New Hubble view of the Lagoon Nebula

A research team has used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to study a body known as BD+44°493, the brightest known second-generation star in the sky. BD+44°493 is thought to have been enriched by elements from one of the first generation of stars and the researchers detected several elements that had never been seen before in such a star.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen dispersing from a warm, Neptune-sized planet orbiting a nearby star. It may offer clues as to how hot super-Earths — massive, hot versions of Earth — are born around other stars.

The artistic outburst of an extremely young star, in the earliest phase of formation, is captured in this spectacular image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The colourful wisps, found in the lower left of the image, are painted onto the sky by a young star cocooned in the partially illuminated cloud of obscuring dust seen to the upper right.