Hubble's hidden treasures
Among the million-plus observations that have been made by the Hubble Space Telescope are 'Hubble's Hidden Treasures' – beautiful images that have never been seen by the public. Nasa launched a competition to identify some of the best. First prize and winner of the public vote was Josh Lake for finding this image of the star-forming region NGC 1763 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Lake produced a two-colour image from the data, showing glowing hydrogen in blue and nitrogen in red
A close-up of the Sun's coronal mass ejection with Earth to scale
Astronomers have found molecules of glycolaldehyde – a simple sugar – in
the gas surrounding a young binary star with a similar mass to our sun.
This is the first time sugar has been found in space around such a star,
and the discovery shows that some of the building blocks of life are potentially
in the right place, at the right time, to become part of planets forming around stars
Experience what it's like to fly through the universe faster than the speed of light by watching this video animation. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) released the largest-ever three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, which will help astronomers explain the whopping 96% of the universe that is unaccounted for – ordinary matter makes up just 4%, the rest is mysterious dark energy and dark matter. SDSS used the map to create a video fly-through of its galaxy images
See more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/2012/sep/28/hubble-space-sugar-pictures