Hey, Saturn! 👋

This weekend, the ringed planet reaches opposition. That means it's orbiting opposite to the Sun, so Saturn will appear brighter in the night sky – be sure to look up!

Hubble captured this view of Saturn when it was near opposition back in 2020. Two if its icy moons are also visible in this image: Mimas at right, and Enceladus at bottom.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL Team

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Shine bright, NGC 5033 💖

The glowing heart of this galaxy is called an active galactic nucleus.

Seen at the center of this #hubbleclassic view, it's powered by a supermassive black hole and shines brightly across the whole electromagnetic spectrum.

NGC 5033 is located about 40 million light-years away, in the constellation Canes Venatici. It has many similar qualities to our home Milky Way Galaxy: NGC 5033 is also about 100,000 light-years across, and has spiral arms dotted with blue patches of ongoing star formation.

Its relative proximity to Earth makes it an ideal target for astronomers to study its active galactic nucleus in detail.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt

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📍 Andromeda Galaxy
➡️ 2.5 million light-years
🏠 Andromeda constellation

We’ve reached our final #meetyourcosmicneighbors destination: the Andromeda Galaxy! With almost the same mass as our home galaxy, Andromeda is headed for a collision with the Milky Way in 2-4 billion years. For now, we can admire its beauty from afar.

As a spiral galaxy, Andromeda’s winding arms are one of its most remarkable features. Hubble zoomed in to get a close look at its rosy tendrils, revealing swathes of ionized gas. These regions — which are common in spiral and irregular galaxies — often indicate the presence of recent star formation.

To investigate the spiral galaxy’s stellar properties, Hubble’s instruments peered through hedges of gas and observed a valuable sample of stars.

This concludes our intergalactic journey for Meet Your Cosmic Neighbors! We hope you enjoyed this series, and that you look forward to more Hubble science.

Image credits: NASA, ESA, M. Boyer (Space Telescope Science Institute), and J. Dalcanton (University of Washington); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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📍 NGC 261
➡️ 200,000 light-years
🏠 Tucana constellation

This emission nebula, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, blooms a brilliant red in our next #meetyourcosmicneighbors image!

NGC 261 is home to numerous stars hot enough to irradiate surrounding hydrogen gas, causing the cloud to emit a pinkish-red glow.

The region contains molecular clouds, which are extremely dense and compact regions of gas and dust. Here, cradled in the cold areas of molecular hydrogen, is where most stars form.

The combined power of Hubble’s instruments form a wide spectral coverage that helped capture the star-forming properties within the nebula.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and L. C. Johnson (Northwestern University); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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Spiders aren’t always what we want for neighbors, but the nearby Tarantula Nebula is an exception! 🕷️

This star-forming site has been caught in Hubble’s web many times, in many wavelengths of light.

It calls the Large Magellanic Cloud home – this is one of our Milky Way’s closest companions, a relatively nearby galaxy that orbits our galaxy, and is about 160,000 light-years away.

The Tarantula Nebula is the brightest stellar nursery in our "Local Group" of galaxies, and it contains some of the most massive and hottest stars known.

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