The Tarantula Nebula is a huge star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years away that orbits the Milky Way. It is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the whole group of nearby galaxies, and it holds some of the most massive stars known, roughly 200 times the mass of the Sun. This image shows dusty clouds near a Wolf-Rayet star, a rare kind of massive star that has lost its outer hydrogen layer and is extremely hot and luminous. Such stars drive furious stellar winds that sculpt the surrounding gas and dust into the shapes seen here. The observations come from a programme called Scylla, which studies the gas and dust around young massive stars and complements the ULLYSSES programme that studies the stars themselves.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.