14:25 10 January 2014
From a black hole rainbow to the hand of God, a flood of spectacular new images wowed the American Astronomical Society meeting this week. See the best of the cosmic treats here. Victoria Jaggard
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Pinwheel in pink
Hot young stars gathered on the galactic fringes give this cosmic pinwheel candy-coloured arms in this mosaic image from the Hubble Space Telescope
. Known as the Southern Pinwheel, the brilliant galaxy sits about 15 million light years away and is a favourite target for backyard astronomers.
The bright pink regions along the galaxy's arms show where powerful radiation from young stars is heating the surrounding gas. In some places, stellar winds have blown the gas away, so we are able to see the stars themselves as blue clumps along the edges of the spiral arms. Hubble's highly detailed snapshot also shows about 300 supernova remnants, structures in the galaxy where older stars exploded and carved out bubbles in the gas. (Image: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))