Star devouring a planet (artist's impression): This is an artist's concept of the exoplanet WASP-12b. It is the hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy, and potentially the shortest lived. The planet is only 3.2 million kilometres from its sunlike parent star — a fraction of Earth's distance from the Sun. Gravitational tidal forces from the star stretch the planet into an egg shape. The planet is so hot that it has puffed up to the point where its outer atmosphere spills onto the star. An accretion bridge streams toward the star and material is smeared into a swirling disc. The planet may be completely devoured by the star in 10 million years. The planet is too far away for the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph, but this interpretation is based in part on analysis of Hubble spectroscopic and photometric data.

Name: WASP-12b
Type: Milky Way : Planet : Type : Gas GiantMilky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Planetary System
Category: Exoplanets
Distance: 850000 light years
Release date: 20 May 2010, 15:00
Credit: Artwork Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI). Science Credit: NASA, ESA, and C. Haswell (The Open University, UK)

Going, going, gone: star leaves the Milky Way: In this illustration, the hot, blue star HE 0437-5439 has been tossed out of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy with enough speed to escape the galaxy's gravitational clutches. The stellar outcast is rocketing through the Milky Way's distant outskirts at 2.6 million kilometres per hour, high above the galaxy's disk, about 200,000 light-years from the centre. The star is destined to roam intergalactic space.

Name: HE 0437-5439
Type: Milky Way : Star : Type : Blue Straggler
Category: Stars
Distance: 200000 light years
Release date: 22 July 2010, 15:00
Credit: Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI). Science Credit: NASA, ESA, O. Gnedin (University of Michigan, Ann  Arbor, USA), and W. Brown (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for  Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., USA)

A speeding star is caught on Hubble's camera: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the hypervelocity star that was kicked out of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy with enough energy to escape the galaxy's gravitational grip. Dubbed HE 0437-5439, the stellar speedster may have been a member of a triple-star system and was jettisoned from the galaxy by the monster central black hole. Galaxies in this image provide a grid of landmarks, which astronomers used to measure the full speed of this stellar outcast over 3 1/2 years. The stellar outcast is rocketing through the Milky Way's distant outskirts at 2.6 million kilometres per hour, high above the galaxy's disk, about 200,000 light-years from the centre. The star is destined to roam the empty depths of intergalactic space. Based on the speed and position of HE 0437-5439, the star would need 100 million years to have journeyed from the Milky Way's core. Yet its mass — nine times that of our Sun — and blue colour mean that it should have burned out after only 20 million years — far shorter than the transit time it took to get to its current location. The most likely explanation for this paradox is that the star is a blue straggler, a pair of smaller and longer-lived stars that merged during flight. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys made this observation  on 8 July 2006, in near-infrared light.

Name: HE 0437-5439
Type: Milky Way : Star : Type : Blue Straggler
Category: Stars
Constellation: Dorado
Release date: 22 July 2010, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, O. Gnedin (University of Michigan, Ann  Arbor, USA), and W. Brown (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for  Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., USA)