In the words of experts who understand more about this stuff than "OMG so pretty!":

The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years.

This shot (full, massive size can be found here) were taken between October 20th and 27th of this year by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. The blue lights are from the hottest, biggest stars, while the green is oxygen and the red is hydrogen. Whoa, you guys. Whoa. Check out this thread on Reddit for some desktop-wallpaper-scaled versions of the shot. [HubbleSite]

I mean, if I were God, I would go live there: A well illuminated apartment, with a nice kitchen in which to cook some new stars, and a sunny beach. But since I'm agnostic, I will tell you that this nebula is just a titanic group of particles, with sizes ranging from ten to a hundred times smaller than a Earth dust grain. It doesn't emit anything: NGC 7023 just reflects the light from HD 200775, a nearby magnitude +7 superstar.

The Iris Nebula was first discovered in 1794 by Sir William Herschel, this is the first closeup, taken by the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Scientists are now studying its composition—which is formed by an unknown hydrocarbon-based compound—using Hubble's infrared camera. [Hubble]

Click on the images to zoom in

This new six-by-three-foot multi-wavelength image combines three visions of the Milky Way's center: A near-infrared image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an X-ray vision from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

It was created to commemorate the International Year of Astronomy, which marks 400 years since a curioser and curioser man called Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope to the truth out there, back in 1609. [NASA]

Click on the image above to enlarge or download ultra-high definition version from here

Click on the image above to enlarge or download ultra-high definition version from here

According to astronomers—those lovely crazy people working in offices with the best views—the speed is so high that, that the galaxies rip apart the intercluster medium. This is a really thin gas but, when the galaxies race through it, it can cause enough pressure to push the galaxies internal material into the cluster itself.

I don't know about you, but looking at these I feel terribly small. Like Mark just said: "That's where God's God lives." [Discover]

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The image on the top is NGC 6302, a dying star 3,800 light years from us. The stellar butterfly is formed by the material ejected from the star, two gas hells roaring at 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and traveling at 600,000 miles an hour. Not a good place to spend your next vacation, but one heck of a view.

It was taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed during the mission. This camera has replaced the WFPC2, adding a second channel in the near-infrarred range. It covers the visible spectrum, part of the near-ultraviolet, and portion of the near-infrared, complementing the infrared channel, which goes from 800 to 1700 nanometers. According to NASA,

With these two channels, WFC3 will achieve excellent panchromatic (full - spectrum) imaging. Stellar objects are not just in the visible spectrum, but also exist in the blue (near-UV) and red (near-IR) extremes. WFC3 was designed to study light in these regions of the spectrum better than Hubble's current capabilities.

In other words: Expect even more kick ass photos from now on. [NASA]

Hubble was at the time being tested and calibrated, but this kind of massive impact only comes around every few decades or so, and the Hubble team scrambled to aim one of their cameras at Jupiter's new, massive scar. The impact site is about the same as the diameter of Earth, though the object that caused it was likely only about 50-100 miles across. The asteroid, or whatever it was, was travelling at somewhere between 31 and 62 miles per second when it smashed into the gas giant near its south pole. The Hubble's repairs will actually be delayed due to the need to photograph this event, and won't be back online until late summer. [CNN]

The mystery event was a "firefly" type flare some 2 billion light years away from Earth. The event occurred in the middle of a void. Nothing should have been there, and yet, there this flare was, lasting 100 days or so before fading away into nothingness. That's about 80 days longer than a traditional super nova.

Today, however, astronomers might have an answer: It was "just" your average run-of-the-mill rogue "free floating" black hole eating a star that was, until said black hole devoured it, residing in a galaxy to dim to view using existing technology.

Lucky for us, one of Hubble's new additions could help us find more "fireflies" in the void. The Wide Field Camera 3, installed by members of the Atlantis crew earlier this month, might be able to determine if there was actually a host galaxy around the mysterious flare that was just too faint to see (thereby making this one-of-a-kind flare a bit more common). [New Scientist]

Barring its mildly inauspicious start, the mission appears to have gone well so far, netting us stunning photos, fascinating live video of the repairs, and of course, years and years of mind-boggling Hubble imagery to look forward to.

One thing: NASA's aggressive, wide new online strategy has been great, and given regular people previously unimaginable levels of information and engagement with the program, but some things are best left unadvertised. Ahem:

Atlantis' crew woke up this morning at 4:31 a.m. EDT to "Lie in Our Graves" performed by the Dave Matthews Band. It was played for astronaut Megan McArthur.

Not that a frumpy musical choice could put a ding in the astronauts' unassailable coolness, but early morning orbital jam band sessions seem like they should be kept private, away from the wide, judgmental eyes of the next generation of potential astronauts. [NASA]

1. High-torque, low-speed pistol power tool with it's own CPU.
2. EVA mini-workstation, where the astronaut puts the tools he needs, attached to his chest.
High speed, low torque electric screwdriver.
3. Low-torque, high-speed power tool to unscrew or screw quickly.
4. Guide studs in their bag, used to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph
5. Washer extraction tool used to secure washers so they don't float into space once they are removed.

So pretty, yet so menacing. Like the ones a dentist will use with you. If you are Dustin Hoffman and your dentist is a nazi, that is. [NASA via NPR via Daily Icon—Thanks Jonathan Will]

Photos by by Michael Soluri

STS-125 astronaut Andrew Feustel selects his next tool to use while participating in the first of five scheduled spacewalks to perform final hands-on servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope. Feustel and veteran astronaut John Grunsfeld (out of frame) are scheduled to participate in three of those spacewalks.

Tools? What tools? Can you see any tools in there? I have tried to decipher what tools are those and I just can't identify any single one of them.

Sure, I wasn't expecting a bunch of Allen keys and Torx screwdrivers to fix the Hubble, but these things look like fake devices from a B-series sci-fi movie. And now that we are at it, can somebody explain to me how can they make any sense of that big mess? Apparently, astronauts just tie their stuff in big balls of junk. Seriously, these guys are amazing. [NASA]

Shot just after launch, the image shows the faraway scene as viewed through a Takahashi TOA-130 refractor telescope (focal length 2200mm) and a Baader solar prism, which gives the Sun its muted look. Strapped to the back of the telescope, the 5D was set to ISO 100 and a 1/8000 shutter speed, the camera's extreme low and high settings, respectively [Edit: woops, the Mk II actually does ISO 50]. Legault used the free online Celestial Observer tool to calculate the best time to shoot from his location. Meanwhile, that little silhouette is the scene of an incredibly complex and dangerous Hubble rescue mission, which will repair a number of the craft's instruments, install a new camera and ensure that NASA's flagship orbital telescope keeps sending us amazing images for years to come.

Check out the unbelievable uncropped photos at Legault's site. —Note: It should be obvious, but don't try anything like this unless you know exactly what you're doing. Your eyes, they will burn. [Thierry Legault via Daily Mail]

Everything seems to be going ok right now, although they are having some problems with one of their cameras.

The scar, spotted during a standard survey of the shuttle's heat shields, was described by NASA as "appear[ing] very minor", and occurred at a very early stage of the launch. Similar damage cast a pall over a space shuttle Endeavor mission in 2007, though repairs—Hollywood-style or otherwise—probably won't be necessary.

The astronauts will just have to put this out of mind while they carry out their ridiculously difficult Hubble repair mission, but it certainly won't make their reentry and landing, scheduled for about 10 days from now, any less stressful. [Daily Mail, Images courtesy of AP]