Cluster’s deceptive serenity hides violent past: The high concentration of stars within globular clusters, like Messier 12, shown here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, makes them beautiful photographic targets. But the cramped living quarters in these clusters also makes them home to exotic binary star systems where two stars are locked in tight orbits around each other and matter from one is gobbled up by its companion, releasing X-rays. It is thought that such X-ray binaries form from very close encounters between stars in crowded regions, such as globular clusters, and even though Messier 12 is fairly diffuse by globular cluster standards, such X-ray sources have been spotted there. Astronomers have also discovered that Messier 12 is home to far fewer low-mass stars than was previously expected (eso0604). In a recent study, astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal, Chile, to measure the brightness and colours of more than 16 000 of the globular’s 200 000 stars. They speculate that nearly one million low-mass stars have been ripped away from Messier 12 as the globular has passed through the densest regions of the Milky Way during its orbit around the galactic centre. It seems that the serenity of this view of Messier 12 is misleading and the object has had a violent and disturbed past. Messier 12 lies about 23 000 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer). This image was taken using the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The colour image was created from exposures through a blue filter (F435W, coloured blue), a red filter (F625W, coloured green) and a filter that passes near-infrared light (F814W coloured red). The total exposure times were 1360 s, 200 s and 364 s, respectively. The field of view is about 3.2 x 3.1 arcminutes .

Name: Messier 12
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Globular
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Ophiuchus
Distance: 23000 light years
Release date: 28 March 2011, 10:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

The beauty of asymmetry: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a planetary nebula with unconventional good looks. Planetary nebulae signal the demise of mid-sized stars (up to about eight times the mass of the Sun); when the star’s hydrogen fuel supply is exhausted, its outer layers expand and cool, creating a cocoon of gas and dust. This gas then glows as it is bathed in the strong ultraviolet radiation from the central star. NGC 5882 is a quite bright, but small, example of a planetary nebula that lies deep in the southern Milky Way in the constellation of Lupus (The Wolf). Planetary nebulae sometimes have a perfectly symmetrical appearance, with gas being bellowed out from the dying star evenly in every direction. However, this isn’t the case for NGC 5882, as this Hubble image shows. It appears to have two distinct, but non-uniform regions: an elongated inner shell of gas and a fainter aspherical shell that surrounds it. Hubble’s sharp view reveals the intricate knots, filaments and bubbles within these shells. But it’s the dying star at the heart of the planetary nebula that dominates the image, shining brightly with an incredible surface temperature of about 70 000 degrees Celsius. (For comparison, the surface temperature of the Sun is only about 5500 degrees Celsius.) The high surface temperature of this white dwarf is a result of the star’s struggle for survival, finding new ways to prevent itself from collapsing under its own gravity. This image is dedicated to all ESA/Hubble Facebook friends on the occasion of our Facebook page reaching 50 000 friends. If you want to be fascinated every week by awe-inspiring photos of the Universe, stay in touch with the most recent discoveries from Hubble, find out about our competitions and events or simply get in touch with people that share the same curiosity about the Universe, join us on Facebook. This picture comes from images taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Light that comes from glowing ionised oxygen is coloured blue (through the F502N filter), yellow/green light (through the broad F555W filter) is shown as green, the light from glowing hydrogen (through the F656N filter) is shown as dark red and light from glowing nitrogen is shown as bright red (through the F658N filter). The exposure times were 320 s, 104 s, 140 s and 1200 s, respectively and the field of view is just 29 arcseconds across.

Name: NGC 5882
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Lupus
Distance: 7000 light years
Release date: 1 April 2011, 21:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Arcade adventure for young stars: Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study the young open star cluster IC 1590, which is found within the star formation region NGC 281 — nicknamed the Pacman Nebula due to its resemblance to the famous arcade game character. This image only shows the central part of the nebula, where the brightest stars at the core of the cluster are found, with part of the Pacman’s hungry mouth visible as the dark region below. But Pacman isn’t gobbling up these stars. Instead, the nebula’s gas and dust are being used as raw ingredients to make new stars. However, the stars in IC 1590 are still plotting their escape from the Pacman Nebula, as open clusters are only loosely bound together and the grouping will eventually disperse within a few tens of millions of years. IC 1590 lies about ten thousand light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cassiopeia (The Queen). Through small telescopes the core of the cluster that appears at the top of this picture shows up as a triple star, but the nebula that surrounds it is much fainter and very hard to see. The eagle-eyed American astronomer E. E. Barnard, using a 15 cm telescope, first recorded it in the late nineteenth century. This picture was created from images taken using the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images though yellow (F550M, coloured blue), orange (F660N, coloured green) and red (F658N) filters were combined. The F658N filter isolates light from glowing hydrogen gas. The total exposure times per filter were 450 s, 1017 s and 678 s, respectively and the field of view is about 3.3 arcminutes across.

Name: IC 1590
Type: Early Universe : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Open
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Cassiopeia
Distance: 10000 light years
Release date: 11 April 2011, 10:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA