The dynamic duo, Messier 81 and 82 (ground-based): This wide-angle image taken by astrophotographer Robert Gendler shows the amazing duo of Messier 81 (right) and Messier 82 (left). These two mighty galaxies in the Plough (Ursa Major) belong to some of the most famous and beloved galaxies known to amateur astronomers. This may be one of the reasons that Supernova 1993J was discovered by the Spanish amateur astronomer Francisco Garcia Diaz and not a professional astronomer. The violent star-forming activity in the neighbouring Messier 82 gives rise to a strong galactic wind that is spewing knotty filaments of hydrogen and nitrogen gas (seen in red) out of its centre.

Name: Messier 81, Messier 82, NGC 3031, NGC 3034
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Ursa Major
Distance: 12 million light years
Release date: 7 January 2004, 15:00
Credit: Robert Gendler (http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/)

Constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (ground-based image): This image was taken by astrophotographer Akira Fujii and shows the Plough (Ursa Major) in the lower right, and Ursa Minor to the left of centre.

Name: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor
Type: Milky Way : Sky Phenomenon : Night Sky : Constellation
Category: Stars
Release date: 7 January 2004, 15:00
Credit: Akira Fujii

Supernova blast bonanza in nearby galaxy: The nearby dwarf galaxy NGC 1569 is a hotbed of vigorous star birth activity which blows huge bubbles and super-bubbles that riddle the main body of the galaxy. The galaxy's vigorous "star factories" are also manufacturing brilliant blue star clusters. This galaxy had a sudden and relatively recent onset of star birth 25 million years ago, which subsided about the time the very earliest human ancestors appeared on Earth. In this new image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, The bubble structure is sculpted by the galactic super-winds and outflows caused by a colossal input of energy from collective supernova explosions that are linked with a massive episode of star birth. The bubble-like structures seen in this image are made of hydrogen gas that glows when hit by the fierce winds and radiation from hot young stars and is racked by supernovae shocks. The first supernovae blew up when the most massive stars reached the end of their lifetimes roughly 20-25 million years ago. The environment in NGC 1569 is still turbulent and the supernovae may not only deliver the gaseous raw material needed for the formation of further stars and star clusters, but also actually trigger their birth in the tortured swirls of gas.

Name: NGC 1569
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : IrregularLocal Universe : Galaxy : Size : Dwarf
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Camelopardalis
Distance: 11 million light years
Release date: 3 February 2004, 15:00
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA & Peter Anders (Göttingen University Galaxy Evolution Group, Germany)

Hubble and Keck team up to find farthest known galaxy in the Universe: This close-up of the large galaxy cluster Abell 2218 shows how this cluster acts as one of nature's most powerful "gravitational telescopes" and amplifies and stretches all galaxies lying behind the cluster core (seen as red, orange and blue arcs). Such natural gravitational "telescopes" allow astronomers to see extremely distant and faint objects that could otherwise not be seen. A new galaxy (split into two "images" marked with an ellipse and a circle) was detected in this image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The extremely faint galaxy is so far away that its visible light has been stretched into infrared wavelengths, making the observations particularly difficult. The galaxy may have set a new record in being the most distant known galaxy in the Universe. Located an estimated 13 billion light-years away (z~7), the object is being viewed at a time only 750 million years after the big bang, when the Universe was barely 5 percent of its current age. In the image the distant galaxy appears as multiple "images", an arc (left) and a dot (right), as its light is forced along different paths through the cluster's complex clumps of mass (the yellow galaxies) where the magnification is quite large. The colour of the different lensed galaxies in the image is a function of their distances and galaxy types. The orange arc is for instance an elliptical galaxy at moderate redshift (z=0.7) and the blue arcs are star forming galaxies at intermediate redshift (z between 1 and 2.5).

Name: Abell 2218
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Type : Gravitationally LensedEarly Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Cosmology
Distance: z=0.17 (redshift)
Release date: 15 February 2004, 18:00
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA, J.-P. Kneib (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées) and R. Ellis (Caltech)

A ground-based wide-angle image of Abell 2218: This wide-angle image spans 0.4 by 0.4 degrees and was taken by the 12k camera on Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, United States. The image is composited by three exposures through blue (B), red (R), and infrared (I) filters.

Name: Abell 2218
Type: Early Universe : GalaxyEarly Universe : Galaxy : Type : Gravitationally Lensed
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Draco
Distance: z=0.17 (redshift)
Release date: 15 February 2004, 18:00
Credit: European Space Agency, J.-P. Kneib (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées) and CFHT

Digitized Sky Survey 2 wide-angle image of Abell 2218 (ground-based image): This image is composited from blue, red and infrared exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 and shows 1.5 x 1.5 degrees centered on galaxy cluster Abell 2218.

Name: Abell 2218
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Type : Gravitationally Lensed
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Draco
Distance: z=0.17 (redshift)
Release date: 15 February 2004, 18:00
Credit: European Space Agency, J.-P. Kneib (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées) and DSS2

V838 Monocerotis revisited: Space phenomenon imitates art: "Starry Night", Vincent van Gogh's famous painting, is renowned for its bold whorls of light sweeping across a raging night sky. Although this image of the heavens came only from the artist's restless imagination, a new picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope bears remarkable similarities to the van Gogh work, complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of kilometres of interstellar space. This image, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004, is Hubble's latest view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon). The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago. V838 Mon is located about 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy.

Name: IRAS 07015-0346, V838 Mon
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Red SupergiantMilky Way : Star : Type : Variable
Category: Stars
Constellation: Monoceros
Distance: 20000 light years
Release date: 4 March 2004, 12:00
Credit: NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA