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Hubble captures the beating heart of the Crab Nebula

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the beating heart of one of the most visually appealing, and most studied, supernova remnants known — the Crab Nebula in the constellation Taurus. At the centre of this nebula the spinning core of a deceased star breathes life into the gas that surrounds it.

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Hubble nets a cosmic tadpole

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a cosmic tadpole, with its bright head and elongated tail, wriggling through the inky black pool of space. Tadpole galaxies are rare and difficult to find in the local universe. This striking example, named LEDA 36252, was explored as part of a Hubble study into their mysterious properties — with interesting results.

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The spider in the loop

This multicoloured swirl of yellow and blue shows a prominent ring of gas near the North Celestial Pole. The pole appears to be fixed in place, while the rest of the night sky slowly circles around it because of Earth’s rotation. This image comes courtesy of ESA’s Planck satellite, which spent years mapping the entire sky in exquisite detail between 2009 and 2013.

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Astrophysicists release new study of one of the first stars

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.

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Radioactive fuel boosts supernovae explosions

Some supernovae have a reserve tank of radioactive cobalt-57 fuel that cuts in and powers their explosions for three times longer than astronomers had previously thought. The discovery by Australian and US researchers gives important new clues about the causes of Type Ia supernovae, which astronomers use to measure vast distances across the universe.

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Ancient dwarf galaxy preserves record of catastrophic event

The lightest few chemical elements formed minutes after the Big Bang. Most heavier elements in the periodic table are created by stars, either from internal nuclear fusion or in catastrophic explosions. New observations of a dwarf galaxy discovered last year show that the heaviest elements, such as gold and lead, are likely left over from rare collisions between two neutron stars.