Hubble finds fifth moon orbiting Pluto (labelled): This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows five moons orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto. The green circle marks the newly discovered moon, designated S/2012 (134340) 1, or P5, as photographed by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on 7 July 2012. Other observations that collectively show the moon’s orbital motion were taken on 26, 27 and 29 June and on July 9. The moon is estimated to be 10 to 25 kilometres across. It is in a 95 000 kilometre diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to be aligned in the same plane as the other satellites in the system. The darker stripe in the centre of the image is because the picture is constructed from a long exposure designed to capture the comparatively faint satellites of Nix, Hydra, P4 and S/2012 (134340) 1, and a shorter exposure to capture Pluto and Charon, which are much brighter.

Name: Charon, Hydra, Nix, P4, Pluto, S/2012 (134340) 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Dwarf planet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 11 July 2012, 18:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)

Hubble finds fifth moon orbiting Pluto (unlabelled): This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows five moons orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto, including a newly discovered moon, designated S/2012 (134340) 1, or P5, as photographed by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on 7 July 2012. Other observations that collectively show the moon’s orbital motion were taken on 26, 27 and 29 June and on July 9. The moon is estimated to be 10 to 25 kilometres across. It is in a 95 000 kilometre diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to be aligned in the same plane as the other satellites in the system. The darker stripe in the centre of the image is because the picture is constructed from a long exposure designed to capture the comparatively faint satellites of Nix, Hydra, P4 and S/2012 (134340) 1, and a shorter exposure to capture Pluto and Charon, which are much brighter.

Name: Charon, Hydra, Nix, P4, Pluto, S/2012 (134340) 1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Dwarf planet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 11 July 2012, 18:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)

Hubble image of galaxy pair Arp 116: This NASA/ESA  Hubble Space Telescope image shows the peculiar galaxy pair called Arp 116. Arp 116 is composed of a giant elliptical galaxy known as Messier 60, and a much smaller spiral galaxy, NGC 4647. Astronomers  have long tried to determine whether these two galaxies are actually  interacting. Although they overlap as seen from Earth, there is no  evidence of new star formation, which would be one of the clearest signs  that the two galaxies are indeed interacting. However, recent studies  of very detailed Hubble images suggest the onset of some tidal  interaction between the two. Also included in the image, just below and to the right of M60, is their even smaller neighbour M60-UCD1. M60-UCD1 is a very tiny galaxy, just 1/500th of the diameter of our Milky Way, that lies about 50 million light-years away. Despite its size, it is pretty crowded, with about 140 million stars crammed into its diameter of just 300 light-years. An international team of astronomers have found a supermassive black hole at the centre of M60-UCD1 with the mass of 20 million Suns.

Name: Arp 116, M 60, Messier 60, NGC 4647, NGC 4649
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : SpiralLocal Universe : Galaxy : Type : EllipticalLocal Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Pair
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Virgo
Distance: 50 million light years
Release date: 6 September 2012, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA

Ground-based image of Arp 116 and its surroundings: This image from a ground-based telescope shows the galaxy pair Arp 116 (made up of the elliptical galaxy M60 and the spiral galaxy NGC 4647) and its surroundings.

Name: 2002 LM60, AM 0702-601, Arp 116, COSMOS 2607238, M 60, Messier 60, NGC 4647, NGC 4649
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : SpiralLocal Universe : Galaxy : Type : EllipticalLocal Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Pair
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Virgo
Distance: 50 million light years
Release date: 6 September 2012, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 (Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin)

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field: This image, called the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), combines Hubble observations taken over the past decade of a small patch of sky in the constellation of Fornax. With a total of over two million seconds of exposure time, it is the deepest image of the Universe ever made, combining data from previous images including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (taken in 2002 and 2003) and Hubble Ultra Deep Field Infrared (2009). The image covers an area less than a tenth of the width of the full Moon, making it just a 30 millionth of the whole sky. Yet even in this tiny fraction of the sky, the long exposure reveals about 5500 galaxies, some of them so distant that we see them when the Universe was less than 5% of its current age. The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field image contains several of the most distant objects ever identified.

Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Cosmology
Constellation: Fornax
Release date: 25 September 2012, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (annotated): This image, called the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), combines Hubble observations taken over the past decade of a small patch of sky in the constellation of Fornax. With a total of over two million seconds of exposure time, it is the deepest image of the Universe ever made, combining data from previous images including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field of 2002/3 and Hubble Ultra Deep Field infrared image of 2009. The image covers an area less than a tenth of the width of the full Moon, making it just a 30 millionth of the whole sky. Yet even in this tiny fraction of the sky, the long exposure reveals about 5500 galaxies, some of them so distant we see them when the Universe was less than 5% of its current age. The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field image contains several of the most distant objects ever identified. Among these are:

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field
Type: Early Universe : Cosmology : Morphology : Deep Field
Category: Cosmology
Release date: 25 September 2012, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team

Distances in the Hubble eXtreme deep field: This image separates out the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field by the distances of objects within it. The galaxies in the XDF are not close together — they lie along one long line of sight from Earth to the very edges of the visible Universe. The most distant objects within the XDF are more than 95% of the way back to the Big Bang, while a few stars in it are within the Milky Way. In the left pane are objects whose light has taken less than 5 billion years to reach us. In the centre pane are objects whose light has taken 5 to 9 billion years to reach us. In the right pane are objects whose light has taken more than 9 billion years to reach us.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field
Type: Early Universe : Cosmology : Morphology : Deep Field
Category: Cosmology
Release date: 25 September 2012, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), Z. Levay (STScI) and the HUDF09 Team