Now a vision of tranquillity, it’s not long since a supernova was spotted in this spiral galaxy
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 13 DECEMBER 2021
It’s a safe bet that at any given moment on any day of the year, an amateur astronomer somewhere is scanning the skies. That’s why, even with quite modest scopes, citizen scientists can play a valuable role in catching transient celestial events.
This barred spiral galaxy is NGC 3568 in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Centaurus, the Centaur. Although all is peaceful in this new image from the Hubble Space Telescope, things were more violent in 2014 when one of its stars went supernova. Like all Type II supernovae, it resulted from the massive star running out of fuel at its core and imploding, causing a rapid contraction followed by an explosive rebound. For a short time, a star that had been just one of the firmament outshone all the others in the galaxy.
Later named SN2014dw, this one was spotted by supernova sleuth Stu Parker and is one of the 194 discovered by Backyard Observatory Supernova Search, a group of New Zealand and Australia-based amateur astronomers.
Colourful collapses
CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY/HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 6 DECEMBER 2021
These new combined X-ray and optical images showcase the riotous variety of planetary nebulae. Not planets at all, but giant stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel, collapsed and then shed their outer layers, each has a hot white dwarf core –a stellar corpse – but myriad eccentric variations in their delicate gas shells. Our Sun will go through the same process several billion years from now.
Hit the gas
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 24 NOVEMBER 2021
These fingers reaching up from the inky blackness are luminous clouds within the Running Man Nebula. A Herbig-Haro object called HH 45, the bright multicoloured shockwaves are the result of high-velocity jets of matter gushing from a newly formed star and slamming into the surrounding molecular gas.
Whipped into shape
MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER, 29 NOVEMBER 2021
Looking not unlike a crusty pie with a slice missing, this is a 1km-wide impact crater on Mars. The northern middle latitudes of the Red Planet are full of craters with these ‘aeolian’ ripples, undulations around their edges and along their floors carved by the Martian winds.
Within touching distance
SOLAR ORBITER, 14 DECEMBER 2021
Solar Orbiter gives us some sense of what its counterpart the Parker Solar Probe just experienced. This image, capturing 348,000 x 348,000 kilometres of the broiling corona – the Sun’s outer atmosphere – was released as Parker made history, flying closer to the Sun than any spacecraft has ever been before, passing through the corona and sampling particles and magnetic fields there.
The Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula – GEMINI SOUTH TELESCOPE, 7 DECEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgments: Image processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab) 
The planet b Centauri b orbiting binary star b Centauri (HIP 71865) – VERY LARGE TELESCOPE, 8 DECEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESO/Janson et al. 
A pair of supermassive black holes in galaxy NGC 7727 – VERY LARGE TELESCOPE/VLT SURVEY TELESCOPE, 30 NOVEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESO/Voggel et al.; ESO/VST ATLAS team. Acknowledgement: Durham University/CASU/WFAU 
Spiral galaxy Mrk (Markarian) 1337 – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 3 DECEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al. 
Swirls of dust in the Flame Nebula – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 22 NOVEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (University of Virginia); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) 
Rock before sample drilling in Mars’s Jezero Crater – PERSEVERANCE MARS ROVER, 15 DECEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS 
Two Perspectives of Séítah Rocks, Mars: enhanced colour (left) and mineral map (right) – PERSEVERANCE MARS ROVER, 15 DECEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS 
Double-helix structure in massive jet from galaxy M87 – VERY LARGE ARRAY, 7 DECEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: Pasetto et al., Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF 
Spiral galaxy NGC 1317 in the constellation Fornax – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 29 NOVEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team 
Galaxy NGC 7727, the result of a clash between two galaxies a billion years ago – VLT SURVEY TELESCOPE, 29 NOVEMBER 2021 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESO/VST ATLAS team. Acknowledgement: Durham University/CASU/WFAU
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