Gliese 710.

A view of a small part of the sky as if you were staring at a star (centre) approaching nearly head on, and then as it passes by and away again. The motion can be likened to what an observer standing beside a road would see looking at an approaching car, and then swinging around to continue to follow it as it moves away. As a result, the objects in the background – in this case distant stars – become blurred as you move quickly to maintain a visual on the passing object. The focus of this animation is the star known as Gliese 710. It will have a close encounter with our Sun in 1.3 million years, passing within the Oort Cloud reservoir of comets in the outskirts of our Solar System. The star is predicted to pass within about 2.3 trillion kilometres, the equivalent of about 16 000 Earth–Sun distances. The star’s motion is set against a background of other moving stars and the visualisation covers, very quickly, the timeframe from about 1.1–1.5 million years in the future. The size of...

Spiral Galaxy M83


M83 is in the huge constellation of Hydra, and is thought to be very like our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, but seen from above one of its poles and at a distance of about 15 million light years. . 
Although discovered 250 years ago, only much later was it appreciated that M83 was not a nearby gas cloud, but a barred spiral galaxy much like our own Milky Way Galaxy. 
The massive blue stars occasionally explode as supernovae; at least eight have been seen in Messier 83 in the last 70 years. 
Composed of billions of stars and huge clouds of dust and gas, this object is one of the finest examples of a spiral galaxy. 
NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and W. P. Blair (JHU) et al.
Australian/Astronomical