A wide-field view of the region around NGC 4710 (ground-based image): A wide-field image of the region around NGC 4710 constructed from Digitized Sky Survey 2 data. The field of view is approximately 2.8 degrees x 2.9 degrees.

Name: NGC 4710
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : SpiralLocal Universe : Galaxy : Component : Bulge
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Distance: 60 million light years
Release date: 18 November 2009, 12:00
Credit: NASA, ESA and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

Blushing dusty nebula: This close-up of an area in the northwest region of the large Iris Nebula seems to be clogged with cosmic dust. With bright light from the nearby star HD 200775 illuminating it from above, the dust resembles thick mounds of billowing cotton. It is actually made up of tiny particles of solid matter, with sizes from ten to a hundred times smaller than those of the dust grains we find at home. Both background and foreground stars are dotted throughout the image. Researchers studying the object are particularly interested in the region to the left and slightly above centre in the image, where dusty filaments appear redder than is expected. North is down, East is right. The field of view is 3.3 arcminutes. The image is a composite of four images obtained through blue, green, near-infrared and H-alpha filters.

Name: HD 200775, NGC 7023
Type: Milky Way : StarMilky Way : Nebula : Appearance : Reflection
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Cepheus
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 1 December 2009, 12:00
Credit: NASA & ESA

A wide-field view of the region around NGC 7023 (ground-based image): A wide-field image of the region around NGC 7023 constructed from Digitized Sky Survey 2 data. The field of view is approximately 2.8 degrees x 2.9 degrees.

Name: HD 200775, NGC 7023
Type: Milky Way : StarMilky Way : Nebula : Appearance : Reflection
Category: Stars
Constellation: Cepheus
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 1 December 2009, 12:00
Credit: NASA, ESA and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

Hubble sees oldest galaxies yet: In 2004, Hubble created the deepest visible-light image of the Universe and now, with its brand-new camera, Hubble is seeing even farther in the same region. Hubble's newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) collects light from near-infrared wavelengths and therefore looks even deeper, because the light from hot young stars in very distant galaxies is stretched out of the ultraviolet and visible regions of the spectrum into near-infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe. The new deep view also provides insights into how galaxies grew in their formative years early in the Universe's history. This image is a composite of separate exposures made by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges in the near-infrared. The colour results from assigning different colours to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colours are: F105W (Y) blue, F125W (J) green and F160 (H) red. The image is roughly 2.4 arcminutes wide.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Fornax
Release date: 8 December 2009, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and the University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (UCO/Lick Observatory and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team

Compass and scale image of Hubble Ultra Deep Field Infrared: Compass and scale image of Hubble Ultra Deep Field Infrared.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Cosmology
Release date: 8 December 2009, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay (STScI), G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and the University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (UCO/Lick Observatory and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team

Ground image and the region of sky around the constellation of Fornax (ground-based image): This picture of the region around the constellation of Fornax, in the southern sky, was taken with a small ground-based camera.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Galaxies
Release date: 8 December 2009, 15:00
Credit: A. Fujii

Hubble Ultra Deep Field region from the Digitized Sky Survey (ground-based image): A wide-field image of the region of the sky around the constellation of Fornax, constructed from the data from Digitized Sky Survey 2. The field of view is approximately 1.94 degrees x 1.65 degrees.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Cosmology
Release date: 8 December 2009, 15:00
Credit: Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech and UKSTU/AAO

Hubble's sharpest image of the Orion Nebula with proplyd highlights: The gorgeous Orion Nebula is home to tens of what could be fledgling planetary systems. In this image, six of these modest "smudges" with big potential are highlighted (from top down): 132-1832, 206-446, 180-331, 106-417, 231-838 and 181-825. Within the awe-inspiring, gaseous folds of Orion, researchers have identified two different types of discs around young and forming stars: those that lie close to the brightest star in the cluster (Theta 1 Orionis C) and those farther away from it. This bright star heats up the gas in the nearby discs, causing them to shine brightly. The discs that are farther away do not receive enough of the energetic radiation from the star to set the gas ablaze; thus, they can only be detected as a dark silhouette against the background of the bright nebula, as the dust that surrounds these discs absorbs background visible light. In these silhouetted discs, astronomers are better able to study the properties of the dust grains that are thought to bind together and possibly form planets like our own. The brighter discs are indicated by a glowing cusp in the excited material and facing the bright star, but which we see at a random orientation within the nebula, so some appear edge on, and others face on, for instance. Other interesting features enhance the look of these captivating objects, such as emerging jets of matter and shock waves. The dramatic shock waves are formed when the stellar wind from the nearby massive star collides with the gas in the nebula, sculpting boomerang shapes or arrows or even, in the case of 181-825, a space jellyfish!

Name: Messier 42, Orion Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Disk : ProtoplanetaryMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 14 December 2009, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA), the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team and L. Ricci (ESO)