Tag: Images

Hubble’s view of the dusty spiral galaxy M66

The big and beautiful spiral galaxy messier 66 is perhaps one of the most dusty and exciting galaxies to explore. With the recent PHANGS-HST proposal, this galaxy was observed in the ultraviolet, visable, and near-infrared wavelegnths in a way that makes this island universe much easier to understand. First, shining brightly in the infrared are the young star clusters, shown in the image below as blue. Then, in the visible light spectrum, the dust lanes cascading over the stars come into sharp relief. Finally, in the infrared, […]

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A spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies – ARP 143 from Hubble

A spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy, as captured in a new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The interacting galaxy duo is collectively called Arp 143. The pair contains the glittery, distorted, star-forming spiral galaxy NGC 2445 at right, along with its less flashy companion, NGC 2444 at left. Astronomers suggest that the galaxies passed through each other, igniting the uniquely shaped star-formation firestorm in NGC 2445, where thousands of stars are bursting to life on the right-hand side of […]

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NGC 2276 from Hubble

The magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 2276 looks a bit lopsided in this Hubble Space Telescope snapshot. A bright hub of older yellowish stars normally lies directly in the center of most spiral galaxies. But the bulge in NGC 2276 looks offset to the upper left. In reality, a neighboring galaxy to the right of NGC 2276 (NGC 2300, not seen here) is gravitationally tugging on its disk of blue stars, pulling the stars on one side of the galaxy outward to distort the galaxy’s normal fried-egg appearance. […]

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Hickson Compact Group 40 from Hubble

NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope’s 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called The Hickson Compact Group 40. This menagerie includes three spiral-shaped galaxies, an elliptical galaxy, and a lenticular (lens-like) galaxy. Somehow, these different galaxies crossed paths in their evolution to create an exceptionally crowded and eclectic galaxy sampler. Caught in a leisurely gravitational dance, the whole group is so crowded that it could fit within a region of space that is less than twice the diameter […]

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Hubble’s Ultra Deep field of Galaxies

Galaxies, galaxies everywhere – as far as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope can see. This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, this galaxy-studded view represents a “deep” core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years. The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies – […]

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The Christmas Tree Nebula

Interstellar clouds of hydrogen gas and dust abound in this gorgeous skyscape. The 3 degree wide field of view stretches through the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264 is centered, a complex jumble of cosmic gas, dust and stars about 2,700 light-years distant. It mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection […]

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Hubble’s stunning 325 megapixel mosaic of the Tarantula Nebula

I don’t really think that words can effectively describe this image. There’s so much going on here that it almost seems wrong to try to simplify what’s happening, but here goes: At the top center lies a massive star cluster that’s putting out enormous amounts of energy. All the hydrogen gas around that star cluster is being ionized, much like a neon sign. The ionization and energy outflows create the beautiful knots and filaments that you can see. By looking at this region through a filter that […]

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Nebulosity in the Auriga Region

This image showcases much of the nebulosity in the Auriga region in its natural colors. On the left is the flaming star nebula, an emission-reflection nebulae ionized by the star at its core. The blue parts are reflection, and the red parts are emission. At top center lies the tadpole nebula, a strong emission nebula. On the left are the spider and fly nebulae, two complex regions, of dark nebula, dust, emission nebulae, and reflection nebulae. Below theses two nebula is an open star cluster. Scroll down […]

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NGC 6814 from Hubble

Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60 percent of the galaxies in the local universe. However, despite their prevalence, each spiral galaxy is unique — like snowflakes, no two are alike. This is demonstrated by the striking face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6814, whose luminous nucleus and spectacular sweeping arms, rippled with an intricate pattern of dark dust, are captured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. NGC 6814 has an extremely bright nucleus, a telltale sign that the galaxy is a Seyfert galaxy. These […]

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The dumbbell nebula from Hubble

When Hubble processes images, they usually crop to the most interesting part. This image, however, shows the entire area captured by the sensor! The pure black areas in this image are parts where there is no sensor. This image looks to me more like a painting than a photo. Tho colors, the bulbos shapes, the small details all look like oil on canvas. Image: Details: All data was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) from the following proposal: https://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=8726 Processing Stretch each channel combine colors […]

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