Space images thread

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Space Images from my window


The moon came up......

followed by the sun

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

I stepped out of the door of our local supermarket

Kaboom

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

At our local Weapons Testing Range. See the Observation Tower?

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

The pink clouds are the heaviest.

 

[VulkanBros]

Sharpest ever view of the Andromeda Galaxy (69.536 x 22.230 pixels)

This is a cropped version of the full image and has 1.5 billion pixels. You would need more than 600 HD television screens to display the whole image.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Maurizio Pignotti takes some wonderful pics..

http://www.mauriziopignotti.com/
His work is subject to copyright.

 

[Drone]

Sh 2-132

Heart Nebula

 

[Drone]

Chandra Celebrates The International Year of Light

Bigger versions here



Interesting links:

Why Is Our Galaxy Called The Milky Way?

Why Is Andromeda Coming Towards Us?

Black hole on a diet creates a 'changing look' quasar

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

When i saw the image top right i had to learn more, here it is ....



When a massive star exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, it left behind an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0. Here, multimillion degree gas is seen in X-rays from Chandra (blue). The outer edge of the explosion (red) and stars in the field of view are seen in visible light from Hubble.

 

[Peter1986C]

Sh 2-132

That could be nicknamed the My Little Pony Nebula.

 

[Drone]

SH2-71, SH2-72, SH2-73

Arp 230

CG4

 

[Drone]

Nebula NGC 2282

Two galaxies [NGC 7714 & 7715 (Arp 284)] drifted too close together 100-200 million years ago, and began to drag at and disrupt one another's structure and shape. As a result, a ring and two long tails of stars have emerged from NGC 7714, creating a bridge between the two galaxies. This bridge acts as a pipeline, funneling material from NGC 7715 towards its larger companion and feeding bursts of star formation. Most of the star-forming activity is concentrated at the bright galactic center, although the whole galaxy is sparking new stars.

The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217 lies up to 90 million ly away in the north circumpolar constellation Ursa Major.

 

[Drone]

Yellowballs lol seriously

New and not so new goodness by LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) radio telescope:

The center of the galaxy M82 at very long radio wavelengths; the bright points are most likely supernova remnants [each remnant can be as little as a few ly across]; the image is ~ 3300 ly across. M82 or NGC 3034 [Cigar Galaxy], is an irregular galaxy located in the northern constellation Ursa Major, ~ 12 million ly away. The galaxy, which is approximately 40000 ly across, is creating stars at 10 times the rate of normal galaxies. The reason for this is the relatively recent encounter with its close neighbor M81. The latest encounter is thought to have occurred around a hundred million years ago, during which M82 was significantly disrupted.

Galaxy cluster Abell 2256 [located 800 million ly from us] - a cosmic collision on a huge scale

Cosmic particles & magnetic fields in M51

Giant radio galaxy triplet

 

[Drone]

Space is my wife!


Lovejoy

SH2-91

SH2-284 star-forming cloud of dust and gas located in the constellation of Monoceros [13000 ly away from us]. Deep inside SH2-284 resides an open star cluster, called Dolidze 25, that is emitting vast amounts of radiation in all directions, along with stellar winds.

 

[Drone]

NGC 7049

3D structure of Cassiopeia A

Look at the cavities ...

 

[Sasqui]

I'm loving this thread!

If you're a NASA researcher stationed in Alaska, you're probably pretty used to seeing the aurora borealis, the sky-watching spectacle better known as the northern lights.

So staffers at the Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks decided to do what any bored teenager would do: fire rockets at it! Four small, suborbital sounding rockets were launched from the facility to collect data on the auroras, which are caused by the interaction of solar wind from the sun and the Earth's atmosphere.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-rocket-northern-lights-aurora-alaska-photo-video-205518437.html

 

[Drone]

Cone nebula

Spiral galaxy NGC 2841 lies 46 million ly away in the constellation of Ursa Major.

NGC 281 is a relatively nearby [located ~ 9200 ly from us] cloud of gas and dust that lies high above the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

 

[Drone]

Galaxy J0836 rapidly losing its gas; shutting down star formation. *salutes & sheds a manly tear*

NGC 7814 [Little Sombrero] is ~ 60 000 ly across and it has a bright central bulge and a bright halo of glowing gas extending outwards into space. The dusty spiral arms appear as dark streaks. They consist of dusty material that absorbs and blocks light from the galactic center behind it. Little Sombrero is about the same size as Sombrero Galaxy, but as it lies further away, it appears smaller in the sky.

Sombrero (M104) is one of the most massive objects in the Virgo cluster, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50 000 ly across and is located 28 million ly from us.

That's a helluva big sombrero. Man, wish I could wear that lmao

 

[Drone]

The two interacting galaxies M51 A & B as seen in the infrared by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Emission from warm dust appears in red, and stellar emission in blue.

NGC 3242 (Jupiter's Ghost) lies some 3000 ly away, and it is visible in the southern constellation of Hydra. The white dwarf star at the center is shaping the double-shell structure of the nebula. The blue glow filling the inner bubble represents X-ray emission from hot gas, heated up to > 2 million degrees by shocks in the fast stellar winds, gusting at ~ 2400 km/s against the ambient gas. The green glow marks cooler concentrations of gas seen in optical light through the emission of oxygen, revealing the edge of the inner shell in contrast to the more diffuse gas making up the outer shell. The two flame-shaped features, visible in red to the upper right and lower left of the inner bubble, are pockets of even cooler gas, seen also in optical light through the emission of nitrogen.

Eskimo Nebula [NGC 2392] emits hot X-ray gas (blue) shining at 2 million degrees. This nebula is located ~ 4000 ly from us in the constellation of Gemini.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Astrophotography Evolution of an Image

The features made of dust and gas, as shown in processed images, are actually there – but the human eye is simply not sensitive to the wavelengths of light they emit.

 

[Drone]

The anatomy of the Milky Way as seen in gamma light

> 90% of that radiation is explained through the two processes: collisions of super-fast protons with nuclei in dense, cold gas clouds and of electrons with photons



Orion Nebula Glows in Amateur Astronomer's Photo

 

[Drone]

Unbelievable and awesome news!!! OMG I'm so excited lol I nearly jump for joy, seriously.

Astronomers found plumes in first known spiral galaxy M51a [Whirlpool Galaxy]. The linear northwest plume is nearly 120000 ly long.

And now ... something more exciting *swoons*

ESO's VISTA survey telescope took new infrared images of M20 (Trifid Nebula). Apparently close to the Trifid in the sky, but in reality ~ 7 times more distant, a newly discovered pair of variable stars has been found. These are Cepheid variables, a type of bright star that is unstable and slowly brightens and then fades with time. They are the first such stars found that lie in the central plane of the Milky Way beyond its central bulge.

Trifid lies ~ 5200 ly from us, the center of the Milky Way is ~ 27 000 ly away, in almost the same direction, and the newly discovered Cepheids are at a distance of ~ 37 000 ly; they brighten and fade over a period of 11 days.

This is amazing. It means we're seeing for the first time things that no one ever did before us XD These Cepheid variables are the first such stars found that lie in the central plane of the Milky Way beyond its central bulge. They're so beautiful! Fascinating!!

 

[Drone]

Globular cluster M9 glows through a screen of stars in a spiral arm of the Milky Way. A globular cluster consists of a dense group of stars gravitationally bound to a host galaxy. In the foreground, two giant clouds of molecules and dust obscure the distant starlight.

In the center of this image is the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849. It seems to be smiling. It's all caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing.

 

[Drone]

In the heart of Henize 2-428 lies a unique object consisting of two white dwarf stars, each with a mass a little less than that of the Sun. These stars are expected to slowly draw closer to each other and merge in around 700 million years. This event will create a dazzling supernova of Type Ia and destroy both stars.

In the heart of Henize 70 is a small group of extremely hot stars which have stellar winds blowing from their surfaces with velocities that approach 4000 km/s. These outward flowing streams of energetic particles eventually interact with an almost stationary interstellar medium, releasing much of their energy as a thin spherical shell of luminous material. The hollow structure accounts for the shape we see in the sky. This nebula is almost 400 ly across, about 100 times the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, and is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way.

This image shows a visible-light view of the emission nebula, Henize 206, which lies within the Large Magellanic Cloud. Embedded within Henize 206 is a region of star formation which is hidden in this image by obscuring dust.

Henize 1357, the youngest known planetary nebula. This image shows a rare moment in the final stages of a star's life: a shell of gas cast off by a dying star which then begins to glow. Its shape resembles a stingray fish, the nebula is one-tenth the size of most planetary nebulae and is 18 000 ly away in the direction of the southern constellation the Altar.

 

[Drone]

Young stars in Large Magellanic Cloud

Birth of quadruple star system in molecular cloud Barnard 5

Supernova remnant G299.2-2.9 gives clues about the explosion that created it about 4500 years ago. It belongs to the class of supernova known as Type Ia.