Starburst galaxy NGC 1569: This image taken by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases the brilliant core of one of the most active galaxies in our local neighbourhood. The entire core is 5000 light-years wide. The galaxy, called NGC 1569, sparkles with the light from millions of newly formed young stars. NGC 1569 is pumping out stars at a rate that is 100 times faster than the rate observed in our Milky Way Galaxy. This frenzied pace has been almost continuous for the past 100 million years. The core's centrepiece is a grouping of three giant star clusters, each containing more than a million stars. (Two of the clusters are so close they appear as one grouping.) The clusters reside in a large, central cavity. The gas in the cavity has been blown out by the multitude of massive, young stars that already exploded as supernovae. These explosions also triggered a violent flow of gas and particles that is sculpting giant gaseous structures. The sculpted structure at lower right is about 3700 light-years long. Huge bubbles of gas, such as the two at left, appear like floating islands. The largest bubble is about 378 light-years wide and the smallest 119 light-years wide. They are being illuminated by the radiation from the bright, young stars within them. Some of those stars are peaking through their gaseous cocoons. The biggest and brightest objects surrounding the core are stars scattered throughout our Milky Way Galaxy. In contrast, the thousands of tiny white dots in the image are stars in the halo of NGC 1569. The galaxy is 11 million light-years from Earth. A new analysis of NGC 1569 shows that it is one and a half times farther from Earth than astronomers previously thought. The extra distance places the galaxy in the middle of a group of about 10 galaxies centered on the spiral galaxy IC 342. Gravitational interactions among the group's galaxies may be compressing gas in NGC 1569 and igniting the star-birthing frenzy. Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and Advanced Camera for Surveys made the observations of NGC 1569 in September 1999, November 2006, and January 2007.

Name: NGC 1569
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Activity : Starburst
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Camelopardalis
Distance: 11 million light years
Release date: 20 November 2008, 15:00
Credit: Credit for Advanced Camera Data: NASA, ESA, A. Aloisi (STScI/ESA), J. Mack and A. Grocholski (STScI), M. Sirianni (STScI/ESA), R. van der Marel (STScI), L. Angeretti, D. Romano, and M. Tosi (INAF-OAB), and F. Annibali, L. Greggio, and E. Held (INAF-OAP)Credit for Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 Data: NASA, ESA, P. Shopbell (California Institute of Technology), R. Dufour (Rice University), D. Walter (South Carolina State University, Orangeburg), and A. Wilson (University of Maryland, College Park)

Hubble image of globular cluster M13: Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope catches an instantaneous glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13, one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky. This glittering metropolis of stars is easily found in the winter sky in the constellation Hercules and can even be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies. M13 is home to over 100 000 stars and located at a distance of 25 000 light-years. These stars are packed so closely together in a ball, approximately 150 light-years across, that they will spend their entire lives whirling around in the cluster. This image is a composite of archival Hubble data taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Observations from four separate science proposals taken in November 1999, April 2000, August 2005, and April 2006 were used. The image includes broadband filters that isolate light from the blue, visible, and infrared portions of the spectrum.

Name: Messier 13, NGC 6205
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Globular
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Hercules
Distance: 25000 light years
Release date: 4 December 2008, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hubble image of M13's nucleus: Hubble catches an instantaneous glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13, one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky. This glittering metropolis of stars is easily found in the winter sky in the constellation Hercules. This image is a composite of archival Hubble data taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Observations from four separate science proposals taken in November 1999, April 2000, August 2005, and April 2006 were used. The image includes broadband filters that isolate light from the blue, visible, and infrared portions of the spectrum.

Name: Messier 13, NGC 6205
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Globular
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Hercules
Distance: 25000 light years
Release date: 4 December 2008, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hubble-Spitzer colour mosaic of the galactic centre: This composite colour infrared image of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionised gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. It offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and influence their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies.

Name: Milky Way
Type: Milky Way : Galaxy : Component : Center/Core
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Sagittarius
Distance: 25000 light years
Release date: 5 January 2009, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA and Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Mosaic of the galactic centre: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope infrared mosaic image represents the sharpest survey of the galactic centre to date. It reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 x 115 light-years. This sweeping infrared panorama offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and influence their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies. The infrared mosaic was taken with Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). The Galactic core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. The spatial resolution of this image corresponds to 0.025 light-years at the distance of the Galactic core of 26 000 light-years. Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own Solar System.

Name: Milky Way
Type: Milky Way : Galaxy : Component : Center/Core
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Sagittarius
Distance: 25000 light years
Release date: 5 January 2009, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA and Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)