Quasars in interacting galaxies: [Top Row] This is a selection of photos from a Hubble Space Telescope survey of 11 ultra-bright quasars that existed at the peak of the universe's star-formation era, which was 12 billion years ago. The quasars (powered by supermassive black holes) are so compact and bright they make a diffraction-spike pattern in the telescope's optics - an optical artifact typically only produced by bright nearby stars. Despite their brightness, the quasars are actually dimmed by dusty gas around them. The infrared capability of Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 was able to probe deeply into the material around the quasars. [Bottom Row] When the glare of the quasar is subtracted, researchers see evidence for collisions between galaxies. The collisions and mergers gave birth to the quasars by fueling the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxies. The new images capture the dust-clearing transitional phase in the merger-driven quasar birth. These observations show that the brightest quasars in the universe live in merging galaxies. NASA Press release

Name: F2M J142744.34+372337.4, F2M J222252.78-020257.4, F2MS J1036+2828 , QSO J0738+2750, UKFS 0030
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Activity : AGN : Quasar
Category: Quasars and Black Holes
Release date: 19 June 2015, 09:46
Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Glikman (Middlebury College, Vermont)

Hubble spies vast gas disk around unique massive star: This artist's illustration reveals a vast disk of gas surrounding a massive, bright Wolf-Rayet star (shown at center). A close companion star is pulling gas from the Wolf-Rayet, shown by the bridge of bright material connecting the two stars. This act of celestial cannibalism exposes the massive star's hot, helium core. Some of the material, however, is escaping into space, forming the huge disk. This disk structure has never been seen before around a Wolf-Rayet star.

Name: Nast1
Type: Unspecified : Star : Type : Wolf-Rayet
Category: Stars
Release date: 22 May 2015, 10:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) Science Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Mauerhan (University of California, Berkeley)

Hubble spies vast gas disk around unique massive star: This visible-light image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a pancake-shaped disk of gas around an extremely bright star in our Milky Way galaxy. The disk glows brightly in the light of ionized nitrogen. The central star is nicknamed "Nasty 1," derived from its catalogue name of NaSt1. Nasty 1 is thought to be a Wolf-Rayet star, a massive, rapidly evolving star weighing well over 10 times the mass of our Sun. The star is losing its hydrogen-filled outer layers quickly, exposing its super-hot and extremely bright helium-burning core. Nasty 1 is thought to have a companion, and gravitational interactions between them may have created the gas disk. Both stars are heavily obscured by gas and dust in the disk. Hubble observations suggest that as Nasty 1 sheds its weight, some of the mass is falling onto a companion star and some is leaking into space, forming the disk. The vast structure is nearly 2 trillion miles wide. The disk is clumpy because astronomers think the outbursts occur sporadically. The knot at left of center is an unusually bright clump of gas. The image is tinted blue to bring out details in the disk. Astronomers were surprised to find the disk-like structure, which has never been seen before around a Wolf-Rayet star in our galaxy. The star may represent a brief transitory stage in the evolution of massive stars. The Nasty 1 system may be as close as 3,000 light-years from Earth. The observations were taken in April 2013 with the Wide Field Camera 3.

Name: Nast1
Type: Early Universe : Star : Type : Wolf-Rayet
Category: Stars
Constellation: Aquila
Distance: 3000 light years
Release date: 22 May 2015, 10:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Mauerhan (University of California, Berkeley)

Artist’s illustration of temperature inversion in exoplanet’s atmosphere: NASA scientists detected a stratosphere on WASP-33b by measuring the drop in  light as the planet passed behind its star (top). Temperatures in the low  stratosphere rise (right) because of molecules absorbing radiation from the star;  otherwise, temperatures would cool down at higher altitudes (left).

Name: WASP-33b
Type: Milky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Planetary System
Category: ExoplanetsIllustrations
Release date: 12 June 2015, 14:33
Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Haynes and A. Mandell (Goddard Space Flight  Center)

CLASH Survey Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Simulations: In this comparison of actual observations with simulations, the top images show Hubble observations of the density of gas in the central portion of two galaxies.The bottom images are computer simulations that are remarkably similar to the Hubble observations. Knots of star formation in the two galaxies show how gas falling into a galaxy’s center is controlled by jets from the central black hole.

Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Component : Central Black Hole
Category: GalaxiesQuasars and Black Holes
Release date: 7 August 2015, 18:25
Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Donahue (Michigan State University), and Y. Li (University of Michigan)