The Hubble Space Telescope is Awesome

[Elspode]

The image below was recently released. It depicts the dust and gas disk around a star at 320 light years distance. This is far and away the clearest such image ever produced, showing that this circumstellar disk (if not all circumstellar disks) have a spiral arm structure not unlike many galaxies.

The most widely accepted theories of planetary formation state that out of such dust clouds are formed solar systems.

For my part, I think it is absolutely amazing that we can see this sort of thing at all. I think that one of the best things about the Internet is the instant access we now have to space and science, and this is a fine example.

BTW - the black blob in the middle is there to form an occulting disk (which appears to me to be digitally formed as opposed to the plates of metal typically used as on the Solar Heliospheric Observer which keeps an eye on our sun), blocking out the direct light of the star and making the dust visible at all...sort of like an artificial eclipse.