US News Scientists detected the brightest light in the universe for the first time, following a mysterious explosion in space

Lead spacewalker ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano is seen here hitching a ride on the International Space Station’s 16-meter long robotic arm to kick off the first of four ventures to service the particle physics detector.

Potentially deadly tick-borne parasite found in UK for the first time

A potentially deadly tick-borne parasite has been found in the UK for the first time, scientists have warned. The organism, named B venatorum, causes babesiosis - a malaria-like animal disease recognised as an emerging infection in people.Symptoms from the infection include flu and jaundice, and can occasionally kill, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.The disease has been recorded extensively in China and also Europe, with two confirmed human infections in Italy over the last two decades.However, it has never previously appeared in the UK until now.

Space is unbelievably large and mysterious . It is unlikely that we will completely explore it before the end of In June 2018, a bright flash suddenly appeared somewhere in the Hercules constellation 200 million Curiously, scientists have discovered that the supervoid could also drain energy from lights

Repeating bursts of radio waves detected for first time since initial accidental discovery in 2007. Astronomers have detected mysterious , ultra-brief The new discovery, made by a Canadian-led team of astronomers searching for FRBs, was published in the journal Nature following a three-week

This image shows a ground-based wide-field view of the region around GRB 190114C from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Located about 5.8 billion light years from Earth in the Phoenix Constellation, astronomers have confirmed the first example of a galaxy cluster where large numbers of stars are being born at its core. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the cosmos that are held together by gravity, consisting of hundreds or thousands of galaxies embedded in hot gas, as well as invisible dark matter. The largest supermassive black holes known are in galaxies at the centers of these clusters. For decades, astronomers have looked for galaxy clusters containing rich nurseries of stars in their central galaxies. Instead, they found powerful, giant black holes pumping out energy through jets of high-energy particles and keeping the gas too warm to form many stars. Now, scientists have compelling evidence for a galaxy cluster where stars are forming at a furious rate, apparently linked to a less effective black hole in its center. In this unique cluster, the jets from the central black hole instead appear to be aiding in the formation of stars. Researchers used new data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, and the NSF’s Karl Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to build on previous observations of this cluster.

Stars form within giant clouds of gas and dust that pervade galaxies like our own Milky Way. This image depicts one such cloud, known as Orion A, as seen by ESA’s Herschel and Planck space observatories. At 1,350 light years away, Orion A is the nearest heavyweight stellar nursery to us. The cloud is packed full of gas – it contains so much material, in fact, that it would be capable of producing tens of thousands of Suns. The different colours visible here indicate the light emitted by interstellar dust grains mixed within the gas, as observed by Herschel at far-infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths, while the texture of faint grey bands stretching across the frame, based on Planck’s measurements of the direction of the polarised light emitted by the dust, show the orientation of the magnetic field.

A debris shield that was removed from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), the International Space Station's cosmic particle detector, is pictured drifting away from the orbiting lab after spacewalkers Andrew Morgan and Luca Parmitano jettisoned it. The debris shield was detached by the spacewalkers so they could access and begin the repairs of the AMS thermal control system.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Lake Tai, the third largest freshwater lake in China. Over the past decades, rapid urbanization, population growth and excessive fish farming have resulted in eutrophication – where the lake becomes enriched with minerals and nutrients. The increase of nutrients deteriorate the water quality of the lake causing toxic algae blooms to form on the lake’s surface – threatening the quality for millions of people who depend on the lake as a source of drinking water. Many attempts have been made to salvage the water quality of the lake including removal of the algae, closing chemical and manufacturing plants near Tai and stricter water treatment regulations. However, the lake remains to be highly polluted. Agriculture, sewage and manufacturing still affect the lake’s waters – overloading it with nutrients.

Mizuna mustard greens are growing aboard the International Space Station to demonstrate the feasibility of space agriculture to provide fresh food for crews on deep space missions.

Fifty years ago on Nov. 14, 1969, Apollo 12 launched at 11:22 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to land on the Moon's Ocean of Storms. When the Earth moved directly between the Sun and the Apollo 12 spacecraft on the journey home from the Moon, the crew captured this image of a solar eclipse a 16mm motion picture camera. Aboard the craft were Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad; command module pilot Richard F. Gordon Jr. and lunar module pilot Alan Bean. While Conrad and Bean descended in the Lunar Module "Intrepid" to explore the Ocean of Storms, Gordon remained with the command and service modules "Yankee Clipper" in lunar orbit.

Bush fires in Australia's Northern Territory are seen from the International Space Station.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this stunningly detailed look at a cyclonic storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere during its 23rd close flyby of the planet (also referred to as “perijove 23”). 

Proba-2 monitors the Sun from Earth orbit and was able to spot Mercury’s transit across the Sun. Solar transits – where a celestial body is seen to pass across the solar disc from the perspective of Earth – are relatively rare events. Mercury undergoes around 13 transits a century; it will not occur again until 2032.

This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a massive galaxy cluster, about 4.6 billion light years away. Along its borders four bright arcs are visible; these are copies of the same distant galaxy, nicknamed the Sunburst Arc. The Sunburst Arc galaxy is almost 11 billion light-years away and the light from it is being lensed into multiple images by gravitational lensing. 

On Nov. 11, 2019, astronaut Andrew Morgan shared this photograph and Veterans Day message from the International Space Station. Morgan wrote, "It’s a privilege to honor our nation's veterans today. My own family’s military service extends through multiple generations, representing every branch. I honor all vets by bringing reminders of my family's military legacy to space with me. Your service inspires me!" Dr. Morgan is an emergency physician in the U.S. Army with sub-specialty certification in primary care sports medicine. He is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, NY and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. Prior to his selection to NASA’s 21st group of astronauts, Dr. Morgan served in elite special operations units worldwide.

The six-member Expedition 61 crew, wearing shirts printed with their crew insignia, gathers for a playful portrait inside the International Space Station's Zvezda service module. From left are, Flight Engineers Andrew Morgan, Oleg Skripochka, Jessica Meir, Christina Koch and Alexander Skvortsov and Commander Luca Parmitano.

Japan's H-II Transfer Vehicle-8 (HTV-8) slowly approaches the International Space Station.

Last week marked a milestone for ESA’s Proba-2 satellite: 10 years of operation in orbit around the Earth. Since its launch on November 2, 2009, Proba-2 (PRoject for OnBoard Autonomy) has probed the intricacies of the Sun and its connection to our planet, imaging and observing our star and investigating how it drives all manner of complex cosmic phenomena: from solar eruptions and flares to closer-to-home space weather effects. This image shows 10 different views of the Sun captured throughout Proba-2’s lifetime, processed to highlight the extended solar atmosphere – the part of the atmosphere that is visible around the main circular disc of the star. 

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Holbox Island, off the Quintana Roo coast of Mexico. This false-color image has been processed in a way that highlights vegetation in bright red. 

ESA test facilities can test more than just space hardware: here, the 2.0m-diameter nose of an Airbus A340 aircraft is seen in ESA’s Hertz chamber, undergoing radio-frequency testing.

NGC 1706 is a spiral galaxy, about 230 million light-years away, in the constellation of Dorado (The Swordfish). NGC 1706 is known to belong to something known as a galaxy group, which is just as the name suggests — a group of up to 50 galaxies which are gravitationally bound and hence relatively close to each other. 

Within a galaxy hosting around 300 billion stars, here the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a mere handful or two — just about enough to form a single football team. These stellar “teammates” play under the banner of NGC 1333, the cloud of gas and dust which formed them and that they continue to call home. NGC 1333 is located about 1000 light-years away in the constellation of Perseus (The Hero). The cool gas and dust concentrated in this region is generating new stars whose light is then reflecting off the surrounding material, lighting it up and making this object’s lingering presence known to us. NGC 1333 is accordingly classified as a reflection nebula. This image shows just a single region of NGC 1333. Hubble has imaged NGC 1333 more widely before, revealing that the smattering of stars seen here has ample company.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir dines on fresh Mizuna mustard greens she harvested earlier that day aboard the International Space Station.

This mosaic of the southern sky was assembled from 208 images taken by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) during its first year of science operations, completed in July 2019. 

German scientists find 44-million-year-old caterpillar

Scientists say it's the first time a fossil from a large butterfly species has been discovered preserved inside an ancient block of amber. They've described it as an "exceptional" find.Scientists say it's the first time a fossil from a large butterfly species has been discovered preserved inside an ancient block of amber. They've described it as an "exceptional" find.

Following the big bang, the universe initially existed as a cold, starless This radiation still permeates all of space today and astronomers are beginning to scrutinise this cosmic As these stars lit up the surrounding gas, the hydrogen atoms were excited, causing them to start absorbing So scientists were also not sure exactly where in the spectrum they should be looking –and some predicted the

A mysterious blast of light spotted earlier this year near the constellation Leo was actually the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, and This closer proximity to Earth enabled astronomers to confirm for the first time that one object can simultaneously create a powerful GRB and a supernova

This carved-out cloud of gas and dust has been nicknamed the "Jack-o'-lantern Nebula" because it looks like a cosmic hollowed-out pumpkin. Powerful outflows of radiation and particles from a massive star — known as an O-type star and about 15 to 20 times heavier than the Sun — has likely swept the surrounding dust and gas outward, creating deep gouges in the cloud. The image shows infrared light (which is invisible to the human eye) captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, with Cygnus resupply spacecraft onboard, launches from Pad-0A of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, on Nov. 2, in Virginia. Northrop Grummans 12th contracted cargo resupply mission with NASA to the International Space Station will deliver about 8,200 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory and its crew.

This artist's concept shows one of NASA's Voyager spacecraft entering interstellar space, or the space between stars. This region is dominated by plasma ejected by the death of giant stars millions of years ago. Hotter, sparser plasma fills the environment inside our solar bubble.

Doctors Place Humans in True Suspended Animation for First Time

It's basically clinical death to save trauma patients. A renowned trauma injury surgeon has conducted his first human trial of suspended animation.Unlike hibernation or therapeutic hypothermia, suspended animation is basically clinical death, without heart or brain activity.Ethical snags, red tape, and need for the right facilities and patient base have held this study off for years.New Scientist reports that doctors have used therapeutic suspended animation for the first time as part of a carefully designed human trial.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has observed hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources across the Universe. This image "Supernova remnant N103B" is a part of composite images -- that is, those that consist of more than one type of light -- using X-ray data from Chandra and optical light from the Hubble Space Telescope.

When a thermonuclear explosion destroyed a white dwarf star (the dense final stage in the evolution of a Sun-like star) in a double star system and produced a supernova, it left behind this glowing debris field, called a supernova remnant. The Chandra X-ray data (most clearly visible on the left side of the remnant in red, green and blue) shows multimillion-degree gas that has been heated by a shock wave produced by the explosion that destroyed the star. An optical light image from the Hubble Space Telescope is brightest on the right side of the image, where the overlap with X-rays is mostly in pink and white.

This images showing LHA 120-N 44, a region of star formation features a giant bubble that is blowing out from the middle of this image due to winds flowing off young stars. Chandra data (purple and pink) show this superbubble of hot gas, while Hubble data (orange and light blue) reveals the gas and dust in the system.

RTÉ journalists say top pay packets of up to €500k are now 'indefensible' and call on bosses to slash salaries

RTÉ journalists say top pay packets of up to €500k are now 'indefensible' and call on bosses to slash salariesA meeting held at the Montrose campus yesterday by members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) resulted in them calling on RTÉ to take stronger action to deal with the ongoing financial crisis, which saw them record a €13m deficit last year.

After a massive star exploded, it left behind this supernova remnant LMC N63A observed by Chandra and Hubble. The Chandra data (red, green and blue) show multimillion-degree gas and the blast wave from the supernova. The light brown region in the upper right of the remnant is a dense cloud of gas and dust that reflects optical light detected by Hubble.

The Chandra image of this supernova remnant DEM L71 (also known as SNR 0505.7-6752) reveals an inner cloud of glowing iron and silicon (green and blue) surrounded by an outer blast wave (red). The outer blast wave, created during the destruction of the white dwarf star, is also seen in optical data from Hubble (red and white).

Another supernova remnant resulting from the explosion of a white dwarf star is revealed in this image of DEM L238, also known as SNR J0534.2-7033. The Chandra image (yellow, green and bright red) shows multimillion-degree gas and the Hubble image shows cooler gas in the system, near the outer border of the remnant in red.

This is the brightest supernova remnant in either the LMC or its galactic cousin, the Small Magellanic Cloud. N132D also stands out because it belongs to a rare class of supernova remnants that have relatively high levels of oxygen. Scientists think most of the oxygen we breathe came from explosions similar to this one. Here, Chandra data are shown in purple and green and Hubble data are shown in red.

Search for pilot after reports of plane crash off North Wales coast

HM Coastguard is co-ordinating a search in the Puffin Island area near Anglesey after the light aircraft disappeared from radar on Monday afternoon.Police have confirmed the small plane had just one person on board when it disappeared from radar in the area of Puffin Island near Anglesey at around 12.47pm on Monday.

A team of European researchers, using data from the X-shooter instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, has found signatures of strontium formed in a neutron-star merger. This artist’s impression shows two tiny but very dense neutron stars at the point at which they merge and explode as a kilonova. In the foreground, we see a representation of freshly created strontium.

In 1572, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was among those who noticed a new bright object in the constellation Cassiopeia. Adding fuel to the intellectual fire that Copernicus started, Tycho showed this “new star” was far beyond the Moon, and that it was possible for the universe beyond the Sun and planets to change.

Astronomers now know that Tycho’s new star was not new at all. Rather it signaled the death of a star in a supernova, an explosion so bright that it can outshine the light from an entire galaxy. This particular supernova was a Type Ia, which occurs when a white dwarf star pulls material from, or merges with, a nearby companion star until a violent explosion is triggered. The white dwarf star is obliterated, sending its debris hurtling into space.

This latest image of Tycho from Chandra is providing clues. To emphasize the clumps in the image and the three-dimensional nature of Tycho, scientists selected two narrow ranges of X-ray energies to isolate material (silicon, colored red) moving away from Earth, and moving towards us (also silicon, colored blue). The other colors in the image (yellow, green, blue-green, orange and purple) show a broad range of different energies and elements, and a mixture of directions of motion. In this new composite image, Chandra’s X-ray data have been combined with an optical image of the stars in the same field of view from the Digitized Sky Survey.

HIV positive sperm bank launched in New Zealand

The world's first HIV positive sperm bank has been launched in New Zealand, with organisers hoping to reduce stigma around the virus. Called Sperm Positive, it will begin with three male donors from across the country who are living with HIV but who have had treatment which has meant the amount of the virus in their blood is so low it cannot be detected by standard methods.This does not mean the HIV has been cured, but it does mean that the treatment has worked to the extent that the virus can no longer be passed on. This includes infection from sex without a condom or childbirth.

This view from NASA's Juno spacecraft captures colorful, intricate patterns in a jet stream region of Jupiter's northern hemisphere known as "Jet N3."

A new selfie taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is breathtaking, but it's especially meaningful for the mission's team: Stitched together from 57 individual images taken by a camera on the end of Curiosity's robotic arm, the panorama also commemorates only the second time the rover has performed a special chemistry experiment. 

The selfie was taken on Oct. 11, 2019 (Sol 2,553) in a location named "Glen Etive" (pronounced "glen EH-tiv"), which is part of the "clay-bearing unit," a region the team has eagerly awaited reaching since before Curiosity launched. Visible in the left foreground are two holes Curiosity drilled named "Glen Etive 1" (right) and "Glen Etive 2" (left) by the science team. The rover can analyze the chemical composition of rock samples by powderizing them with the drill, then dropping the samples into a portable lab in its belly called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM).

The Triangulum galaxy, also known as Messier 33 or M33, as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

This image of star trails was compiled from time-lapse photography taken by NASA astronaut Christina Koch from aboard the International Space Station, taken in July 2019. This composite image was made from more than 400 individual photos taken over a span of about 11 minutes as the station traveled from Namibia toward the Red Sea.

This image shows an area near the sand sea (called an "erg") that is surrounding the water ice-rich layered deposits. The many bumps are sand dunes less than 100 meters across that are mostly covered by seasonal frost, appearing in a manner that looks artificial but is a natural consequence of the wind patterns in this region. The smaller, darker spots are places where the seasonal frost has sublimed away, exposing the dark surface below. The combination of these features makes for an unearthly scene!

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, taken in infrared light, shows where the action is taking place in galaxy NGC 1291. The outer ring, colored red in this view, is filled with new stars that are igniting and heating up dust that glows with infrared light. The stars in the central area produce shorter-wavelength infrared light than that seen in the ring, and are colored blue. This central area is where older stars live, having long ago gobbled up the available gas supply, or fuel, for making new stars.

This strikingly simple and serene view of NGC 1404 — a giant elliptical galaxy located 62 million light-years away in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace) — hides the galaxy’s cruel reality. NGC 1404 is one of the galaxies comprising the massive Fornax Cluster — and it is slowly falling inwards towards the cluster’s core. As it moves towards the cluster’s large centremost galaxy, NGC 1399, the galaxy’s reserves of hot gas are being forcibly ripped and stripped away, leaving an elongated tell-tale trail of gas in its wake. While not visible in this image, this gas stream can be seen clearly in X-ray images of the galaxy; in time, NGC 1404 will lose most of its hot gas, and therefore its ability to form new stars.

Astronomers using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have put together a detailed map of a rare collision between four galaxy clusters. Eventually, all four clusters – each with a mass of at least several hundred trillion times that of the Sun – will merge to form one of the most massive objects in the universe.

In this new Hubble Space Telescope image, glowing eyes glare menacingly in our direction. The piercing "eyes" are the most prominent feature of what resembles the face of an otherworldly creature. But this is no ghostly apparition. Hubble is looking at a titanic head-on collision between two galaxies. 

Each "eye" is the bright core of a galaxy, one of which slammed into another. The outline of the face is a ring of young blue stars. Other clumps of new stars form a nose and mouth. The entire system is catalogued as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424), from the Arp-Madore "Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations."

On July 2, 2019, a total solar eclipse was visible over ESO’s La Silla Observatory, located in the Chilean Atacama Desert. 

A satellite view shows storms moving through Texas, on Oct. 20.

Engineers working on NASA's Mars 2020 mission remove the inner layer of protective antistatic foil from the rover after a move from JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility to the Simulator Building for testing. Mars 2020 must meet extraordinary cleanliness standards before its launch next summer.

The galaxy NGC 4380 looks like a special effect straight out of a science fiction or fantasy film in this Hubble Picture of the Week, swirling like a gaping portal to another dimension.

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch make the first all-female spacewalk outside the International Space Station.

A new communication technology experiment satellite is launched by a Long March-3B carrier rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Xichang, China on Oct. 18. The satellite will be mainly used for multi-band and high-speed communication technology experiments.

Citizen scientist spots main-belt asteroid 2001 SE101 passing in front of the Crab Nebula (M1). Colour composition using HST ACS/WFC F550M and F606W filters.

Amy Ross, a spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, left, and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, second from left, watch as Kristine Davis, a spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, wearing a ground prototype of NASA’s new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), and Dustin Gohmert, Orion Crew Survival Systems Project Manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, wearing the Orion Crew Survival System suit, right, wave after being introduced by the administrator, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The xEMU suit improves on the suits previous worn on the Moon during the Apollo era and those currently in use for spacewalks outside the International Space Station and will be worn by first woman and next man as they explore the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. The Orion suit is designed for a custom fit and incorporates safety technology and mobility features that will help protect astronauts on launch day, in emergency situations, high-risk parts of missions near the Moon, and during the high-speed return to Earth. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

The spiral galaxy featured in this Picture of the Week is called NGC 3717, and it is located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra (The Sea Serpent). Seeing a spiral almost in profile, as Hubble has here, can provide a vivid sense of its three-dimensional shape. Through most of their expanse, spiral galaxies are shaped like a thin pancake. At their cores, though, they have bright, spherical, star-filled bulges that extend above and below this disc, giving these galaxies a shape somewhat like that of a flying saucer when they are seen edgeon. NGC 3717 is not captured perfectly edge-on in this image; the nearer part of the galaxy is tilted ever so slightly down, and the far side tilted up. This angle affords a view across the disc and the central bulge (of which only one side is visible).

Typhoon Hagibis is headed towards Japan’s main island of Honshu, where it is expected to make landfall over the weekend. Japan is bracing for potential damage from strong winds and torrential rain. This enormous typhoon, which is being compared to a Category 5 hurricane, can be seen in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on 10 October at 01:00 GMT (10:00 Japan Standard Time). The eye of the storm has a diameter of approximately 60 km.

In this view of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captures swirling clouds in the region of the giant planet’s northern hemisphere known as “Jet N4.” Jupiter spins once every 10 hours, and this fast rotation creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones that stretch across the face of the planet. More than a dozen prevailing winds sweep over Jupiter, some reaching more than 300 miles per hour (480 kilometers per hour) at the equator.

A first quarter Moon is pictured from the International Space Station just above the Earth's limb.

Four of the first ALMA antennas at the Array Operations Site (AOS), located at 5000 metres altitude on the Chajnantor plateau, in the II Region of Chile. Three of them — those which are pointing in the same direction — are being tested together as part of the ongoing Commissioning and Science Verification process. Across the image in the background is the impressive plane of the Milky Way, our own galaxy, here seen looking toward the centre. The centre of our galaxy is visible as a yellowish bulge crossed by dark lanes. The dark lanes are huge clouds of interstellar dust that lie in the disc of the galaxy. While opaque in visible light, they are transparent at longer wavelengths, such as the millimetre and submillimetre radiation detected by ALMA. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is the largest astronomical project in existence and is a truly global partnership between the scientific communities of East Asia, Europe and North America with Chile. ESO is the European partner in ALMA.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured this unprecedented image of two circumstellar disks, in which baby stars are growing, feeding with material from their surrounding birth disk. The complex network of dust structures distributed in spiral shapes remind of the loops of a pretzel. These observations shed new light on the earliest phases of the lives of stars and help astronomers determine the conditions in which binary stars are born.

The Iberian Peninsula at night, showing Spain and Portugal. Madrid is the bright spot just above the center.

This artist's illustration depicts the exoplanet LHS 3844b, which is 1.3 times the mass of Earth and orbits an M dwarf star. The planet's surface may be covered mostly in dark lava rock, with no apparent atmosphere, according to observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The galaxy pictured in this Hubble Picture of the Week has an especially evocative name: the Medusa merger. 

Often referred to by its somewhat drier New General Catalogue designation of NGC 4194, this was not always one entity, but two. An early galaxy consumed a smaller gas-rich system, throwing out streams of stars and dust out into space. These streams, seen rising from the top of the merger galaxy, resembles the writhing snakes that Medusa, a monster in ancient Greek mythology, famously had on her head in place of hair, lending the object its intriguing name. The legend of Medusa also held that anyone who saw her face would transform into stone.

In this case, you can feast your eyes without fear on the centre of the merging galaxies, a region known as Medusa's eye. All the cool gas pooling here has triggered a burst of star formation, causing it to stand out brightly against the dark cosmic backdrop. The Medusa merger is located about 130 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear).

The center of the Milky Way galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras penetrate much of the dust, revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will offer a much-improved infrared view, teasing out fainter stars and sharper details. 

This image features a comet located in the outer reaches of the Solar System: comet C/2016 R2 (PANSTARRS). As its name suggests, the comet was discovered in 2016 by the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawai’i. The new image seen here was captured by a project based at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile named the Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars — or SPECULOOS for short. 

After completing the first of 10 spacewalks to upgrade the station, astronaut Christina Koch wrote: "The great @Space_Station battery swap series of spacewalks is underway! A joy & privilege working with @AstroDrewMorgan outside, @astro_luca as the lead for suits & airlock, @Astro_Jessica as robotic arm operator, & the incredible teams in Houston. 3 batteries complete, 9 to go!"

From aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 60 astronaut Christina Koch photographed the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft ascending into space after its launch from Kazakhstan on Sept. 25, 2019. After a four-orbit, six-hour journey, the Soyuz docked to the Space Station with NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and spaceflight participant Hazzaa Ali Almansoori of the United Arab Emirates joining the crew.

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust full of bubbles, which are inflated by wind and radiation from young, massive stars. Each bubble is about 10 to 30 light-years across and filled with hundreds to thousands of stars. The region lies in the Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Aquila (aka the Eagle).

The Chandrayaan-2 lander, Vikram, attempted a landing Sept. 7 (Sept. 6 in the United States), on a small patch of lunar highland smooth plains between Simpelius N and Manzinus C craters. 

As astronaut Nick Hague prepares to conclude his stay aboard the orbiting laboratory this week, he shared this photo saying: "Today is my last Monday living on this orbiting laboratory and I’m soaking up my final views. The @Space_Station is truly an engineering marvel. #MondayMotivation."

Hague will return to Earth after a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station. He and Expedition 60 and Soyuz commander Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos​ are completing a 203-day mission, spanning 3,248 orbits of Earth, and a journey of 80.8 million miles. Hague is completing his second flight in space totaling 203 days, while Ovchinin will have logged 375 days in space on his third flight at the time of landing.

In our vast universe, the heaviest black holes grew from seeds. Nourished by the gas and dust they consume, or by merging with other dense objects, these seeds grow in size and heft to form the centers of galaxies, such as our own Milky Way. But unlike in the realm of plants, the seeds of giant black holes must have been black holes, too. And no one has ever found these seeds — yet.

One idea is that supermassive black holes — the equivalent of hundreds of thousands to billions of Suns in mass — grew from a population of smaller black holes that has never been seen. This elusive group, the "intermediate-mass black holes," would weigh in somewhere between 100 and 100,000 Suns. Among the hundreds of black holes found so far, there have been plenty of relatively small ones, but none for sure in the intermediate mass-range "desert."

In this image, a galaxy called ESO 243-49 is home to an extremely bright object called HLX-1. Circled in this image, HLX-1 is the most likely example of a black hole in the intermediate mass range that scientists have found. 

Jupiter's volcanically active moon, "lo," casts its shadow on the planet in this dramatic image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. As with solar eclipses on the Earth, within the dark circle racing across Jupiter's cloud tops one would witness a full solar eclipse as "Io" passes in front of the Sun.

Using the detailed eyes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have mapped the intense tails of a cosmic jellyfish: a number of knotty streams of gas spewing outwards from a spiral galaxy named ESO 137-001.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy Messier 86. Despite its being discovered over 235 years ago by astronomer Charles Messier, the morphological classification of Messier 86 remains unclear. Astronomers are still debating over whether it is either elliptical or lenticular (the latter being a cross between an elliptical and spiral galaxy).

Like a drop of dew hanging on a leaf, Tethys appears to be stuck to the A and F rings from this perspective. Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across), like the ring particles, is composed primarily of ice. The gap in the A ring through which Tethys is visible is the Keeler gap, which is kept clear by the small moon Daphnis (not visible here). This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Tethys. North on Tethys is up and rotated 43 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2014.