A team of astronomers has observed the largest protoplanetary disk ever seen circling a young star some 1,000 light years away. This churning expanse of gas and dust spans roughly 400 billion miles, 40 times the size of our solar system and extending to the Kuiper Belt. They’ve cataloged this disk as IRAS 23077+6707, also known as Dracula’s Chivito, and it’s easy to see why given its completely opaque center, which Hubble’s high resolution photo has peeled away to reveal a really odd image.

This new image of Arp 4 captured by NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope appears to have been created for a screen, doesn’t it? The way the galaxies align provides a flawless optical illusion that tricks the eye into sensing intimacy where none exists. It sits in the constellation Cetus, also known as the Whale, a peaceful region of sky far from the crowded Milky Way.

Hubble’s most recent image focuses on NGC 4388, a sideways spiral galaxy undergoing tremendous change. It’s located 60 million light years away in the constellation Virgo, right in the midst of the Virgo Cluster, which contains over a thousand other galaxies. Because Hubble is looking at this galaxy from virtually straight on, what would ordinarily be a flat disk has transformed into a narrow, luminous line chock full of secrets just waiting to be unearthed.

Astronomers have discovered a super-Earth located 280 light-years away in the Sextans constellation. Called TOI-561 b, a day there lasts only 11 hours because it is so close to its star. That said, you would expect the surface to be a giant ball of heat, yet it is still maintaining a thick layer of gas around itself.