Wide-field image of NGC 4696 (ground-based image): This ground-based image shows the galaxy NGC 4696 and its surroundings.

Name: NGC 4696
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Elliptical
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Centaurus
Distance: 150 million light years
Release date: 1 December 2016, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

Close-up of star near a supermassive black hole (artist’s impression): This artist’s impression depicts a Sun-like star close to a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole, with a mass of about 100 million times the mass of the Sun, in the centre of a distant galaxy. Its large mass bends the light from stars and gas behind it. Despite being way more massive than the star, the supermassive black hole has an event horizon which is only 200 times larger than the size of the star. Its fast rotation has changed its shape into an oblate sphere. The gravitational pull of the supermassive black hole rips the the star apart in a tidal disruption event. In the process, the star was “spaghettified” and shocks in the colliding debris as well as heat generated in accretion led to a burst of light.

Name: ASASSN-15lh
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Component : Central Black Hole
Category: Quasars and Black Holes
Release date: 12 December 2016, 17:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, ESO, M. Kornmesser

Supermassive black hole with torn-apart star (artist’s impression): This artist’s impression depicts a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disc. This thin disc of rotating material consists of the leftovers of a Sun-like star which was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black hole. Shocks in the colliding debris as well as heat generated in accretion led to a burst of light, resembling a supernova explosion.

Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Component : Central Black Hole
Category: Quasars and Black Holes
Release date: 12 December 2016, 17:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, ESO, M. Kornmesser

Festive nebulae: This glowing nebula, named NGC 248, is located within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and about 200 000 light-years from Earth. The nebula was observed with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in September 2015, as part of a survey called the Small Magellanic cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution (SMIDGE).

Name: NGC 248
Type: Local Universe : Nebula : Appearance : Emission
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Tucana
Distance: 200000 light years
Release date: 20 December 2016, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, K. Sandstrom (University of California, San Diego), and the SMIDGE team.

Wide-field image of Magellanic clouds (ground-based image): This ground-based image shows both the Small and the Large Magellanic Clouds — two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The Small Magellanic Cloud can be seen on the left, the Large Magellanic Cloud on the right. This photo was taken by the Japanese astrophotographer Akira Fujii.

Name: Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Release date: 20 December 2016, 19:00
Credit: A. Fujii

Small Magellanic Cloud and SMIDGE survey: This ground-based image shows the Small Magellanic Cloud. The area of the SMIDGE survey is highlighted, as well as the position of the nebula NGC 248.

Name: Small Magellanic Cloud
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Release date: 20 December 2016, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Our Place in Space Banner: This is the official poster for the travelling exhibition Our Place in Space, to be displayed at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti in Venice, Italy. The exhibition is on display from 1 February to 17 April 2017.

Type: Unspecified
Category: Illustrations
Release date: 20 January 2017, 12:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Pam Jeffries

Lensed quasar and its surroundings: HE0435-1223, located in the centre of this wide-field image, is among the five best lensed quasars discovered to date. The foreground galaxy creates four almost evenly distributed images of the distant quasar around it.

Name: HE0435-1223
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Activity : AGN : QuasarEarly Universe : Cosmology : Phenomenon : Lensing
Category: CosmologyQuasars and Black Holes
Constellation: Eridanus
Distance: z=1.689 (redshift)
Release date: 26 January 2017, 16:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Suyu et al.

Studied lensed quasars of H0LiCOW collaboration: This montage shows the five lensed quasars and the foreground galaxies studied by the H0LICOW collaboration. Using these objects astronomers were able to make an independent measurement of the Hubble constant. They calculated that the Universe is actually expanding faster than expected on the basis of our cosmological model.

Type: Early Universe : Cosmology
Category: Cosmology
Release date: 26 January 2017, 16:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Suyu et al.

Lensed quasar: B1608+656 is among the five best lensed quasars discovered to date. The two foreground galaxies smeared the light of the more distant quasar's host galaxy into bright arcs.

Name: CLASS B1608+656
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Activity : AGN : QuasarEarly Universe : Cosmology : Phenomenon : Lensing
Category: CosmologyQuasars and Black Holes
Constellation: Draco
Distance: z=1.394 (redshift)
Release date: 26 January 2017, 16:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Suyu et al.

Lensed quasar: RXJ1131-1231 is among the five best lensed quasars discovered to date. The foreground galaxy smears the image of the background quasar into a bright arc (left) and creates a total of four images — three of which can be seen within the arc.

Name: 2MASX J11315154-1231587, RXJ1131-1231
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Activity : AGN : QuasarEarly Universe : Cosmology : Phenomenon : Lensing
Category: CosmologyQuasars and Black Holes
Constellation: Crater
Release date: 26 January 2017, 16:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Suyu et al.

Comet falling into white dwarf (artist's impression): This artist’s impression shows a massive, comet-like object falling towards a white dwarf. New observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show evidence for a belt of comet-like bodies orbiting the white dwarf, similar to the Kuiper Belt in our own Solar System. The findings also suggest the presence of one or more unseen surviving planets around the white dwarf which may have perturbed the belt sufficiently to hurl icy objects into the burned-out star.

Type: Milky Way : Interplanetary Body : CometMilky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : White Dwarf
Category: Illustrations
Release date: 9 February 2017, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levy (STScI)

New image of SN 1987A: This new image of the supernova remnant SN 1987A was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in January 2017 using its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Since its launch in 1990 Hubble has observed the expanding dust cloud of SN 1987A several times and this way helped astronomers to create a better understanding of these cosmic explosions. Supernova 1987A is located in the centre of the image amidst a backdrop of stars. The bright ring around the central region of the exploded star is composed of material ejected by the star about 20 000 years before the actual explosion took place. The supernova is surrounded by gaseous clouds. The clouds’ red colour represents the glow of hydrogen gas. The colours of the foreground and background stars were added from observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).

Name: SN 1987A
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Supernova
Category: Stars
Constellation: Dorado
Distance: 170000 light years
Release date: 24 February 2017, 16:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation) and P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)