Hubble captures Deep Impact's collision with a comet (view 3 min before impact): The image shows the comet three minutes before impact. The encounter occurred at 7:52 CEST 4 July.

Name: Comet 9P, Tempel 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 July 2005, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Feldman (Johns Hopkins University), and H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)

Hubble captures Deep Impact's collision with a comet (view 12 minutes after impact): This image shows that just 12 minutes after the collision, the innermost coma of dust appears 10 times brighter than in the pre-impact photo. The impact caused a brilliant flash of light and a constant increase in the brightness of the inner cloud of dust.

Name: Comet 9P, Tempel 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet : Coma
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 July 2005, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Feldman (Johns Hopkins University), and H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)

Hubble captures Deep Impact's collision with a comet (view 64 minutes after impact): The Hubble telescope continued to monitor the comet, snapping another image an hour after the encounter. In this photo, the dust ejected during the impact is expanding outward in the shape of a fan. The debris extends about 720 kilometres from the nucleus.

Name: Comet 9P, Tempel 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 July 2005, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Feldman (Johns Hopkins University), and H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)

Hubble captures Deep Impact's collision with a comet (view 88 minutes after impact): The expansion of the comet debris cloud continues.

Name: Comet 9P, Tempel 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 July 2005, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Feldman (Johns Hopkins University), and H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)

Hubble captures Deep Impact's collision with a comet (view 4h41 after impact): In this photo, the cloud is 3,200 kilometres across.

Name: Comet 9P, Tempel 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 July 2005, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Feldman (Johns Hopkins University), and H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)

Hubble captures Deep Impact's collision with a comet (view 19h7 after impact): This picture in the sequence shows the cloud becoming more diffuse.

Name: Comet 9P, Tempel 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 July 2005, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Feldman (Johns Hopkins University), and H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)

Hubble Images Comet Tempel 1 Just Before Deep Impact Probe Arrives: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped an image of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 just days before the Deep Impact spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with the comet. This image, taken on the morning of 30 June, 2005, shows an undisturbed and quiet comet. This Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Wide Field Camera (WFC) image of Tempel 1 shows a slightly larger view of the comet than was seen in Hubble images released last week. This image of the comet shows the dusty inner coma around the nucleus, but the solid nucleus itself is below Hubble's resolution. The nucleus was at a distance of 134 million kilometers when the image was taken. The ACS/WFC image is a composite of data taken with blue and red filters onboard Hubble. A quiescent comet is seen in this pre-impact image along with elongated star trails. As the telescope was locked on the movement of the comet, the background stars left small trailed arcs during the time the exposures were taken.

Name: Comet 9P, Tempel 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet : NucleusSolar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet : Coma
Category: Solar System
Release date: 4 July 2005, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: P. Feldman (JHU), L. McFadden (University of Maryland),

The North America Nebula (ground-based image): This image is a composite from black and white images taken with the Palomar Observatory's 48-inch (1.2 meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II). The images were recorded on two glass photographic plates - one sensitive to red light and the other to blue and later they were digitized. In order to produce the colour image seen here a total of 62 different frames were processed with the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator by Italian amateur astronomer Davide De Martin - 31 frames for each colour band, coming from 4 different plates taken from 1990 to 1993. The original file is 14,264 x 15,429 pixels with a resolution of about 1 arc-second per pixel. The image covers an area of sky larger than 4› x 4.3› (for comparison, the Full Moon is about 0.5› in diameter).

Name: NGC 7000, North America Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Appearance : Emission
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Cygnus
Release date: 8 August 2005, 10:00
Credit: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble), the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator & Digitized Sky Survey 2

No-host quasar compared with a normal quasar: This figure shows two Hubble images of quasars from a sample of 20 relatively nearby quasars examined by a team of European astronomers two of the most powerful astronomical facilities available, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Cerro Paranal. The team confidently concludes that the quasar on the left, HE0450-2958 (in the centre, distance about 5 billion light-years) does not have a massive host galaxy. The quasar HE1239-2426 to the right (at a distance of 1.5 billion light-years), has a normal host galaxy which displays large spiral arms. Although HE1239-2426 is much closer than HE0450-2958, the host galaxy of the latter would still be perfectly visible if it was as bright as the one of HE1239-2426. The lack of a prominent host galaxy around a very bright quasar (HE0450-2958) suggests a rare case of a collision between a seemingly normal spiral galaxy and an exotic object harbouring a very massive black hole. Also seen in the image to the left (above the quasar) is a strongly disturbed galaxy, showing all the signs of a recent collision. The VLT observations show it to be forming stars at a frantic rate. Below the quasar a foreground star is seen. The two images have been scaled to exhibit the same linear scale. The images were taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Name: HE0450-2958, HE1239-2426
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Activity : AGN : Quasar
Category: Quasars and Black Holes
Release date: 14 September 2005, 19:00
Credit: NASA/ESA, ESO, Frédéric Courbin (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland) & Pierre Magain (Universite de Liège, Belgium)