Helix Nebula: Detail Image 1: Detailed image of the Helix Nebula.

Name: Helix Nebula, NGC 7293
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Aquarius
Distance: 2500 light years
Release date: 9 May 2003, 15:00
Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO).

Helix Nebula: Detail Image 2: Detailed image of the Helix Nebula.

Name: Helix Nebula, NGC 7293
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Aquarius
Distance: 2500 light years
Release date: 9 May 2003, 15:00
Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO).

Helix Nebula: Detail Image 3: Detailed image of the Helix Nebula.

Name: Helix Nebula, NGC 7293
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Aquarius
Distance: 2500 light years
Release date: 9 May 2003, 15:00
Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO).

Helix Nebula: Detail Image 4: Detailed image of the Helix Nebula.

Name: Helix Nebula, NGC 7293
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Aquarius
Distance: 2500 light years
Release date: 9 May 2003, 15:00
Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO).

The mysterious 'Garden-sprinkler' nebula: There are many mysterious objects seen in the night sky which are not really well understood. For example, astronomers are puzzled by the 'jets' emerging from planetary nebulae. However, the S-shaped jet from Henize 3-1475 is the most perplexing of all. 'Jets' are long outflows of fast-moving gas found near many objects in the Universe, such as around young stars, or coming from black holes, neutron stars, and planetary nebulae, for example. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the young planetary nebula Henize 3-1475 and its bizarre jet. Astronomers have nicknamed it the 'Garden-sprinkler' Nebula.

Name: Garden-sprinkler Nebula, Hen 3-1475
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Sagittarius
Distance: 18000 light years
Release date: 22 May 2003, 15:00
Credit: European Space Agency, A. Riera (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain) and P. Garcia-Lario (European Space Agency ISO Data Centre, Spain)

Unique Mass Map: This is a mass map of galaxy cluster CL0024+1654 derived from an extensive Hubble Space Telescope campaign.

Name: ClG 0024+1654
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: CosmologyGalaxies
Distance: z=0.4 (redshift)
Release date: 17 July 2003, 15:00
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA and Jean-Paul Kneib (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, France/Caltech, USA)

Hubble observes shapes of more than 7000 faint background galaxies: Five days of observations produced altogether the 39 Hubble Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2(WFPC2) images required to map the mass of the galaxy cluster CL0024+1654.

Name: CL0024+1654
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: CosmologyGalaxies
Distance: z=0.4 (redshift)
Release date: 17 July 2003, 15:00
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA and Jean-Paul Kneib (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, France/Caltech, USA)

Ground-based image of the galaxy cluster CL0024+1654: This is a colour image of the galaxy cluster CL0024+1654 obtained with the CFHT12k camera at the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea (Hawaii). The cluster clearly appears as a concentration of yellow galaxies in the centre of this image although cluster galaxies actually extend at least to the edge of this image. This image measures 21 x 21 arc-minutes.

Name: CL0024+1654
Type: Early Universe : Star : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Pisces
Distance: z=0.4 (redshift)
Release date: 17 July 2003, 15:00
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA, Jean-Paul Kneib (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, France/Caltech, USA) and the Canada France Hawaii Telescope

Sky around galaxy cluster CL0024+1654 (ground-based image): This is a 2.5-degree field around galaxy cluster CL0024+1654. The cluster galaxies are visible in the centre of the image in yellow. The image is a colour composite constructed from three Digitized Sky Survey 2 images: Blue (shown in blue), Red (shown in green), and Infrared (shown in red).

Name: ClG 0024+1654
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: CosmologyGalaxies
Constellation: Pisces
Distance: z=0.4 (redshift)
Release date: 17 July 2003, 15:00
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA, Jean-Paul Kneib (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, France/Caltech, USA) and the Digitized Sky Survey

Galaxy NGC 3982: A team of European astronomers is using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to look back in time. They have imaged the spiral galaxy NGC 3982 and hundreds of other galaxies in the hope that one of the millions of stars in these images will some day explode as a supernova. They can then look back and pinpoint the exact star that has exploded. Only two such supernova 'mother stars' have ever been identified.

Name: NGC 3982
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Ursa Major
Distance: 70 million light years
Release date: 24 September 2003, 15:00
Credit: Image credit: European Space Agency and Stephen Smartt (University of Cambridge)

Mega starbirth cluster is biggest, brightest and hottest ever seen (artist's impression): This illustration shows an artist's impression of the so-called Lynx arc, a newly identified distant super-cluster that contains a million blue-white stars twice as hot as similar stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The Lynx arc is one million times brighter than the well-known Orion Nebula, a nearby prototypical 'starbirth' region visible with small telescopes. The stars in the Lynx arc are more than twice as hot as the Orion Nebula's central stars, with surface temperatures up to 80 000›C. Though there are much bigger and brighter star-forming regions than the Orion Nebula in our local Universe, none are as bright as the Lynx arc, nor do they contain such large numbers of hot stars. The stars are so hot that a very large fraction of their light is emitted in the ultraviolet that makes the gas glow with the green and red colours illustrated here.

Name: Lynx Arc
Type: Early Universe : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Distance: z=3.356 (redshift)
Release date: 30 October 2003, 15:00
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA and Robert A.E. Fosbury (European Space Agency/Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility, Germany)