Heaven's Carousel premiere: This image shows audiences taking in the new astronomy-inspired art installation premiered in Rome at the Science with the Hubble Space Telescope IV conference. The installation, named Heaven’s Carousel, links together the fields of art, music and astronomy. Conceptualised and designed by German artist and composer Tim Otto Roth, the work is inspired by novel work on the accelerating expansion of the Universe by Nobel laureate Adam Riess (STScl), Greek cosmology and Renaissance astronomers.

Type: Unspecified : People
Category: Miscellaneous
Release date: 25 March 2014, 20:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and Pam Jeffries (STScI)

Heaven’s Carousel: This installation, named Heaven’s Carousel, links together the fields of art, music and astronomy. Conceptualised and designed by German artist and composer Tim Otto Roth, the work is inspired by novel work on the accelerating expansion of the Universe by Nobel laureate Adam Riess (STScl), Greek cosmology and Renaissance astronomers.

Type: Unspecified
Category: Miscellaneous
Release date: 25 March 2014, 20:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and Pam Jeffries (STScI)

Hubble’s cross-section of the cosmos: An image of a galaxy cluster taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope gives a remarkable cross-section of the Universe, showing objects at different distances and stages in cosmic history. They range from cosmic near neighbours to objects seen in the early years of the Universe. The 14-hour exposure shows objects around a billion times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye. Hubble’s images might look flat, but this one shows a remarkable depth of field that lets us see more than halfway to the edge of the observable Universe. Most of the galaxies visible here are members of a huge cluster called CLASS B1608+656, which lies about five billion light-years away. But the field also contains other objects, both significantly closer and far more distant, including quasar QSO-160913+653228 which is so distant its light has taken nine billion years to reach us, two thirds of the time that has elapsed since the Big Bang.

Name: CLASS B1608+656
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Draco
Distance: z=0.63 (redshift)
Release date: 17 April 2014, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA

Annotated image of the field around CLASS B1608+656: Most of the galaxies visible in this Hubble image are members of a huge cluster called CLASS B1608+656, which lies about five billion light-years away. But the field also contains other objects that are both significantly closer and far more distant — including two gravitational lenses dubbed Fred and Ginger. These contain enough mass to visibly distort the light from objects behind them. Fred, also known more prosaically as [FMK2006] ACS J160919+6532, lies near the lens galaxies in CLASS B1608+656, while Ginger ([FMK2006] ACS J160910+6532) is markedly closer to us. Despite their different distances from us, both can be seen near to CLASS B1608+656 in the central region of this Hubble image, and are labelled.

Name: CLASS B1608+656, Fred Ginger, QSO-160913+653228
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Activity : AGN : QuasarEarly Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : ClusterEarly Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=0.63 (redshift)
Release date: 17 April 2014, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA

Digitized Sky Survey Image around CLASS B1608+656 (ground-based image): This Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) image was taken with a ground based telescope and shows the region surrounding a galaxy cluster called CLASS B1608+656.

Name: CLASS B1608+656
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Draco
Release date: 17 April 2014, 16:00
Credit: NASA & ESA, Digitised Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

Galaxy cluster MACS J1720+35: The heart of a vast cluster of galaxies called MACSJ1720+35 is shown in  this image, taken in visible and near-infrared light by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy cluster is so massive that its gravity distorts, brightens, and magnifies light from more distant objects behind it, an effect called gravitational lensing. In the top right an exploding star nicknamed Caracalla and located behind the cluster can just be made out. The supernova is a member of a special class of exploding star called Type Ia, prized by astronomers because it provides a consistent level of peak brightness that makes it reliable for making distance estimates. Finding a gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernova gives astronomers a unique opportunity to check the optical "prescription" of the foreground lensing cluster. The supernova is one of three exploding stars discovered in the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH), and was followed up as part of a Supernova Cosmology Project HST program. CLASH is a Hubble census that probed the distribution of dark matter in 25 galaxy clusters. Dark matter cannot be seen directly but is believed to make up most of the universe's matter. The image of the galaxy cluster was taken between March and July 2012 by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Name: Caracalla Supernova, MACSJ1720+35
Type: Local Universe : Star : Evolutionary Stage : SupernovaEarly Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : ClusterEarly Universe : Cosmology : Phenomenon : Lensing
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Hercules
Release date: 1 May 2014, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Perlmutter (UC Berkeley, LBNL), A. Koekemoer (STScI), M. Postman (STScI), A. Riess (STScI/JHU), J. Nordin (LBNL, UC Berkeley), D. Rubin (Florida State), and C. McCully (Rutgers University)