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Space images thread

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Composite image of Abell 2597 Brightest Cluster Galaxy. The background image (blue) is from the Hubble Space Telescope. The foreground (red) is ALMA data showing the distribution of CO gas in and around the galaxy. The pull-out box is the ALMA data of the "shadow" (black) produced by absorption of the mm-wavelength light emitted by electrons whizzing around powerful magnetic fields generated by the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The shadow indicates that cold clouds of molecular gas are raining in on the black hole. Each cloud contains as much material as a million Suns and is 10s of ly across.


While ALMA was only able to detect 3 clouds of cold gas near the black hole, the astronomers speculate that there may be 1000s like them in the vicinity, setting up the black hole for a continuing downpour that could fuel its activity well into the future.
 
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Wide-field view is centered on the globular star cluster M4 (aka NGC 6121) in the constellation of Scorpius. It's a color composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2).
 
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NGC 1569 is a small starburst galaxy located ~ 11 million ly away in the constellation of Camelopardalis. For almost 100 million years, NGC 1569 has pumped out stars > 100 times faster than the Milky Way!

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An intriguing dwarf galaxy named LEDA 677373 is located ~ 14 million ly away from us. This particular dwarf galaxy contains a plentiful reservoir of gas from which it could form stars. However, it stubbornly refuses to do so. Rather than being stubborn, LEDA 677373 seems to have been the unfortunate victim of a cosmic crime. A nearby giant spiral galaxy M83 seems to be stealing gas from the dwarf galaxy, stopping new stars from being born!
 
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At left, in optical light, UGC 1382 appears to be a simple elliptical galaxy. But spiral arms emerged when astronomers incorporated UV and deep optical data (middle). Combining that with a view of low-density hydrogen gas (shown in green at right), scientists discovered that UGC 1382 is gigantic (718000 ly across).
The center of UGC 1382 is actually younger than the spiral disk surrounding it.

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Nebula NGC 6778 with the brightest recombination lines
 
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IC 5068 Emission nebula in Cygnus

Images by moonrocksastro & Albert L. Ruppel

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Spectacular new image of the Orion Nebula star-formation region. This is the deepest view ever of this region and reveals more very faint planetary-mass objects than expected.
 
I've just learned that birds have Ultraviolet Vision so they can see Andromeda Galaxy in UV with their naked eyes. :D Avian families rule!

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Hot stars burn brightly in this image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the UV side of a familiar face.

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NASA's Nuclear Spectroscope Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has imaged a swath of the Andromeda galaxy.


Close-ups of Andromeda Galaxy, taken with Subaru Telescope's prime-focus instrument, Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC).
 
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NASA's Hubble Looks to the Final Frontier


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In the center of the image is the immense galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion ly away, and surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther.


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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the vibrant core of the starburst galaxy NGC 3125.

NGC 3125 is 15000 ly across. It's located ~ 50 million ly away in the constellation of Antlia.
 
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Globular cluster NGC 4833 located ~ 22000 ly away in the constellation of Musca.

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Rippling wisps of ionized gas, named DEM L316A, are located some 160 000 ly away within one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors - the Large Magellanic Cloud.
 
Cool thread only just seen this.

 
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Irregular galaxy, known as NGC 2337, resides 25 million ly away in the constellation of Lynx

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Open star cluster M18 lies approximately 4600 ly away in the constellation of Sagittarius.

Blue and white colors of the stellar population indicate that the cluster's stars are very young, probably only ~ 30 million years old.

The dark lanes that snake through this image are murky filaments of cosmic dust, blocking out the light from distant stars. The contrasting faint reddish clouds that seem to weave between the stars are composed of ionized hydrogen. Young, extremely hot stars are emitting intense UV light which strips the surrounding gas of its electrons and causes it to emit the faint glow.

Download mammoth 30577 x 20108 pixel image (2 GB)
 
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the glow of new stars in these small, ancient galaxies. Pisces A is on the left and Pisces B is on the right.

Astronomers estimate that < 100 million years ago both galaxies doubled their star-formation rate. An analysis of the stars' colors reveals that the galaxies contain ~ 20-30 bright blue stars. The blue color is a sign they are young, < 100 million years old. Each galaxy contains ~ 10 million stars.

In the image of Pisces A, at left, the bright object at the top of the image is a distant background galaxy. Other distant background galaxies are visible as bright dots.

In the image of Pisces B, at right, the bright object with the diffraction spikes below left of center is a foreground star in our Milky Way galaxy. Several distant background galaxies are also visible.


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Several thousand years ago, a star some 160 000 ly away from us exploded, scattering stellar shrapnel across the sky.

This is the supernova remnant known as DEM L71. It formed when a white dwarf reached the end of its life and ripped itself apart, ejecting a superheated cloud of debris in the process.

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These images show the edge of the vast molecular cloud that lies behind the Orion Nebula, 1400 ly from us.

The clouds are stellar nurseries and at their edge atoms react and form molecules by key astrochemical processes.
 
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NGC 5264 is a dwarf galaxy located just over 15 million ly away in the constellation of Hydra.

Dwarf galaxies like NGC 5264 typically possess around a billion stars - just 1% of the number of stars found within the Milky Way. They are usually found orbiting other, larger, galaxies such as our own, and are thought to form from the material left over from the messy formation of their larger cosmic relatives.
 
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This stormy scene shows a stellar nursery N159, an HII region > 150 ly across. N159 contains many hot young stars. These stars are emitting intense UV light, which causes nearby hydrogen gas to glow, and torrential stellar winds, which are carving out ridges, arcs, and filaments from the surrounding material.

N159 is located > 160000 ly away within Large Magellanic Cloud.
 
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Oyster Nebula (NGC 1501), a candescent cloud some 5000 ly away from us in the constellation of Camelopardalis.
Oyster Nebula is a type of cosmic object that is essentially a giant cloud of dust and electrically charged gases.
 
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M98, aka NGC 4192, is located ~50 million ly away in the constellation of Coma Berenices.

The galaxy's perimeter, rippled with gas and dust, is dotted with pockets of blueish light. These are regions filled with very young stars, which are burning at such high temperatures that they are emitting fierce radiation, burning away some of the dense material that surrounds them. In total, M98 is thought to contain 1 trillion stars!

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Terzan 5, located 19000 ly from us, is like no other globular cluster known.
There're two distinct stellar populations in Terzan 5 which not only differ in the elements they contain, but have an age-gap of roughly 7 billion years.
 
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