Behold the Bubble Nebula. Photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way, it looks, well, like a giant space bubble. Astronomers pin the blame for this blowup on a hot, bright star called SAO 20575, seen near the center of the nebula. The stellar wind from this O-class star is what’s creating this shape, pushing gas outward like a tween’s bubblegum. The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory peered into the center of the Milky Way to capture this image in the far infrared spectrum. The galactic core glows mostly in yellow and takes a sort of sideways figure-8 shape, from top left to bottom right. ESA says these cold clumps of gas a few hundred light years across (15 degrees above absolute zero!) are very active stellar nurseries. This core is 30,000 light years away, so the information you’re seeing in this photo took 30,000 years to reach Herschel’s telescope. This image from inside the La Silla Observatory dome in the Chilean desert stares up into the stars, right at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. With its bright yellow center, the galactic core again steals the show. The heart of our galaxy is home to dense and active star-forming regions—and also home to many black holes, though you can’t see them in this photo. The Coma Cluster contains more than 1,000 galaxies of all different shapes and sizes. Some are visible here in detail, with spiral arms curving around their centers. Dominating the image like a beacon in the center is NGC 4860; to its left lies NGC 4858, in fiery red. A younger galaxy, NGC 4858 has got its arms full: The brighter reds are the tell-tale signs of baby stars made mostly of hydrogen. Here’s a look at Abel 2142—a cluster of hundreds of galaxies that we’ve seen before, but not like this. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captured this behemoth, estimated at 6 million light years across, in x-rays. That’s light beyond our visible spectrum and UV rays, which is why Abel appears here in strange and amorphous purple. But stay tuned for the action scene: New data show that another group of galaxies is speeding toward Abel 2142, which might set off a spectacular galactic clash.
