In the new Hubble image of the galaxy M74 we can also see a smattering of bright pink regions decorating the spiral arms. These are huge, relatively short-lived, clouds of hydrogen gas which glow due to the strong radiation from hot, young stars embedded within them; glowing pink regions of ionized hydrogen (hydrogen that has lost its electrons).
The Hubble telescope has captured an image of an unusual edge-on galaxy, revealing remarkable details of its warped dusty disk and showing how colliding galaxies spawn the formation of new generations of stars. The dust and spiral arms of normal spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, appear flat when viewed edge-on
This is an artist’s impression of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-121b. The bloated planet is so close to its star that the tidal pull of the star stretches it into an egg shape
Astronomers used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to analyse light from the nearby star TRAPPIST-1 as it passed through the atmospheres of four Earth-sized planets in the star’s habitable zone — the region at a distance from the star where liquid water, the key to life as we know it, could exist on their surfaces. The astronomers were looking for the signatures of certain gases, including hydrogen, in the atmospheres that were imprinted on the starlight