HH 24 (ground-based view): This image shows the Herbig–Haro object 24 and the surrounding sky as it is seen from the ground.

Name: HH 24
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Young Stellar Object
Category: Stars
Constellation: Orion
Release date: 17 December 2015, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

Dazzling diamonds of Trumpler 14: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the star cluster Trumpler 14. One of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in the Milky Way, this cluster houses some of the most luminous stars in our entire galaxy. The prominent dark patch, close to the centre of the cluster is a so called Bok globule: this is an isolated and relatively small dark nebula, containing dense dust and gas. These objects are still subjects of intense research as their structure and density remains somewhat a mystery.

Name: Trumpler 14
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Open
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Carina
Distance: 8000 light years
Release date: 21 January 2016, 16:00
Credit: NASA & ESA, Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC-INTA, Spain)

Trumpler 14 embedded in the Carina Nebula: This colour-composite image of the Carina Nebula, made by the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile, reveals exquisite details in the stars and dust of the region. The open star cluster Trumpler 14, a collection of very bright, young stars within the Carina Nebula, is marked with a red circle. Several more well known astronomical objects can be seen in this wide field image: to the bottom left of the image is one of the most impressive binary stars in the Universe, Eta Carinae, with the famous Keyhole Nebula just adjacent to the star. A second open star cluster, Collinder 228 is also seen in the image, just below Eta Carinae.

Name: Carina Nebula, NGC 3372, Trumpler 14
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : OpenMilky Way : Nebula
Category: NebulaeStar Clusters
Distance: 7500 light years
Release date: 21 January 2016, 16:00
Credit: ESO

The sleeping giant NGC 4889: This image shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 4889 in front of hundreds of background galaxies, and deeply embedded within the Coma galaxy cluster. Well-hidden from human eyes, there is a gigantic supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.

Name: NGC 4889
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Elliptical
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Distance: 300 million light years
Release date: 11 February 2016, 16:00
Credit: NASA & ESA

Wide-field view of NGC 4889 (ground-based view): This image shows a ground-based wide-field view of the region around NGC 4889 from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Name: NGC 4889
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Elliptical
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Release date: 11 February 2016, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

Most distant galaxy: This image shows the position of the most distant galaxy discovered so far within a deep sky Hubble Space Telescope survey called GOODS North (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North). The survey field contains tens of thousands of galaxies stretching far back into time. The remote galaxy GN-z11, shown in the inset, existed only 400 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only 3 percent of its current age. It belongs to the first generation of galaxies in the Universe and its discovery provides new insights into the very early Universe. This is the first time that the distance of an object so far away has been measured from its spectrum, which makes the measurement extremely reliable. GN-z11 is actually ablaze with bright, young, blue stars but these look red in this image because its light was stretched to longer, redder, wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe.

Name: GN-z11
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=11.1 (redshift)
Release date: 3 March 2016, 18:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Oesch (Yale University)

Hubble spectroscopically confirms remotest galaxy today: This illustration shows a timeline of the Universe, stretching from the present day (left) back to the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago (right). The newly discovered galaxy GN-z11 is the most distant galaxy discovered so far, at a redshift of 11.1, which corresponds to 400 million years after the Big Bang. The previous record holder’s position is also identified. Its remote position puts GN-z11 at the beginning of the reionisation era. In this period starlight from the first galaxies started to heat and lift the fog of cold hydrogen gas filling the Universe. The previous record-holding galaxy was seen in the middle of this epoch, about 150 million years later.

Name: GN-z11
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=11.1 (redshift)
Release date: 3 March 2016, 18:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

R136 observed with WFC3: The image shows the central region of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The young and dense star cluster R136 can be seen at the lower right of the image. This cluster contains hundreds of young blue stars, among them the most massive star detected in the Universe so far. Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope astronomers were able to study the central and most dense region of this cluster in detail. Here they found nine stars with more than 100 solar masses.

Name: R136, RMC 136
Type: Local Universe : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Open
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Dorado
Distance: 170000 light years
Release date: 17 March 2016, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, P Crowther (University of Sheffield)

Pseudo image of R136: The left side of this collage shows the central part of the young star cluster R136 as it can be seen in the ultraviolet. Due to the high-resolution of Hubble in the ultraviolet the individual stars in this dense cluster can be resolved and studied. The right side shows a pseudo-image, created from the UV spectra collected with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). These spectra have been used by scientists to determine the properties of the stars in R136. The boundary of the 17 slit locations is outlined in white in the left image. The long-slit data from the spectrograph have been compressed to the width of the slits and stacked to create a pseudo-image. This allows the slit locations to be matched to stars in the left image.

Name: R136, RMC 136
Type: Local Universe : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Open
Category: IllustrationsStar Clusters
Distance: 170000 light years
Release date: 17 March 2016, 16:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, K.A. Bostroem (STScI/UC Davis)

The galactic centre: This infrared image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the centre of the Milky Way, 27 000 light-years away from Earth. Using the infrared capabilities of Hubble, astronomers were able to peer through the dust which normally obscures the view of this interesting region. At the centre of this nuclear star cluster — and also in the centre of this image — the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is located.

Name: Galactic Centre, Sagittarius A*
Type: Milky Way : Galaxy : Component : Center/Core
Category: Stars
Constellation: Sagittarius
Distance: 27000 light years
Release date: 31 March 2016, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: NASA, ESA, T. Do and A. Ghez (UCLA), and V. Bajaj (STScI)