Hubble has imaged NGC 1084, an almost face-on spiral galaxy with no central bar, which makes it a near-perfect example of its type. Massive stars, many times the Sun's mass, end their lives by collapsing and blowing off their outer layers in supernova explosions. Astronomers have recorded five supernovae in NGC 1084 over the past half century, named after their years of discovery. The most recent, 2012ec, was found in August 2012. Using older Hubble images taken in 2001, researchers at Queen's University Belfast identified the star that exploded as a red supergiant, roughly 10 to 20 times the Sun's mass and similar to Betelgeuse.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.