The Western Veil Nebula, NGC 6960 // Karl-Heinz Macek

Hubble image of Arp 142 by Hubble Space Telescope / ESA

SN 1006, Supernova Streams

Sometimes, another galaxy passes through briefly but changes you forever. That’s the tale being told in this Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy AM 0644-741. Once it was a classic spiral shape, until another galaxy passed directly through it and moved on to parts unknown. The stars, gas, and dust of the spiral arms were disrupted and pushed outward, similar to ripples after a rock has been thrown in a pond. As the ripple of galactic material plows outward into its surroundings, gas clouds collide and are compressed. The clouds can then contract under their own gravity, collapse, and form an abundance of new stars—shown here in bright blue. The core of the galaxy, glowing yellow, remains intact, though not centered. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI. ALT TEXT: An oval-shaped galaxy with a hazy yellow core is surrounded by a ring of bright blue stars. The core is off-center, much closer to the left-hand edge of the outer ring, like the yolk of an egg. One partial arm of stars wraps beneath and to the right of the core. The remainder of space inside the galaxy’s outer ring of stars is filled with dark gas and dust, and occasional stars or star clusters seen as red or yellow dots. The outer ring of blue stars is interspersed with pink and red areas, with some glowing almost white. A scattering of stars appears in the background in blue and red, with some distant galaxies appearing hazy yellow.

M51, Whirpool Galaxy

A colonized Moon. One day this could be our view from Earth.

via @latestinspace

The Mermaid Nebula Supernova Remnant Image Credit: Neil Corke

Cosmic Jellyfish: Interacting Galaxies UGC 9326/7 ©

Strike a pose, vogue! 📸

The galaxy on the left looks like it went with extreme eye makeup, while the one on the right went with a more natural look. Together, they’re known as Arp 107, a pair of colliding galaxies.

The glamorous galaxy on the left is an extremely energetic galaxy with a very active core. Its small companion is connected to it by a faint “bridge” of gas and dust. This view was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton.

ALT TEXT: A pair of merging galaxies. The galaxy on the left has a single, large spiral arm curving out from the core toward 3 o’clock and wrapping counterclockwise, ending in a straighter line pointing toward the bottom of the frame. This arm is bright blue with shades of brown mixed in. The right-hand galaxy has a bright core that is approximately the same size as the galaxy at left, but only a tiny bit of very faint material surrounds it. A broad curtain of gas connects the two galaxies’ cores and hangs beneath them. Small stars and galaxies are scattered throughout the black background of space.

Amazing

Though a doomed star exploded some 20,000 years ago, its tattered remnants continue racing into space at breakneck speeds—and the Hubble Space Telescope has caught the action.

The nebula, called the Cygnus Loop, forms a bubble-like shape that is about 120 light-years in diameter. The distance to its center is approximately 2,600 light-years. The entire nebula has a width of six full Moons as seen on the sky.

"Hubble is the only way that we can actually watch what's happening at the edge of the bubble with such clarity," said Ravi Sankrit, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

"The Hubble images are spectacular when you look at them in detail. They're telling us about the density differences encountered by the supernova shocks as they propagate through space, and the turbulence in the regions behind these shocks."

The Cygnus Loop was discovered in 1784 by William Herschel, using a simple 18-inch reflecting telescope. He could have never imagined that a little over two centuries later we'd have a telescope powerful enough to zoom in on a very tiny slice of the nebula for this spectacular view.

Credit: Video - NASA, ESA, STScI; Acknowledgment - NSF's NOIRLab, Akira Fujii, Jeff Hester, Davide De Martin, Travis A. Rector, Ravi Sankrit (STScI), DSS.

Awesome

Big Dipper and Comet NEOWISE