Space images thread

[Drone]

Astronomers had previously identified G1.9+0.3 as the remnant of the most recent Type Ia supernova in our Galaxy. It is estimated to have occurred about 110 years ago from the vantage point of Earth, in a dusty region of the Galaxy that blocked visible light from reaching Earth. This Chandra image shows G1.9+0.3 where low-energy X-rays are colored red, medium-energy X-rays are green, and a higher-energy band of X-rays is blue.

It is important to identify the trigger mechanism for Type Ia supernovae because if there is more than one cause then the contribution from each can change over time, affecting their use as "standard candles" in cosmology.

 

[Drone]

Astronomers have uncovered the signal of a fast-spinning neutron star in Andromeda galaxy. This peculiar X-ray pulsar is called 3XMM J004301.4+413017. It spins every 1.2 seconds, and appears to be feeding on a neighboring star that orbits it every 1.3 days.

Peering deep into the heart of our Milky Way, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a rich tapestry of more than half a million stars. Except for a few blue foreground stars, the stars are part of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster, the most massive and densest star cluster in our galaxy. So packed with stars, it is equivalent to having a million suns crammed between us and our closest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. At the very hub of our galaxy, this star cluster surrounds the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, which is about 4 million times the mass of our sun.

 

[Drone]

L1551-IRS5, which is about 450 ly away from the Earth, is believed to be a binary system consisting of two protostars. (A protostar is a cloud of gas which is collapsing prior to starting nuclear fusion at its core.) This picture shows two parallel jets (green) being emitted from a nebula (white, located slightly left of center), within which the protostars are located.

The jets are thought to be produced separately by each of the protostars, and extend for ~ 1500 AU.

 

[Drone]

The elliptical galaxy NGC 1600, approximately 200 million ly - shown in the center of the Hubble image and highlighted in the box - hosts in its center one of the biggest supermassive black holes known.

A Hubble image of the Arches star cluster. Astronomers compared young massive gas clouds in the galaxy with the Arches and other more developed star clusters to model how these clusters developed.

 

[Drone]

NGC 3576 & 3603

 

[Drone]

W3 is a region where many massive stars are forming in a string of stellar clusters, located about 6000 ly from Earth in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way. Scientists believe that the extraordinary amount of star formation in W3 has possibly been influenced by neighboring W4, an inflating bubble of gas over 100 ly across. W4 may directly trigger the birth of W3's massive stellar clusters as it expands and sweeps up molecular gas into a high-density layer at its edge, within which stars can form. Another possible scenario is that W4's expansion has caused a domino effect of star formation, forming the cluster IC 1795 (seen as a clump of X-ray sources in the bottom left corner of this image) which in turn triggered formation of the young, massive clusters in W3.

 

[Drone]

A nearby dwarf galaxy known as Leo A. Its few million stars are so sparsely distributed that some distant background galaxies are visible through it. Leo A itself is at a distance of ~ 2.5 million ly from Earth. It's one of the most isolated galaxies in the Local Group.

The star HD 44179 is surrounded by an extraordinary structure known as the Red Rectangle. Details are in the video:

 

[Drone]

This spiral galaxy, UGC 8621, was identified by volunteers in the Galaxy Zoo 2 project as a spiral galaxy with a very small bulge at the center. Follow-up observations show that this galaxy also hosts a massive and active black hole at its center, a phenomenon previously associated only with prominent bulges.

Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxy UGC 477, located just over 110 million light-years away in the constellation of Pisces.
LSB galaxies like UGC 477 are more diffusely distributed than galaxies such as Andromeda and the Milky Way.
With surface brightnesses up to 250 times fainter than the night sky, these galaxies can be incredibly difficult to detect.
Most of the matter present in LSB galaxies is in the form of hydrogen gas, rather than stars.

 

[Drone]

New VLT Survey Telescope image shows the central part of Fornax Galaxy Cluster in great detail. At the lower-right is the elegant barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and to the left the big elliptical NGC 1399.

Did anyone try to download and successfully render 1.8 GB or 285 MB version? I had no luck

 

[Drone]

Located in the constellation Auriga, IC 417 [Spider Nebula] lies ~ 10kly away. It's in the outer part of the Milky Way, almost exactly in the opposite direction from the galactic center.

 

[Drone]

Composite image of the gravitational lens SDP.81 showing the distorted image of the more distant galaxy (red arcs) and the nearby lensing galaxy (blue center object). By analyzing the distortions in the ring, astronomers have determined that a dark dwarf galaxy (data indicated by white dot near left lower arc segment) is lurking nearly 4 billion ly away.

really old image of nebula NGC 2371

 

[Drone]

NGC 4112 galaxy

NGC 4111 is a lenticular galaxy, lying ~ 50 million ly from us in the constellation of Canes Venatici. Running through its center, at right angles to the thin disc, is a series of filaments, silhouetted against the bright core of the galaxy. It's possible that this polar ring of gas and dust is actually the remains of a smaller galaxy that was swallowed up by NGC 4111 long ago.

 

[Drone]

I've never seen anything like this.

Bubble Nebula [NGC 7635] is 7 ly across and resides 7100 ly from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia.

The seething star forming this nebula is 45 times more massive than our sun. Gas on the star gets so hot that it escapes away into space as a "stellar wind" moving at over 4 million miles per hour. This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble.

As the surface of the bubble's shell expands outward, it slams into dense regions of cold gas on one side of the bubble. This asymmetry makes the star appear dramatically off-center from the bubble, with its location in the 10 o'clock position in this Hubble view.

Dense pillars of cool hydrogen gas laced with dust appear at the upper left of the picture, and more "fingers" can be seen nearly face-on, behind the translucent bubble.

The colors correspond to blue for oxygen, green for hydrogen, and red for nitrogen. This information will help astronomers understand the geometry and dynamics of this complex system.

Bubble Nebula is being formed by a proto-typical Wolf-Rayet star, BD +60º2522, an extremely bright, massive, and short-lived star that has lost most of its outer hydrogen and is now fusing helium into heavier elements. The star is ~ 4 million years old, and in 10-20 million years, it will likely detonate as a supernova.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

isnt this the pic that celebrates 26 years of Hubble today?


https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1608/

 

[Drone]

^ yup that's the one, the link to Hubble site is in that post

Here's an old 3d gif of Bubble Nebula by astrophotographer J-P Metsävainio

And here's a 3D gif of IC 1396 nebula located over 2000 ly away, toward the constellation of Cepheus

 

[Drone]

NASA tweeted out this photo on April 21, 2016, in honor of the musician Prince, who died that day at the age of 57.

The famous Crab Nebula recalled the late musician's most famous album, Purple Rain.

Crab Nebula, which lies ~ 6500 ly from Earth, is a supernova remnant - a structure shaped by the explosive death of a massive star.

 

[Drone]

This new video from ESA's Herschel space observatory reveals in stunning detail the intricate pattern of gas, dust and star-forming hubs along the plane of our Galaxy. Against the diffuse background of the interstellar material, a wealth of bright spots, wispy filaments and bubbling nebulae emerge, marking the spots where stars are being born in the Galaxy.

The video was compiled by stitching together several hundred hours of Herschel observations. It spans a vast portion – almost 40% – of the plane of the Milky Way, where most of the stars in the Galaxy form and reside.

Denser portions of the interstellar medium, the mixture of gas and dust that pervades the Galaxy, are visible in orange and red, popping up against the background in this false-color view. These concentrations of matter, often arranged in long, thread-like structures, are the sites where future generations of stars will form.

The tiny white spots that appear sprinkled over the filaments are denser clumps of gas and dust, embedding the seeds of stars that are slowly taking shape.

In contrast, the glowing blue and violet gas is set ablaze by the powerful light emitted by newborn stars in their vicinity. This signature of full-fledged stars completes the inventory of all stages in the process of stellar formation that are portrayed in this stunning panorama.

The center of our Galaxy, ~ 25 kly away. Clouds of gas and dust appear distributed along a giant, twisted ring, > 600 ly wide, which encompasses the supermassive black hole sitting at the Galaxy's core.

 

[Drone]

NGC 3576 is a giant HII region of glowing gas located ~ 9000 ly from Earth. Stars are born from condensing clouds of hydrogen gas.

Galactic Starburst Region NGC 3603
NGC 3603 is located in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way at a distance of ~ 20 kly (6-7 kpc).

RCW 120 bubble lies ~ 4.3 kly away.

A star at the center, not visible at these infrared wavelengths, has blown a beautiful bubble around itself with the mighty pressure of the light it radiates. The pressure is so strong that it has compressed the material at the edge of the bubble, causing it to collapse and triggering the birth of new stars.

 

[Drone]

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh Spitzer site/links/pics are not accessible anymore and I can't even edit my posts. That's why it's a good idea to save everything, duh anyway ...

NGC 339 is a massive intermediate age star cluster in the southern constellation of Tucana. It's part of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

By measuring the brightnesses and colors of the stars of NGC 339, astronomers were able to estimate the overall age of the cluster (~6.5 billion years old). This makes it only half the age of the more common globular clusters. The relationship between massive intermediate age star clusters, such as NGC 339, and the true globular clusters are not fully understood yet. So far none of these type of clusters has been found in the Milky Way.

Globular cluster M10 (NGC 6254) sits high above the plane of our Galaxy. Globular clusters consist of stars in dense groups bound together by mutual gravitational attraction, and gravitating as a whole around their host galaxy. M10 lies ~ 14 kly from us in the equatorial constellation of Ophiuchus.

 

[Drone]

This colorful view of the globular cluster NGC 6362 was captured by the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. This brilliant ball of ancient stars lies in the southern constellation of Ara.

 

[Drone]

Yay Spitzer site works again. All links and images are accessible again!

The central region of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1313 viewed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is located some 20 million ly away and hosts a very bright source of X-rays, NGC 1313 X-1. NGC 1313 X-1 is an ultra-luminous X-ray source – a binary system consisting of a stellar remnant that is feeding on gas from a companion star at an especially high rate.

The irregular galaxy NGC 5408 viewed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is located some 16 million ly away.

Scientists using ESA's XMM-Newton have discovered gas streaming away at a quarter of the speed of light (70000 km/s) from NGC 1313 X-1 and NGC 5408 X-1, confirming that these sources conceal a compact object accreting matter at extraordinarily high rates.

 

[Peter1986C]

New VLT Survey Telescope image shows the central part of Fornax Galaxy Cluster in great detail. At the lower-right is the elegant barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and to the left the big elliptical NGC 1399.

Did anyone try to download and successfully render 1.8 GB or 285 MB version? I had no luck

The large version? I succeeded but do not see the point of such a large picture on a regular HD screen, lol.

 

[Drone]

The large version? I succeeded but do not see the point of such a large picture on a regular HD screen, lol.

It's all about being hardcore

 

[Drone]

Astronomers have used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA's Planck and a large list of optical telescopes to develop a powerful new method for investigating dark energy, the mysterious energy that is currently driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

The technique takes advantage of the observation that the outer reaches of galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, show similarity in their X-ray emission profiles and sizes. More massive clusters are simply scaled up versions of less massive ones.

These latest results confirm earlier studies that the amount of dark energy has not changed over billions of years. They also support the idea that dark energy ("cosmological constant") is the energy of empty space.

 

[Drone]

Omega Centauri (located 17000 ly away) is the largest globular cluster in the sky. This group contains > 10 million stars older than the Sun and is 150 ly in diameter.

At the crowded center, stars may be as close together as 0.1 ly (note that our own nearest star is 4.3 light-years away).