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Part of the constellation Scorpius centred on NGC 6357 which has star cluster Pismis 24 in its centre. This image is a colour composite taken by the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), the field of view is 3.8x3.3 degrees. Image Credit: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

A round solar prominence burst from the sun on March 13, 2016, shortly after it rotated into the view of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. Much of the solar material did not escape the sun’s gravitational pull, falling back to the solar surface. Prominences – called filaments when seen against the sun’s face instead of over the horizon – are notoriously unstable clouds of solar material suspended above the solar surface by the sun’s complex magnetic forces. They often break apart after a few days. This video was made from images taken every 12 seconds by SDO – the fastest-ever cadence for solar observations from space. This prominence was captured in wavelengths of 304 angstroms, a type of extreme ultraviolet light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in red. Video Credit: NASA/SDO Explanation from: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-s-sdo-sees-circular-outburst

Bardarbunga Volcano, Iceland September 14, 2014 Image Credit: Bernard Meric

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy cluster MACSJ0717.5+3745. This is one of six being studied by the Hubble Frontier Fields programme, which together have produced the deepest images of gravitational lensing ever made. Due to the huge mass of the cluster it is bending the light of background objects, acting as a magnifying lens. It is one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, and it is also the largest known gravitational lens. Of all of the galaxy clusters known and measured, MACS J0717 lenses the largest area of the sky. Image Credit: NASA, ESA and the HST Frontier Fields team (STScI) Explanation from: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1523b/

Plane above Faroe Islands, Atlantic Ocean March 20, 2015 Image Credit & Copyright: Philippe Rowland

Situated some 5,000 light years away, the stellar nursery of the Lagoon Nebula lies in the constellation of Sagittarius. Despite being light years away, the Lagoon Nebula is in fact one of the few star-forming nebulae that it is possible to see with the naked eye (in optimum conditions) from mid-northern latitudes. Image Credit & Copyright: László Francsics Explanation by: Royal Observatory Greenwich

In October of 2013 Hubble kicked off the Frontier Fields programme, a three-year series of observations aiming to produce the deepest ever views of the Universe. The project’s targets comprise six massive galaxy clusters, enormous collections of hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. These structures are the largest gravitationally-bound objects in the cosmos. One of the Frontier Fields targets is shown in this new image: MACS J0717.5+3745, or MACS J0717 for short. MACS J0717 is located about 5.4 billion light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Auriga (The Charioteer). It is one of the most complex galaxy clusters known; rather than being a single cluster, it is actually the result of four galaxy clusters colliding. This image is a combination of observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (showing the galaxies and stars), the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory (diffuse emission in blue), and the NRAO Jansky Very Large Array (diffuse emission in pink). The Hubble dat...

Senja, Troms, Norway January 21, 2015 Image Credit & Copyright: Rune Engebo

Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Jaeger

Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland Image Credit & Copyright: James Woodend

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1–2403. This is one of six being studied by the Hubble Frontier Fields programme, which together have produced the deepest images of gravitational lensing ever made. Due to the huge mass of the cluster it is bending the light of background objects, acting as a magnifying lens. Astronomers used this and two other clusters to find galaxies which existed only 600 to 900 million years after the Big Bang. Image Credit: NASA, ESA and the HST Frontier Fields team (STScI) Explanation from: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1523a/

A close encounter between our neighbouring red planet Mars and Comet C/2013 A1, also known as Siding Spring, as it whizzes through the night sky on 22 October 2014. It was initially thought that there was a chance of collision between the comet and Mars when the comet was discovered in 2013, but this was ruled out when the comet’s orbit was determined more accurately. Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia. Image Credit & Copyright: Sebastian Voltmer Explanation by: Royal Observatory Greenwich

This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole's event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object's gravitational grip. The black hole's powerful gravity distorts space around it like a funhouse mirror. Light from background stars is stretched and smeared as the stars skim by the black hole. Astronomers have uncovered a near-record-breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe. The observations, made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini telescope in Hawaii, could indicate that these monster objects may be more common than once thought. Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes — those roughly 10 billion times the mass of our sun — have been found at the cores of very large galaxies in regions of the universe packed with other large galaxies. ...

Most galaxies possess a majestic spiral or elliptical structure. About a quarter of galaxies, though, defy such conventional, rounded aesthetics, instead sporting a messy, indefinable shape. Known as irregular galaxies, this group includes NGC 5408, the galaxy that has been snapped here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. John Herschel recorded the existence of NGC 5408 in June 1834. Astronomers had long mistaken NGC 5408 for a planetary nebula, an expelled cloud of material from an aging star. Instead, bucking labels, NGC 5408 turned out to be an entire galaxy, located about 16 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). In yet another sign of NGC 5408 breaking convention, the galaxy is associated with an object known as an ultraluminous X-ray source, dubbed NGC 5408 X-1, one of the best studied of its class. These rare objects beam out prodigious amounts of energetic X-rays. Astrophysicists believe these sources to be strong candidates for inte...

A meteor can be seen piercing through the darkness as the Milky Way towers above the 4,392m peak of Mount Rainier in Washington, USA. The white lights dotted across the rocky paths of the mountain’s face are the headlamps of hikers ascending to the peak Image Credit & Copyright: Brad Goldpaint Explanation by: Royal Observatory Greenwich

Réunion, Indian Ocean May 17, 2015 Image Credit: Richard Bouhet

Of the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen since the birth of the solar system, this one, captured here in a mosaic of light and dark, is the first witnessed up close by an emissary from Earth … none other than our faithful robotic explorer, Cassini. Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn’s rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini’s wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun’s disk was exactly overhead at the planet’s equator. The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun’s angle to the ring plane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and to cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn’s e...

Oxycomanthus bennetti , common name Bennett's feather star , is a species of crinoids belonging to the family Comasteridae Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms (phylum Echinodermata). Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, "a lily", and eidos, "form". They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 metres (20,000 ft). Sea lilies refer to the crinoids which, in their adult form, are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk. Feather stars or  comatulids refer to the unstalked forms. Crinoids are characterised by a mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms. They have a U-shaped gut, and their anus is located next to the mouth. Although the basic echinoderm pattern of fivefold symmetry can be recognised, most crinoids have many more than five arms. Crinoids usually have a stem used to attach themselves to a substrate, but many live attached only as juveniles and become free-swimming ...

Using a network of telescopes scattered across the globe, including the Danish 1.5-m telescope at ESO La Silla (Chile), astronomers discovered a new extrasolar planet significantly more Earth-like than any other planet found so far. The planet, which is only about 5 times as massive as the Earth, circles its parent star in about 10 years. It is the least massive exoplanet around an ordinary star detected so far and also the coolest. The planet most certainly has a rocky/icy surface. Its discovery marks a groundbreaking result in the search for planets that support life. The planet, designated by the unglamorous identifier of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, orbits a red star five times less massive than the Sun and located at a distance of about 20,000 light years, not far from the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Image Credit: ESO Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0603a/

Kiruna, Lapland, Sweden Image Credit & Copyright: Antony Spencer