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Located 3,600 parsecs or over 11,700 light years distant, the star is 50% larger than the famous red giant Betelgeuse

down into the center of our own solar system, and it would extend out over 6 astronomical units (A.U.s) past the orbit of Jupiter

also has a relatively small companion star orbiting across our line of sight once every 1300 days

The companion star

is also a large star in its own right at around six solar masses and 400 solar radii in size.

the surface-to-surface distance for the A and B components of the system are “only” about 2.8 A.U.s apart

This all means that these two massive stars are in physical contact, with the expanded outer atmosphere of the bloated primary contacting the secondary, giving the pair a distorted peanut shape.

yellow hypergiants are some of the brightest stars known

That’s just 16x times fainter than the apparent visual magnitude of a Full Moon but over 100 times brighter than Venus

if you placed a star like HR 5171 A 32 light years from the Earth, it would easily cast a shadow.

the discovery of a companion around such a bright star was a big surprise since any ‘normal’ star should at least be 10,000 times fainter than the hypergiant

the hypergiant was much bigger than expected

What we see is not the companion itself, but the regions gravitationally controlled and filled by the wind from the hypergiant

These latest measurements place HR 5171 A firmly in the “Top 10” for largest stars in terms of size known, as well as the largest yellow hypergiant star known

Only eight yellow hypergiants have been identified in our Milky Way galaxy

June 3) depicts the suspected gas giant (called HD 95086 b) circling its young star (named HD 95086) in infrared light

HD 95086 b was sighted by ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile. Based on the planet's brightness, scientists estimate that it is only about four or five times more massive than Jupiter

Only a few planets have been directly observed so far

The blue circle in the photo represents the distance between the sun and Neptune.

The planet orbits its star at about twice the distance from the sun to Neptune and about 56 times the distance between Earth and the sun

is relatively young star at only 10 million to 17 million years old, making the formation of the exoplanet and the dusty disc surrounding the star potentially intriguing to researchers

It either grew by assembling the rocks that form the solid core and then slowly accumulated gas from the environment to form the heavy atmosphere

started forming from a gaseous clump that arose from gravitational instabilities in the disc

Interactions between the planet and the disc itself or with other planets may have also moved the planet from where it was born

Astronomers have known for some time that the earliest galaxies were much smaller than the impressive spiral and elliptical galaxies that now fill the Universe

employing the state-of-the-art instruments on ESO's Very Large Telescope an international team is unravelling what really happened

more than one hundred hours of observations the team has collected the biggest ever set of detailed observations of gas-rich galaxies at this early stage of their development.

Two different ways of growing galaxies are competing

violent merging events when larger galaxies eat smaller ones

smoother and continuous flow of gas onto galaxies

zoom sequence starts

Smooth gas flow (eso1040) seems to have been a big factor in the building of galaxies in the very young Universe, whereas mergers became more important later.

you could win an iPod Touch in our Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Competition.

Download the data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, process using powerful open-source software such as the ESO/ESA/NASA FITS Liberator and make a beautiful image for our Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Image Processing Contest Flickr group.

you’ll be in with a chance to win an iPad.

Both parts of the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures competition close on 31 May 2012

The best datasets that you identify will also be featured as future pictures of the week and photo releases on spacetelescope.org.