Face-on spiral galaxy NGC 3982: Though the universe is chock full of spiral-shaped galaxies, no two look exactly the same. This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms. The arms are lined with pink star-forming regions of glowing hydrogen, newborn blue star clusters, and obscuring dust lanes that provide the raw material for future generations of stars. The bright nucleus is home to an older population of stars, which grow ever more densely packed toward the centre. NGC 3982 is located about 68 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The galaxy spans about 30,000 light-years, one-third of the size of our Milky Way galaxy. This colour image is composed of exposures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The observations were taken between March 2000 and August 2009. The rich colour range comes from the fact that the galaxy was photographed invisible and near-infrared light. Also used was a filter that isolates hydrogen emission that emanates from bright star-forming regions dotting the spiral arms.

Name: NGC 3982
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Ursa Major
Distance: 70 million light years
Release date: 19 October 2010, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hubble helps astronomers map dark matter in Abell 1689: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the distribution of dark matter in the centre of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689, containing about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe's mass. Hubble cannot see the dark matter directly. Astronomers inferred its location by analyzing the effect of gravitational lensing, where light from galaxies behind Abell 1689 is distorted by intervening matter within the cluster. Researchers used the observed positions of 135 lensed images of 42 background galaxies to calculate the location and amount of dark matter in the cluster. They superimposed a map of these inferred dark matter concentrations, tinted blue, on an image of the cluster taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. If the cluster's gravity came only from the visible galaxies, the lensing distortions would be much weaker. The map reveals that the densest concentration of dark matter is in the cluster's core. Abell 1689 resides 2.2 billion light-years from Earth. The image was taken  in June 2002.

Name: Abell 1689
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : SuperclusterEarly Universe : Cosmology : Phenomenon : Dark Matter
Category: Cosmology
Constellation: Virgo
Distance: z=0.183 (redshift)
Release date: 11 November 2010, 17:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Coe (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and Space Telescope Science Institute), N. Benítez (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucía, Spain), T. Broadhurst (University of the Basque Country, Spain), and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University, USA)

Elliptical galaxy NGC 4150: Elliptical galaxy NGC 4150.

Name: NGC 4150
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Elliptical
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Distance: 45 million light years
Release date: 18 November 2010, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, R.M. Crockett (University of Oxford, U.K.), S. Kaviraj (Imperial College London and University of Oxford, U.K.), J. Silk (University of Oxford), M. Mutchler (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

Core of elliptical galaxy NGC 4150: Core of elliptical galaxy NGC 4150 (detailed view).

Name: NGC 4150
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Elliptical
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Distance: 45 million light years
Release date: 18 November 2010, 15:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, R.M. Crockett (University of Oxford, U.K.), S. Kaviraj (Imperial College London and University of Oxford, U.K.), J. Silk (University of Oxford), M. Mutchler (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee