Artist's illustration of scenario for plasma ejections from V Hydrae: This four-panel graphic illustrates how the binary-star system V Hydrae is launching balls of plasma into space. Panel 1 shows the two stars orbiting each other. One of the stars is nearing the end of its life and has swelled in size, becoming a red giant. In panel 2, the smaller star's orbit carries the star into the red giant's expanded atmosphere. As the star moves through the atmosphere, it gobbles up material from the red giant, which settles into a disk around the star. The buildup of material reaches a tipping point and is eventually ejected as blobs of hot plasma along the star's spin axis, shown in panel 3. This ejection process is repeated every eight years, the time it takes for the orbiting star to make another pass through the bloated red giant's envelope, shown in panel 4. NASA Press release

Name: V Hydrae
Type: Milky Way : Star : Type : Variable
Category: Stars
Distance: 1200 light years
Release date: 11 October 2016, 16:53
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Voyager 1's view of Solar System (artist's impression): In 1977, NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft began their pioneering journey across the Solar System to visit the giant outer planets. Now, the Voyagers are hurtling through unexplored territory on their road trip beyond our Solar System. Along the way, they are measuring the interstellar medium, the mysterious environment between stars that is filled with the debris from long-dead stars. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is providing the roadmap, by measuring the material along the probes' trajectories as they move through space. Hubble finds a rich, complex interstellar ecology, containing multiple clouds of hydrogen, laced with other elements. Hubble data, combined with the Voyagers, have also provided new insights into how our sun travels through interstellar space.

Name: Solar System
Type: Solar System
Category: Solar System
Release date: 11 January 2017, 15:58
Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

Exocomets plunging into a young star (artist’s impression): This artist’s impression shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disc of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star of the system. These "kamikaze" comets will eventually plunge into the star and vaporise. The comets are too small to be imaged, but their gaseous spectral "fingerprints" on the star's light were detected with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The gravitational influence of a suspected Jupiter-sized planet in the foreground may have catapulted the comets into the star. This star, called HD 172555, represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. The star resides 95 light-years from Earth.

Name: HD 172555
Type: Milky Way : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: ExoplanetsStars
Release date: 11 January 2017, 15:58
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild and G. Bacon (STScI)

Shadow on TW Hydrae’s disc: These images, taken a year apart by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, reveal a shadow moving counterclockwise around a gas and dust disc encircling the young star TW Hydrae. The two images at the top, taken by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, show an uneven brightness across the disc. Through enhanced image processing (images at bottom), the darkening becomes even more apparent. These enhanced images allowed astronomers to determine the reason for the changes in brightness. The dimmer areas of the disc (top left) are caused by a shadow spreading across the outer disc. The dotted lines approximate the shadow's coverage. The long arrows show how far the shadow has moved in a year (from 2015-2016), which is roughly 20 degrees. Based on Hubble archival data, astronomers determined that the shadow completes a rotation around the central star every 16 years. They know the feature is a shadow because dust and gas in the disc do not orbit the star nearly that quickly. So, the feature must not be part of the physical disc. The shadow may be caused by the gravitational effect of an unseen planet orbiting close to the star. The planet pulls up material from the main disc, creating a warped inner disc. The twisted disc blocks light from the star and casts a shadow onto the disc's outer region.

Name: TW Hydrae
Type: Milky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Disk : Protoplanetary
Category: Exoplanets
Distance: 190 light years
Release date: 11 January 2017, 15:58
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Debes (STScI)

The making of a shadow in TW Hydrae's disc (illustration): This illustration reveals the proposed structure of the gas and dust disc surrounding the nearby, young star TW Hydrae. It shows an inner disc that is tilted due to the gravitational influence of an unseen companion, which is orbiting just outside the disc. The tilted inner disc is the best explanation for a shadow covering part of the disc's outer region. The warped disc is blocking light from the star and casting the shadow across the disc. The nature of the darkening was first revealed in Hubble Space Telescope archival observations, which showed that the feature moved around the star at a much faster rate than any phenomenon that would be physically linked to the slowly rotating disc. TW Hydrae is about 8 million years old and resides about 190 light-years from Earth.

Name: TW Hydrae
Type: Milky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Planetary SystemMilky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Disk : Protoplanetary
Category: Exoplanets
Distance: 190 light years
Release date: 11 January 2017, 15:58
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Quasar’s light yields clues to outflow: This artist’s impression shows the light of several distant quasars piercing the northern half of the Fermi Bubbles, an outflow of gas expelled by the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope probed the quasars’ light for information on the speed of the gas and whether the gas is moving toward or away from Earth. Based on the material’s speed, the research team estimated that the bubbles formed from an energetic event between 6 million and 9 million years ago. The inset diagram at bottom left shows the measurement of gas moving toward and away from Earth, indicating the material is traveling at a high velocity. Hubble also observed light from quasars that passed outside the northern bubble. The box at upper right reveals that the gas in one such quasar’s light path is not moving toward or away from Earth. This gas is in the disc of the Milky Way and does not share the same characteristics as the material probed inside the bubble.

Name: Fermi Bubble
Type: Milky Way : Galaxy : Component : Central Black Hole
Category: Quasars and Black Holes
Release date: 10 March 2017, 12:48
Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levy (STScI)

Moon Around the Trans-Neptunian object 2007 OR10: These two images, taken a year apart, reveal a moon orbiting the trans-Neptunian object 2007 OR10. Each image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, shows the companion in a different orbital position around its parent body. 2007 OR10 is the third-largest known trans-Neptunian object, behind Pluto and Eris, and the largest unnamed world in the Solar System. The pair is located in the Kuiper Belt, a realm of icy debris left over from the formation of the Solar System. The trans-Neptunian object is about 1520 kilometres across; the moon is estimated to be 240 kilometres to 400 kilometres in diameter. 2007 OR10, like Pluto, follows an eccentric orbit, but it is currently three times farther than Pluto is from the Sun.

Name: 2007 OR10
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body
Category: Solar System
Release date: 19 May 2017, 12:20
Credit: NASA, ESA, C. Kiss (Konkoly Observatory), and J. Stansberry (STScI)