty is a puzzle for astronomers. This faint and sparse object is very different from the more familiar brilliant and very rich globular clusters and had to wait until 1954 for its discovery by George Abell on photographs from the Palomar Schmidt telescope


Image Of The Day 2021-09-07 : The spiral galaxy NGC 1345 and its loose and ragged arms dominate this rich image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It is a member of the Eridanus Galaxy Cluster — a group of about 70 galaxies that lies 85 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (the River)


Image Of The Day 2021-09-06 : Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to image the tiny planetary nebula NGC 6886. These celestial objects signal the final death throes of mid-sized stars (up to about eight times the mass of the Sun); when such a star exhausts its supply of hydrogen fuel, the outer layers begin to expand and cool, which creates an envelope of gas and dust that shrouds the dying star


Image Of The Day 2021-09-05 : A spectacular section of the well-known Eagle Nebula has been targeted by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This collection of dazzling stars is called NGC 6611, an open star cluster that formed about 5


Image Of The Day 2021-09-04 : An image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been reprocessed using the latest techniques to mark the closure of the Space Telescope European Coordination Facility (ST-ECF), based near Munich in Germany, and to celebrate its achievements in supporting Hubble science in Europe over the past 26 years.

Astronomer Bob Fosbury, who is stepping down as Head of the ST-ECF, was responsible for much of the early research into the Cartwheel Galaxy along with the late Tim Hawarden — including giving the object its very apposite name — and so this image was selected as a fitting tribute


Image Of The Day 2021-09-03 : The galaxy captured in this image, called UGC 12158, certainly isn’t camera-shy: this spiral stunner is posing face-on to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, revealing its structure in fine detail. UGC 12158 is an excellent example of a barred spiral galaxy in the Hubble sequence — a scheme used to categorise galaxies based on their shapes


Image Of The Day 2021-09-02 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has turned its eagle eye to the planetary nebula NGC 6572, a very bright example of these strange but beautiful objects. Planetary nebulae are created during the late stages of the evolution of certain stars that eject gas into space and emit intense ultraviolet radiation that makes the material glow


Image Of The Day 2021-09-01 : The star cluster is very bright and was discovered in the mid-eighteenth century. The nebula, however, is much more elusive and it took almost a further two decades for it to be first noted by Charles Messier in 1764


Image Of The Day 2021-08-31 : Fresh starbirth infuses the galaxy NGC 6503 with a vital pink glow in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, a smaller version of the Milky Way, is perched near a great void in space where few other galaxies reside


Image Of The Day 2021-08-30 : Smaller, dimmer galaxies appear to flit like moths around a radiant street light in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The brilliant central object is a supergiant elliptical galaxy, the dominant member of a galaxy cluster with the mouthful of a name MACSJ1423


Image Of The Day 2021-08-29 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to peer closely at the strange cloud of gas and dust that envelops a star at a late stage in its life, a short-lived phenomenon known as a protoplanetary, or pre-planetary nebula. These fascinating celestial objects give astronomers an opportunity to watch the early stages of planetary nebula formation, as the gas and dust is moulded by high velocity winds — like watching a glassblower at work in his factory


Image Of The Day 2021-08-28 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a striking galaxy called NGC 4452, which appears to lie exactly edge-on as seen from Earth. The result is an extraordinary picture of billions of stars observed from an unusual angle


Image Of The Day 2021-08-27 : At first glance NGC 3077 looks like a typical, relatively peaceful elliptical galaxy. However, as this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image dramatically reveals it is actually a hotbed of very energetic star formation and the whole galaxy is laced with dusty tendrils


Image Of The Day 2021-08-26 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has turned its sharp eye towards a tight collection of stars, first seen 174 years ago. The result is a sparkling image of NGC 1806, tens of thousands of stars gravitationally bound into a rich cluster


Image Of The Day 2021-08-24 : The beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 406 was discovered in 1834


Image Of The Day 2021-08-23 : The keen eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has often peered deeply into the Orion Nebula to see the processes occurring there and revealed many dramatic tableaux of young stars hurling material into space and entire solar systems forming. This image shows the spectacular region around an object known as Herbig-Haro 502, a very small part of the vast stellar nursery


Image Of The Day 2021-08-22 : This bright spray of stars in the small but evocative constellation of Delphinus (the Dolphin) is the globular cluster NGC 6934. Globular clusters are large balls of (typically) a few hundred thousand ancient stars that exist on the edges of galaxies


Image Of The Day 2021-08-21 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope snapped this striking image of an aging star whose outer layers of gas have blown off into space. These gases glow in the fierce ultraviolet glare from the hot, small remnant of the star at the cloud's centre


Image Of The Day 2021-08-20 : Astronomers are used to encountering challenges in their work, but studying the prosaically-named galaxy PGC 39058 proves more difficult than usual. Due to a stroke of bad luck, a bright star happens to lie between the galaxy and the Earth, meaning our view is partly obscured by the glare of the star


Image Of The Day 2021-08-19 : This remarkable picture from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows one of the most perfect geometrical forms created in space. It captures the formation of an unusual pre-planetary nebula, known as IRAS 23166+1655, around the star LL Pegasi (also known as AFGL 3068) in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse)


Image Of The Day 2021-08-18 : A billowing cloud of hydrogen in the Triangulum galaxy (Messier 33), about 2.7 million light-years away from Earth, glows with the energy released by hundreds of young, bright stars


Image Of The Day 2021-08-17 : This spectacular NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a bright scattering of stars in the small constellation of Sagitta (the Arrow). This is the centre of the globular cluster Messier 71, a great ball of ancient stars on the edge of our galaxy around 13 000 light-years from Earth


Image Of The Day 2021-08-16 : At first glance, the scatter of pale dots on this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image looks like a snowstorm in the night sky. But almost every one of these delicate snowflakes is a distant galaxy in the cluster MACS J0717


Image Of The Day 2021-08-15 : Haro 11 appears to shine gently amid clouds of gas and dust, but this placid facade belies the monumental rate of star formation occurring in this “starburst” galaxy. By combining data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have created a new image of this incredibly bright and distant galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-08-14 : This dramatic image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planetary nebula NGC 3918, a brilliant cloud of colourful gas in the constellation of Centaurus, around 4900 light-years from Earth. In the centre of the cloud of gas, and completely dwarfed by the nebula, are the dying remnants of a red giant


Image Of The Day 2021-08-14 : This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture depicts the galaxy NGC 1533 in the southern constellation of Dorado (the Dolphin-fish). Around 62 million light-years from Earth, NGC 1533, which is classed as a lenticular galaxy, is a transitional type that shows characteristics of both spiral and elliptical galaxies


Image Of The Day 2021-08-13 : This spectacular NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture shows NGC 1872, a rich cluster of thousands of stars lying in our small neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. This little-studied cluster is located in the constellation of Dorado (the Dolphinfish, a fish unrelated to the dolphin and which often appears on dinner menus under its Hawaiian name mahi-mahi)


Image Of The Day 2021-08-12 : This Hubble Space Telescope picture captures a brief but beautiful phase late in the life of a star. The curious cloud around this bright star is called IRAS 19475+3119


Image Of The Day 2021-08-11 : This image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the core of the great globular cluster Messier 13 and provides an extraordinarily clear view of the hundreds of thousands of stars in the cluster, one of the brightest and best known in the sky. Just 25 000 light-years away and about 145 light-years in diameter, Messier 13 has drawn the eye since its discovery by Edmund Halley, the noted British astronomer, in 1714


Image Of The Day 2021-08-10 : The Hubble Space Telescope captured this beautiful image of NGC 6326, a planetary nebula with glowing wisps of outpouring gas that are lit up by a central star nearing the end of its life. When a star ages and the red giant phase of its life comes to an end, it starts to eject layers of gas from its surface leaving behind a hot and compact white dwarf


Image Of The Day 2021-08-09 : The small spiral galaxy NGC 2758 is captured in great detail in this image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It was first seen by the American astronomer Frank Muller, at the McCormick Observatory in Virginia in the 1880s


Image Of The Day 2021-08-08 : The little-known nebula IRAS 05437+2502 billows out among the bright stars and dark dust clouds that surround it in this striking image from the Hubble Space Telescope. It is located in the constellation of Taurus (the Bull), close to the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-08-08 : The little-known nebula IRAS 05437+2502 billows out among the bright stars and dark dust clouds that surround it in this striking image from the Hubble Space Telescope. It is located in the constellation of Taurus (the Bull), close to the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy


Image Of The Day 2021-08-07 : The star HD 44179 is surrounded by an extraordinary structure known as the Red Rectangle. It acquired its moniker because of its shape and its apparent colour when seen in early images from Earth


Image Of The Day 2021-08-06 : The bright galaxy NGC 3810 demonstrates classical spiral structure in this very detailed image from Hubble. The bright central region is thought to be forming many new stars and is outshining the outer areas of the galaxy by some margin


Image Of The Day 2021-08-05 : That galaxies come in very different shapes and sizes is dramatically demonstrated by this striking Hubble image of the Hickson Compact Group 59. Named by astronomer Paul Hickson in 1982, this is the 59th such collection of galaxies in his catalogue of unusually close groups


Image Of The Day 2021-08-04 : This striking Hubble image of the planetary nebula IC 4634 reveals two shining, S-shaped ejections from a dying star. This star, awash in glowing material at the centre of the picture, bloated as it aged and launched its outer layers off into space


Image Of The Day 2021-08-03 : The richly textured spiral galaxy NGC 2082 is found about 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado (the Swordfish), deep in the southern sky. As seen here in a very detailed image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, filaments of dark dust splay across NGC 2082’s luminous curved arms and dense central bulge of stars


Image Of The Day 2021-08-02 : A stunning image of an unfamiliar star cluster.This rich collection of scattered stars, known as Messier 72, looks like a city seen from an airplane window at night, as small glints of light from suburban homes dot the outskirts of the bright city centre


Image Of The Day 2021-08-01 : This colour image of the region known as NGC 2264 - an area of sky that includes the sparkling blue baubles of the Christmas Tree star cluster and the Cone Nebula - was created from data taken through four different filters (B, V, R and H-alpha) with the Wide Field Imager at ESO's La Silla


Image Of The Day 2021-07-31 : The surface of the Sun is a very busy place. It has electrically charged gases that generate areas of powerful magnetic forces. These areas are called magnetic fields. The Sun's gases are constantly moving, which tangles, stretches and twists the magnetic fields. This motion creates a lot of activity on the Sun's surface, called solar activity.


Image Of The Day 2021-07-30 : A real challenge! Through the smoke of Canadian forest fires, during a full moon and under a Bortle 9 sky, this picture of the Tulip Nebula (SH2-101) was taken with about 10 hours of exposure in SHO from Montreal.there was a lot of struggle with the processing, especially to bring out the weak OIII signal...Interesting thing here, we can see the Cygnus X-1 binary system (above the Tulip nebula on the picture)




Image Of The Day 2021-07-29 : The NGC 6188 emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara,about 4,000 light-years away from us. Born in that region only a few million years ago,the massive young stars sculpt the fantastic shapes and power the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation.


Image Of The Day 2021-07-28 : The rim of the large blue galaxy at the right is an immense ring-like structure 150,000 light years in diameter composed of newly formed, extremely bright, massive stars. AM 0644-741 is known as a ring galaxy and was caused by an immense galaxy collision.


Image Of The Day 2021-07-27 : Chaotic in appearance, these tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star


Image Of The Day 2021-07-26 : Can a gas cloud grab a galaxy? It's not even close. The 'claw' of this odd looking 'creature' in the featured photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule


Image Of The Day 2021-07-25 : Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase. The elegant picture of the gas giant planet and its cloudy moon was taken from behind just after closest approach in 1989


Image Of The Day 2021-07-24 : Where does space begin? For purposes of spaceflight some would say at the Karman line, currently defined as an altitude of 100 kilometers (60 miles). Others might place a line 80 kilometers (50 miles) above Earth's mean sea level


Image Of The Day 2021-07-22 : Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. NGC 7814 is centered in the pretty field of view that would almost be covered by a full moon


Image Of The Day 2021-07-21 : What if you could see, separately, all the colors of the Ring? And of the surrounding stars? There's technology for that. The featured image shows the Ring Nebula (M57) and nearby stars through such technology: in this case, a prism-like diffraction grating


Image Of The Day 2021-07-20 : Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens.  Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages


Image Of The Day 2021-07-19 : The photographer had this shot in mind for some time. He knew that objects overhead are the brightest -- since their light is scattered the least by atmospheric air


Image Of The Day 2021-07-18 : What does the Andromeda galaxy look like in ultraviolet light? Young blue stars circling the galactic center dominate. A mere 2


Image Of The Day 2021-07-17 : Point your telescope at tonight's first quarter Moon. Along the terminator, the shadow line between night and day, you might find these two large craters staring back at you with an owlish gaze


Image Of The Day 2021-07-16 : Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god's namesake, come together by moonlight in this serene skyview, recorded on July 11 from Lualaba province, Democratic Republic of Congo, planet Earth. Taken in the western twilight sky shortly after sunset the exposure also records earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark surface of the young crescent Moon


Image Of The Day 2021-07-15 : In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnalogical constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower. In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait


Image Of The Day 2021-07-14 : What happens when a black hole destroys a neutron star? Analyses indicate that just such an event created gravitational wave event GW200115, detected in 2020 January by LIGO and Virgo observatories. To better understand the unusual event, the featured visualization was created from a computer simulation


Image Of The Day 2021-07-13 : What has happened to Saturn's moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark brown, while others are as bright white. The composition of the dark material is unknown, but infrared spectra indicate that it possibly contains some dark form of carbon


Image Of The Day 2021-07-12 : What will become of our Sun? The first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets


Image Of The Day 2021-07-11 : Where's the Moon? Somewhere in this image, the Earth's Moon is hiding. The entire Moon is visible, in its completely full phase, in plain sight


Image Of The Day 2021-07-10 : On July 8th early morning risers saw Mercury near an old Moon low on the eastern horizon. On that date bright planet, faint glow of lunar night side, and sunlit crescent were captured in this predawn skyscape from Tenerife's Teide National Park in the Canary Islands


Image Of The Day 2021-07-10 : On July 8th early morning risers saw Mercury near an old Moon low on the eastern horizon. On that date bright planet, faint glow of lunar night side, and sunlit crescent were captured in this predawn skyscape from Tenerife's Teide National Park in the Canary Islands


Image Of The Day 2021-07-09 : M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow


Image Of The Day 2021-07-08 : Aphelion for 2021 occurred on July 5th. That's the point in Earth's elliptical orbit when it is farthest from the Sun


Image Of The Day 2021-07-06 : How many moons does Saturn have? So far 82 have been confirmed, the smallest being only a fraction of a kilometer across. Six of its largest satellites can be seen here in a composite image with 13 short exposure of the bright planet, and 13 long exposures of the brightest of its faint moons, taken over two weeks last month


Image Of The Day 2021-07-04 : Wouldn't it be fun if clouds were castles? Wouldn't it be fun if the laundry on the bedroom chair was a superhero? Wouldn't it be fun if rock mesas on Mars were interplanetary monuments to the human face? Clouds, though, are floating droplets of water and ice. Laundry is cotton, wool, or plastic, woven into garments


Image Of The Day 2021-07-03 : You can't walk along the Milky Way. Still, under a dark sky you can explore it


Image Of The Day 2021-07-02 : Awash in a sea of incandescent plasma and anchored in strong magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized dark islands in the solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. Found in solar active regions, sunspots look dark only because they are slightly cooler though, with temperatures of about 4,000 kelvins compared to 6,000 kelvins for the surrounding solar surface


Image Of The Day 2021-07-01 : On sol 46 (April 6, 2021) the Perseverance rover held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera at the end of the arm was designed to take close-ups of martian rocks and surface details though, and not a quick snap shot of friends and smiling faces


Image Of The Day 2021-06-30 : How did the first stars form? To help find out, the SPHINX computer simulation of star formation in the very early universe was created, some results of which are shown in the featured video. Time since the Big Bang is shown in millions of years on the upper left


Image Of The Day 2021-06-29 : Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away


Image Of The Day 2021-06-28 : It may look like a paper Moon. Sailing past a canvas Sun


Image Of The Day 2021-06-27 : What drives auroras on Saturn? To help find out, scientists have sorted through hundreds of infrared images of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft for other purposes, trying to find enough aurora images to correlate changes and make movies. Once made, some movies clearly show that Saturnian auroras can change not only with the angle of the Sun, but also as the planet rotates


Image Of The Day 2021-06-26 : These two panels, composed of video frames made with a safe solar telescope and hydrogen alpha filter, show remarkably sharp details on the solar disk and giant prominences along the Sun's edge on June 6 (top) and June 18. Taken from Beijing, China, they also show a transit of the International Space Station and China's new Tiangong Space Station in silhouette against the bright Sun


Image Of The Day 2021-06-25 : How far can you see? The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, is the most distant object easily seen by the unaided eye


Image Of The Day 2021-06-24 : Grand design spiral galaxy Messier 99 looks majestic on a truly cosmic scale. This recently processed full galaxy portrait stretches over 70,000 light-years across M99


Image Of The Day 2021-06-23 : How do stars form? Most form in giant molecular clouds located in the central disk of a galaxy. The process is started, influenced, and limited by the stellar winds, jets, high energy starlight, and supernova explosions of previously existing stars


Image Of The Day 2021-06-22 : How are jets created during star formation? No one is sure, although recent images of the young star system HD 163296 are quite illuminating. The central star in the featured image is still forming but seen already surrounded by a rotating disk and an outward moving jet


Image Of The Day 2021-06-21 : Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco)


Image Of The Day 2021-06-20 : Today the Sun reaches its northernmost point in planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice, many cultures mark this date as a change of seasons -- from spring to summer in Earth's Northern Hemisphere and from fall to winter in Earth's Southern Hemisphere


Image Of The Day 2021-06-19 : Nights grow shorter and days grow longer as the summer solstice approaches in the north. Usually seen at high latitudes in summer months, noctilucent or night shining clouds begin to make their appearance


Image Of The Day 2021-06-18 : Atmospheric refraction flattened the solar disk and distorted its appearance in this telescopic view of an Atlantic sunrise on June 10. From Belmar, New Jersey on the US east coast, the scene was recorded at New Moon during this season's annular solar eclipse




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