Schematic of Fomalhaut system: This diagram shows the orbit of the exoplanet Fomalhaut b as calculated from recent Hubble Space Telescope observations. The planet follows a highly elliptical orbit that carries it across a wide belt of debris encircling the bright star Fomalhaut. The planet swings as close to its star as 7.4 billion kilometres, and the outermost point of its orbit is 43 billion kilometres away from the star. The orbital period is approximately 2000 years.

Name: Fomalhaut b
Type: Milky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Planetary System
Category: ExoplanetsStars
Release date: 22 January 2013, 13:44
Credit: Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Feild (STScI).Science Credit: NASA, ESA and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley, USA)

Forecast for exotic weather: This artist's conception illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026. The NASA/ESA Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes observed the object to learn more about its turbulent atmosphere. Brown dwarfs are more massive and hotter than planets but lack the mass required to become sizzling stars. Their atmospheres can be similar to the giant planet Jupiter's. Hubble and Spitzer simultaneously observed the object as it rotated every 90 minutes. The results suggest wind-driven, planet-size clouds.

Name: 2MASSJ22282889-431026
Type: Milky Way : Star : Type : Brown Dwarf
Category: Stars
Release date: 22 January 2013, 13:50
Credit: Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA and JPL-CaltechScience Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Apai and E. Buenzli (University of Arizona, USA)

Stellar Motions of Halo Stars in Milky Way: This illustration shows the disc of our Milky Way galaxy, surrounded by a faint, extended halo of old stars. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the nearby Andromeda galaxy serendipitously identified a dozen foreground stars in the Milky Way halo. They measured the first sideways motions (represented by the arrows) for such distant halo stars. The motions indicate the possible presence of a shell in the halo, which may have formed from the accretion of a dwarf galaxy. This observation supports the view that the Milky Way has undergone continuing growth and evolution over its lifetime by consuming smaller galaxies.

Type: Milky Way
Category: Illustrations
Release date: 22 February 2013, 11:16
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Oldest star in solar neighbourhood: This is a Digitized Sky Survey image of the oldest star with a well-determined age in our galaxy. The ageing star, catalogued as HD 140283, lies over 190 light-years away. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was used to narrow the measurement uncertainty on the star's distance, and this helped to refine the calculation of a more precise age of 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 800 million years). The star is rapidly passing through our local stellar neighborhood. The star's orbit carries it through the plane of our galaxy from the galactic halo that has a population of ancient stars. The Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) UK Schmidt telescope photographed the star in bluelight.

Name: HD 140283
Type: Milky Way : Star
Category: Stars
Constellation: Libra
Distance: 200 light years
Release date: 13 March 2013, 19:00
Credit: Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, and UKSTU/AAO

Artist’s view of ancient star: This is an illustration of the oldest star ever found in our solar neighborhood. The ageing star, catalogued as HD 140283, lies over 190 light-years from Earth. NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations narrowed the measurement uncertainty on the star's distance, and this helped to refine the calculation of a more precise age of 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 800 million years). Because the ageing star is relatively nearby, familiar stars and constellations as seen from Earth are visible in the surrounding sky, but in different locations. In the upper left is the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), which looks distorted from our new perspective in space. Just to the upper left of the foreground star is the Pleiades cluster. To the lower left of the cluster, our Sun has dimmed to an apparent magnitude of +7, placing it below naked-eye visibility.

Name: HD 140283
Type: Local Universe : Star
Category: Illustrations
Release date: 13 March 2013, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Feild and F. Summers (STScI)

Hubble captures Comet ISON: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet (C/2012 S1) ISON was photographed on 10 April, when the comet was just within Jupiter’s orbit, at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun (394 million miles from Earth). Even at that great distance the comet is already active as sunlight warms the surface and causes frozen volatiles to sublimate. Preliminary measurements from the Hubble images suggest that the nucleus of ISON is no larger than three or four miles across – remarkably small considering the high level of activity that researchers have observed in the comet so far. Astronomers are using these images to measure the activity level of this comet and constrain the size of the nucleus, in order to predict the comet’s activity when it skims 700 000 miles above the sun’s roiling surface on 28 November 2013. The comet’s dusty coma is approximately 3 100 miles across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 57 000 miles, far beyond Hubble’s field of view. ISON stands for International Scientific Optical Network, a group of observatories in ten countries who have organised to detect, monitor, and track objects in space. ISON is managed by the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Name: C/2012 S1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 24 April 2013, 14:32
Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute), and the Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team

Enhanced Hubble image of Comet ISON: This is a contrast-enhanced image produced from Hubble images of Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). It reveals the subtle structure in the inner coma of the comet. In this computer-processed view, the Hubble image has been divided by a computer model coma that decreases in brightness proportional to the distance from the nucleus, as expected for a comet that is producing dust uniformly over its surface. ISON's coma shows enhanced dust particle release on the sunward-facing side of the comet's nucleus, the small, solid body at the core of the comet. This information is invaluable for determining the comet's shape and evolution, and the spin of the solid nucleus.

Name: C/2012 S1
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 24 April 2013, 14:46
Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute), and the Hubble Comet ISON Science Team