Close encounter: This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the unusual galaxy IRAS 06076-2139, found in the constellation Lepus (The Hare). Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instruments observed the galaxy from a distance of 500 million light-years.
This particular object stands out from the crowd by actually being composed of two separate galaxies rushing past each other at about 2 million kilometres per hour. This speed is most likely too fast for them to merge and form a single galaxy. However, because of their small separation of only about 20 000 light-years, the galaxies will distort one another through the force of gravity while passing each other, changing their structures on a grand scale.
Such galactic interactions are a common sight for Hubble, and have long been a field of study for astronomers. The intriguing behaviours of interacting galaxies take many forms; galactic cannibalism, galaxy harassment and even galaxy collisions. The Milky Way itself will eventually fall victim to the latter, merging with the Andromeda Galaxy in about 4.5 billion years. The fate of our galaxy shouldn’t be alarming though: whilst galaxies are populated by billions of stars, the distances between individual stars are so large that hardly any stellar collisions will occur.

Name: IRAS 06076-2139
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Interacting
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Lepus
Distance: 500 million light years
Release date: 8 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Crab on LCD: This captivating new image shows the Crab Nebula in bright neon colours. The unusual image was produced by combining data from telescopes spanning nearly the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to X-rays. The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) provided information about the nebula gathered in the radio regime (coloured in red). NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope took images in the infrared (yellow). The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provided the images made in optical wavelengths (coloured in green). ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope observed the Crab Nebula in the ultraviolet (blue) and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory provided the data for X-ray radiation (purple). The Crab Nebula, located 6500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), is the result of a supernova explosion which was observed by Chinese and other astronomers in 1054. At its centre is a pulsar: a super-dense neutron star, spinning once every 33 milliseconds, shooting out rotating lighthouse-like beams of radio waves and visible light. Surrounding the pulsar lies a mix of material; some of it was originally expelled from the star before it went supernova, and the rest was ejected during the explosion itself. Fast-moving winds of particles fly off from the neutron star, energising the dust and gas around it. These different layers and intricacies of the nebula can be observed in all of the different wavelengths of light.

Name: Crab Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Neutron Star : PulsarMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Supernova Remnant
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Taurus
Distance: 6500 light years
Release date: 15 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI

Very Large Array (radio) Image of the Crab Nebula: The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) observed the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6500 light-years from Earth, at radio wavelengths.

Name: Crab Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Neutron Star : PulsarMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Supernova Remnant
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Taurus
Distance: 6500 light years
Release date: 15 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF

Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) Image of the Crab Nebula: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope observed the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6500 light-years from Earth, in the infrared.

Name: Crab Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Neutron Star : PulsarMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Supernova Remnant
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Taurus
Distance: 6500 light years
Release date: 15 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: JPL/Caltech

Hubble Space Telescope (visible) Image of the Crab Nebula: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6500 light-years from Earth, in optical wavelengths.

Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Neutron Star : PulsarMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Supernova Remnant
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Taurus
Distance: 6500 light years
Release date: 15 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble

XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) Image of the Crab Nebula: ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope observed the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6500 light-years from Earth, in the ultraviolet.

Name: Crab Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Neutron Star : PulsarMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Supernova Remnant
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Taurus
Distance: 6500 light years
Release date: 15 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: ESA

Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-ray) Image of the Crab Nebula: NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory observed X-ray emissions from the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6500 light-years from Earth.

Name: Crab Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Neutron Star : PulsarMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Supernova Remnant
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Taurus
Distance: 6500 light years
Release date: 15 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: CXC

Viewing the Vermin Galaxy: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is famous for its jaw-dropping snapshots of the cosmos. At first glance this Picture of the Week appears to be quite the opposite, showing just a blur of jagged spikes, speckled noise, and weird, clashing colours — but once you know what you are looking at, images like this one are no less breathtaking. This shows a distant galaxy — visible as the smudge to the lower right — as it begins to align with and pass behind a star sitting nearer to us within the Milky Way. This is an event known as a transit. The star is called HD 107146, and it sits at the centre of the frame. Its light has been blocked in this image to make its immediate surroundings and the faint galaxy visible — the position of the star is marked with a green circle. The concentric orange circle surrounding HD 107146 is a circumstellar disc — a disc of debris orbiting the star. In the case of HD 107146 we see the disc face-on. As this star very much resembles our Sun, it is an interesting scientific target to study: its circumstellar disc could be analogous to the asteroids in our Solar System and the Kuiper belt. A detailed study of this system is possible because of the much more distant galaxy — nicknamed the “Vermin Galaxy” by some to reflect their annoyance at its presence — as the star passes in front of it. The unusual pairing was first observed in 2004 by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, and again in 2011 by Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The latter image is shown here, as the Vermin Galaxy began its transit behind HD 107146. The galaxy will not be fully obscured until around 2020, but interesting science can be done even while the galaxy is only partly obscured. Light from the galaxy will pass through the star’s debris discs before reaching our telescopes, allowing us to study the properties of the light and how it changes, and thus infer the characteristics of the disc itself.

Name: Vermin Galaxy
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Release date: 29 May 2017, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA