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Slideshow: Hubble Captures a Starry Night

The red giant star V838 Monocerotis puts on a show worthy of Van Gogh, and the Hubble Space Telescope takes note. By Lore Sjöberg.
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A new picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope bears remarkable similarities to the van Gogh work "Starry Night," complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of miles of interstellar space. This image, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004, is Hubble's latest view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon).Courtesy of NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA

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The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of these images, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago. V838 Mon is located about 20,000 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of the Milky Way.

Courtesy of NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA