Hubble's Hidden Treasures — Image Processing
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Muchas, muchas gracias por sus visitas, favs y comentarios :)
Many, many thanks for your visits, favs and comments :)
Olympus & 60 mm macro.
A beautiful galactic dance 211 million light years away. Captured by Hubble WFC3 and processed by me.
A macro of a glass of coffee, for Macro Monday, on the theme of beverage.
This was my second try at it, as the first try gave me some very lukewarm image. Also had to take a photo, then leave it for a few seconds, then go back, as the lense kept fogging up!
I was originally going to leave this as colour, but popped it into silver efex after color efex, just to see and I really liked it.
Nikon Z6, 18mm Extension Tube, FTZ, Tamron 90mm Macro Lense, Ring FLash,
Exposure X5, Color Efex Pro 4, Silver Efex Pro 2
La galaxie spirale NGC 634 (Hubble) est située à 217 millions d'années-lumière de la Terre dans la constellation du Triangle (Triangulum). La finesse des détails et la structure spirale exceptionnellement parfaite de la galaxie en ont fait une cible d'observation privilégiée suite à la disparition violente d'une naine blanche. La supernova de type Ia SN2008a y avait ainsi été repérée et brièvement rivalisé d'éclat avec la galaxie hôte.
Les naines blanches constituent le point final de l'évolution des étoiles dont la masse se situe entre 0,07 et 8 masses solaires, soit 97 % des étoiles de la Voie lactée. Avec toutefois des exceptions, dans un système binaire une naine blanche peut accréter la matière provenant de son étoile compagnon et prendre progressivement du poids. Mais l'étoile peut finir par devenir trop pleine, lorsqu'elle dépasse 1,38 masse solaire. Des réactions nucléaires se déclenchent en produisant d'énormes quantités d'énergie et l'étoile explose en supernova de type Ia.
Cette image a été créée à partir d'images prises avec le canal grand champ de la caméra avancée de Hubble. Ces images ont été obtenues à travers un filtre jaune (F555W, coloré en bleu), combinées avec celles images obtenues à travers des filtres rouge (F625W, coloré en vert) et proche infrarouge (F775W, coloré en rouge). Les temps d'exposition totaux par filtre étaient respectivement de 3 750 s, 3 530 s et 2 484 s, et le champ de vision de 2,5 x 1,5 minute d'arc, soir 0,062° (cf. ESA/Hubble et NASA).
Pour situer la galaxie spirale NGC 634 (Hubble) dans la constellation du Triangle (Triangulum) :
It's Dog Day Monday again! I can't believe another week has flown bye.
Meet Hubble. All I know is that he was not named after the space station or Edwin Hubble after whom the space station was named. Hubble was a loveable, happy-go-lucky Welsh Corgi that lived right around the corner from us until he and his owners moved out of the Bay Area in 2014. Every time I'd meet him, he'd "smile." Don't get the idea that every dog I'm going to show you is smiling. I'm getting into the more serious group and then, just plain old. And, you know, we get grumpy as dogs, especially the two who I'll be showing you in a few weeks that were 17 when I met them.
Anyway, Happy Dog Day Monday #19. Any day with a dog is a happy one (a gross exaggeration, but not as exaggerated as any day without a dog isn't half as great as a day with one). When you unravel that, go rescue a dog.
Cats are okay, too, but from what I've seen on You Tube (and at my nephew's home), they are usually cantankerous, shredding rugs and couches, and love to throw things off countertops. So do parrots, but at least a parrot will talk to you while you're trying to correct them. Our cockatiel used to sing all the radio commercials he'd learned from the radio while we went to school. That was 61 years ago. My favorite, "Where there's Life, there's Lucky Strikes!"
… no not the space telescope, the (T)Oil and Trouble one.
Another quick on for Sliders Sunday. I am working on a couple of sets as project, but neither is near enough to completion to share, and time is limited for me just now.
Never one to throw away images (though I am trying to learn how) I have repurposed one of my oil droplet images from Smile on Saturday’s project yesterday. The starting image had lots of detail and texture and a little bit of colour variation from using two oils (see the comment from yesterday for more if you wish).
The work was done mainly in Affinity though I did us a bit of Nik Color Efex to tweak it a bit at the end.
The basic approach takes an oft-travelled path for me. Duplicate the image layer, flip it horizontally and vertically to give the overall result some symmetry and blend the two layers together with Difference blend mode (or any other mode that works for you) which injects lots of colours. The rest is just tweaking the colours.
I’ll post a link to the in-camera image so you can see the rather bland (in comparison) starting point.
Thanks for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)
Hubble rocks out with heavy metal stars!
This 10.5-billion-year-old globular cluster, NGC 6496, is home to heavy-metal stars of a celestial kind! The stars comprising this spectacular spherical cluster are enriched with much higher proportions of metals — elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are curiously known as metals in astronomy — than stars found in similar clusters.
A handful of these high-metallicity stars are also variable stars, meaning that their brightness fluctuates over time. NGC 6496 hosts a selection of long-period variables — giant pulsating stars whose brightness can take up to, and even over, a thousand days to change — and short-period eclipsing binaries, which dim when eclipsed by a stellar companion.
The nature of the variability of these stars can reveal important information about their mass, radius, luminosity, temperature, composition, and evolution, providing astronomers with measurements that would be difficult or even impossible to obtain through other methods.
NGC 6496 was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop. The cluster resides at about 35,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion).
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
Text credit: European Space Agency
Read more: go.nasa.gov/1U2wqGW
Lors du lancement du télescope spatial Hubble il y a 35 ans, personne n'aurait pu imaginer à quel point il allait transformer notre vision de l'espace. Lancé le 24 avril 1990, le télescope poursuit aujourd'hui sa mission. Pour célébrer son anniversaire, la NASA a publié quatre images récentes prises par Hubble, qui prouvent sa pérennité, même après trois décennies !
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When the launched 35 years ago, no one would have guessed how much it would shape the way we view space. Launched on April 24, 1990, the telescope continues its mission today. To celebrate its anniversary, NASA released four recent images taken by Hubble that prove its staying power even after three decades !
Credit : NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The Hubble Space telescope's observations of the universe have seldom produced more intriguing images than that seen in this section of bubble glass in the window of a public house.
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star makes the material glow. The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, is the white dot in the center. Our sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 billion years.
Our Milky Way Galaxy is littered with these stellar relics, called planetary nebulae. The objects have nothing to do with planets. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century astronomers called them the name because through small telescopes they resembled the disks of the distant planets Uranus and Neptune. The planetary nebula in this image is called NGC 2440. The white dwarf at the center of NGC 2440 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of more than 360,000 degrees Fahrenheit (200,000 degrees Celsius). The nebula's chaotic structure suggests that the star shed its mass episodically. During each outburst, the star expelled material in a different direction. This can be seen in the two bowtie-shaped lobes. The nebula also is rich in clouds of dust, some of which form long, dark streaks pointing away from the star. NGC 2440 lies about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Puppis.
The material expelled by the star glows with different colors depending on its composition, its density and how close it is to the hot central star. Blue samples helium; blue-green oxygen, and red nitrogen and hydrogen.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI), Acknowledgment: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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We are back from Portugal, a little jet-lagged (always milder going east to west than vice-versa) and none the worse for the wear. Time to upload the 1,136 images that I took. Here's a garden abstract from the archives while I get to it. :)
- Rosa's Garden of Earthly Delights, Keefer Lake, Ontario, Canada -
Two enormous galaxies capture your attention in this spectacular image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The galaxy on the left is a lenticular galaxy, named 2MASX J03193743+4137580. The side-on spiral galaxy on the right is more simply named UGC 2665. Both galaxies lie approximately 350 million light-years from Earth, and they both form part of the huge Perseus galaxy cluster.
Perseus is an important figure in Greek mythology, renowned for slaying Medusa the Gorgon – who is herself famous for the unhappy reason that she was cursed to have living snakes for hair. Given Perseus’s impressive credentials, it seems appropriate that the galaxy cluster is one of the biggest objects in the known universe, consisting of thousands of galaxies, only a few of which are visible in this image. The wonderful detail in the image is thanks to the WFC3’s powerful resolution and sensitivity to both visible and near-infrared light, the wavelengths captured in this image.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Harris; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy
Dans la constellation du Poisson Volant (Volans) à 300 millions d'a.l. de la Terre, l'anneau de Lindsay-Shapley AM 0644-741 est une galaxie lenticulaire non barrée et en anneau. Elle avait autrefois un noyau jaunâtre qui était le centre d’une galaxie spirale normale. Il se serait formé par une collision avec une autre galaxie, ce qui a déclenché un effet gravitationnel et une perturbation provoquant la condensation de la poussière, ce qui l'a forcé à s'étendre et à créer un anneau. D'une taille de 150 000 a.l., il possède aujourd'hui une région de formation d'étoiles dominée par de jeunes étoiles massives, bleues et chaudes. Les régions roses le long de l'anneau sont des nuages raréfiés d'hydrogène gazeux rougeoyant et fluorescent, alors qu'il est bombardé par une forte lumière ultraviolette émise par les étoiles bleues. Il continuera à s’étendre pendant encore 300 millions d’années, après quoi il commencera à se désintégrer.
Outre les deux grandes structures galactiques proches, plusieurs galaxies très éloignées sont visibles sur l'image, principalement dans sa partie inférieure gauche. Les deux stries rougeâtres et les autres petites structures elliptiques témoignent que leur lumière a été émise bien avant celle des galaxies voisines et qu'elles sont donc bien plus éloignées de nous dans l’espace-temps (cf. site Hubble).
Pour situer l'astre dans sa constellation :
www.flickr.com/photos/7208148@N02/48950795956/in/datepost...
Cette photomosaïque de la galaxie d'Andromède, située à 2,5 millions d'années-lumière de la Terre, est la plus grande jamais créée à partir d'images du télescope spatial Hubble. Elle comprend plus de 600 images du télescope et a nécessité plus d'une décennie de travail. La photomosaïque comprend 200 millions d'étoiles, soit une fraction de la population d'étoiles estimée à mille milliards d'étoiles d'Andromède.
« Les régions intéressantes comprennent : (a) des amas d'étoiles bleues brillantes intégrées dans la galaxie, des galaxies d'arrière-plan vues beaucoup plus loin et un bombardement photographique par quelques étoiles brillantes au premier plan qui sont en fait à l'intérieur de notre Voie lactée ; (b) NGC 206, le nuage d'étoiles le plus visible d'Andromède ; (c) un jeune amas d'étoiles bleues nouveau-nées ; (d) la galaxie satellite M32, qui pourrait être le noyau résiduel d'une galaxie qui est entrée en collision avec Andromède ; (e) des bandes de poussière sombres à travers une myriade d'étoiles.
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This photomosaic of the Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years from Earth, is the largest ever created using images from the Hubble Space Telescope. It features over 600 Hubble images and required over a decade to make. The composite features 200 million stars, a fraction of Andromeda’s estimated trillion-star population.
Interesting regions include: (a) Clusters of bright blue stars embedded within the galaxy, background galaxies seen much farther away, and photo-bombing by a couple bright foreground stars that are actually inside our Milky Way; (b) NGC 206 the most conspicuous star cloud in Andromeda; (c) A young cluster of blue newborn stars; (d) The satellite galaxy M32, that may be the residual core of a galaxy that once collided with Andromeda; (e) Dark dust lanes across myriad stars.
Crédit : NASA, ESA, Benjamin F. Williams (Université de Washington), Zhuo Chen (Université de Washington), L. Clifton Johnson (Northwestern) ; traitement des images : Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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A black hole forms in a giant cumulus cloud where nothing can escape, well not actually nothing but it’s toil and trouble for somebody, that ship on the horizon for instance.
Galaxy NGC 6946 is nothing short of spectacular. In the last century alone, it has experienced 10 observed supernovae (the explosion of a star), earning its nickname as the Fireworks Galaxy. 🎆
In comparison, our Milky Way averages just one to two supernova events per century. This NASA's Hubble Space Telescope image shows the stars, spiral arms, and various stellar environments of NGC 6946 in phenomenal detail.
We are able to marvel at NGC 6946 as it is a face-on galaxy, which means that we see the galaxy “facing” us, rather than seeing it from the side (known as edge-on). The Fireworks Galaxy is further classified as an intermediate spiral galaxy and as a starburst galaxy. The former means the structure of NGC 6946 sits between a full spiral and a barred spiral galaxy, with only a slight bar in its center, and the latter means it has an exceptionally high rate of star formation.
The galaxy resides 25.2 million light-years away, along the border of the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus (The Swan).
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Leroy, K.S. Long
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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A 130 millions d'a.l., les bras gracieux et sinueux de la majestueuse galaxie spirale NGC 3147, d'un diamètre de 83 000 a.l., apparaissent comme un grand escalier en spirale balayant l’espace dans cette image du télescope spatial Hubble. Ce sont en fait de longues bandes de jeunes étoiles bleues, de nébuleuses roses et de poussière. La beauté de la galaxie dément le fait qu’en son centre même se trouve un trou noir mal nourri, entouré d’un disque mince et compact d’étoiles, de gaz et de poussière qui ont été pris dans un maelstrom gravitationnel. La gravité du trou noir est si intense que tout ce qui s’aventure près de lui est balayé dans le disque. Ce dernier est si profondément ancré dans le champ gravitationnel intense du trou noir que la lumière du disque de gaz est modifiée, selon les théories de relativité d’Einstein, donnant aux astronomes un aperçu unique des processus dynamiques proches (cf. hubblesite.org).
Pour mieux situer l'astre dans sa constellation :
www.flickr.com/photos/7208148@N02/48686608841/in/datepost...
After seeing yesterday's APOD, a Hubble Legacy Archive image processed by Hunter Wilson; (apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160309.html) I really enjoyed the presentation, but there were a few things that I didn't like about the way the image was processed. So naturally I decided to have a go at it myself and downloaded the data from the website last night (hla.stsci.edu/) and started tinkering with it this morning. I finished it to an initial satisfactory processing and was quite pleased at the results!
Clustered at the center of this image are six brilliant spots of light, four of them creating a circle around a central pair. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this formation is not composed of six individual galaxies, but is actually two separate galaxies and one distant quasar imaged four times. Data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also indicates that there is a seventh spot of light in the very center, which is a rare fifth image of the distant quasar. This rare phenomenon is the result of the two central galaxies, which are in the foreground, acting as a lens.
The four bright points around the galaxy pair, and the fainter one in the very center, are in fact five separate images of a single quasar (known as 2M1310-1714), an extremely luminous but distant object. The reason we see this quintuple effect is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object with an enormous amount of mass – such as a pair of galaxies – causes the fabric of space to warp. When light from a distant object travels through that gravitationally warped space, it is magnified and bent around the huge mass. This allows humans here on Earth to observe multiple, magnified images of the far-away source. The quasar in this image actually lies farther away from Earth than the pair of galaxies. The galaxy pair’s enormous mass bent and magnified the light from the distant quasar, giving the incredible appearance that the galaxies are surrounded by four quasars – when in reality, a single quasar lies far beyond them!
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) imaged the trio in spectacular detail. It was installed on Hubble in 2009 during Hubble Servicing Mission 4, Hubble’s final servicing mission. WFC3 continues to provide both top-quality data and fantastic images 12 years after its installation.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Treu; Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Spotted in Explore by DMC43. Thanks Donna! #228 23/11/08
Pretty chilly here today so back to indoor flowers for the moment!
La nébuleuse planétaire NGC 2899 est située à 4 500 années-lumière de la Terre et à 25 895 années-lumière du centre galactique dans la constellation australe des Voiles (Vela). Cet objet présente un flux de gaz cylindrique, bipolaire et diagonal propulsé par le rayonnement et les vents stellaires d'une naine blanche située en son centre. En réalité, deux étoiles compagnes pourraient interagir et sculpter la nébuleuse, pincée en son centre par un anneau fragmenté (tore) qui ressemble à un beignet à moitié mangé. Elle présente une forêt de "piliers" gazeux pointant vers la source du rayonnement et des vents stellaires. Ses couleurs proviennent de l'hydrogène et de l'oxygène brillants (cf. NASA, ESA, STScI ; Image Processing : Joseph DePasquale STScI).
Pour situer la nébuleuse planétaire NGC 2899 (Hubble) dans la constellation australe des Voiles (Vela) :
Spanning from 2003 to 2021, this collection of images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features galaxies that are all hosts to both Cepheid variables and supernovae. These two celestial phenomena are both crucial tools used by astronomers to determine astronomical distance, and have been used to refine our measurement of Hubble’s constant, the expansion rate of the Universe.
Credits: NASA, ESA CC BY 4.0
The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower. So the nickname for this cosmic object — the Sunflower Galaxy — is no coincidence.
Discovered by Pierre Mechain in 1779, the galaxy later made it as the 63rd entry into fellow French astronomer Charles Messier’s famous catalogue, published in 1781. The two astronomers spotted the Sunflower Galaxy’s glow in the small, northern constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). We now know this galaxy is about 27 million light-years away and belongs to the M51 Group — a group of galaxies, named after its brightest member, Messier 51, another spiral-shaped galaxy dubbed the Whirlpool Galaxy.
Galactic arms, sunflowers and whirlpools are only a few examples of nature’s apparent preference for spirals. For galaxies like Messier 63 the winding arms shine bright because of the presence of recently formed, blue–white giant stars and clusters, readily seen in this Hubble image.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5, is located approximately 11 million light-years from Earth. This sparkling, face-on view of the center of the galaxy displays intertwined tendrils of dust in spectacular arms that wrap around a brilliant core of hot gas and stars. This core is a specific type of region called an H II nucleus – an area of atomic hydrogen that has become ionized. Such regions are energetic birthplaces of stars where thousands of stars can form over a couple million years. Each young, extremely hot, blue star emits ultraviolet light, further ionizing the surrounding hydrogen.
Despite its relatively bright 8.4 magnitude, this galaxy doesn’t stand out in the sky. It appears near the equator of the Milky Way’s pearly disk, which is crowded with thick cosmic gas, dark dust, and glowing stars that all obscure our view. This has earned Caldwell 5 the nickname of the Hidden Galaxy.
Were it not obscured by so much interstellar matter, the Hidden Galaxy would be one of the brightest galaxies in our sky. A relatively close galaxy, it is roughly 50,000 light-years across and billions of years old.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, P. Sell (University of Florida), and P. Kaaret (University of Iowa); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)
#NASA #NASAMarshall #Hubble #HST #galaxy
A bright young star is surrounded by a shroud of thick gas and dust in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 inspected a young stellar object, over 9000 light years away in the constellation Taurus, to help astronomers understand the earliest stages in the lives of massive stars. This object — which is known to astronomers as IRAS 05506+2414 — is thought to be an example of an explosive event caused by the disruption of a massive young star system. If so, it would only be the second such example known.
Usually the swirling discs of material surrounding a young star are funnelled into twin outflows of gas and dust from the star. In the case of IRAS 05506+2414, however, a fan-like spray of material travelling at velocities of up to 350 kilometres per second is spreading outwards from the centre of this image.
Astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. While it is possible to measure the velocity of material speeding outwards from the star, astronomers cannot tell how far from Earth the star actually is from a single observation. However, by measuring the distance that the outflow travels between successive images, they will be able to infer the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. This will allow astronomers to determine how bright the star is and how much energy it is emitting, and hence to estimate its mass — all vital information that will help to understand the origin of this bright young star’s unusual outflow.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sahai; CC BY 4.0
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen dubbed “The Behemoth” bleeding from a planet orbiting a nearby star. The enormous, comet-like feature is about 50 times the size of the parent star. The hydrogen is evaporating from a warm, Neptune-sized planet, due to extreme radiation from the star.
This phenomenon has never been seen around an exoplanet so small. It may offer clues to how other planets with hydrogen-enveloped atmospheres could have their outer layers evaporated by their parent star, leaving behind solid, rocky cores. Hot, rocky planets such as these that roughly the size of Earth are known as Hot-Super Earths.
“This cloud is very spectacular, though the evaporation rate does not threaten the planet right now,” explains the study’s leader, David Ehrenreich of the Observatory of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “But we know that in the past, the star, which is a faint red dwarf, was more active. This means that the planet evaporated faster during its first billion years of existence because of the strong radiation from the young star. Overall, we estimate that it may have lost up to 10 percent of its atmosphere over the past several billion years.”
Read more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/hubble-sees-a-behemoth-bleed...
Caption: This artist's concept shows "The Behemoth," an enormous comet-like cloud of hydrogen bleeding off of a warm, Neptune-sized planet just 30 light-years from Earth. Also depicted is the parent star, which is a faint red dwarf named GJ 436. The hydrogen is evaporating from the planet due to extreme radiation from the star. A phenomenon this large has never before been seen around any exoplanet.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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This is an image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken with the NASA/ESA (European Space Agency) Hubble Space Telescope.
The object was first spotted on wide-field images from the U.K. Schmidt telescope and then studied in detail using the Anglo-Australian Telescope.
Lying about 500 million light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor, the cartwheel shape of this galaxy is the result of a violent galactic collision. A smaller galaxy has passed right through a large disk galaxy and produced shock waves that swept up gas and dust — much like the ripples produced when a stone is dropped into a lake — and sparked regions of intense star formation (appearing blue). The outermost ring of the galaxy, which is 1.5 times the size of our Milky Way, marks the shock wave’s leading edge. This object is one of the most dramatic examples of the small class of ring galaxies.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
In the depths of the night sky lies a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 3583, imaged here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This is a barred spiral galaxy with two arms that twist out into the universe. This galaxy is located 98 million light-years away from the Milky Way. Two supernovae exploded in this galaxy, one in 1975 and another, more recently, in 2015.
There are a few different ways that supernovae can form. In the case of these two supernovae, the explosions evolved from two independent binary star systems in which the stellar remnant of a Sun-like star, known as a white dwarf, was collecting material from its companion star. Feeding off of its partner, the white dwarf gorged on the material until it reached a maximum mass. At this point, the star collapsed inward before exploding outward in a brilliant supernova.
Two of these events were spotted in NGC 3583, and though not visible in this image, we can still marvel at the galaxy’s spectacular symmetry.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
The Prawn Nebula is located in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, in the constellation Scorpius. Other names include both IC 4628, and Gum 56. From our vantage point, it is about 6,000 light-years away. IC 4628 is an extensive stellar nursery containing a large number of very hot, luminous, young stars created from the surrounding gases.
The nebula is about 250 light-years in diameter, with an apparent size of 1.5 degrees. For reference, this would cover an area three to four times the size of the moon. With my instrument, the full moon will fill my sensor. Unfortunately, I can’t fit the entire complex within this image.
Gum 56 is very faint and emits light at wavelengths not visible to our eyes. Two luminous giants and several young stars in this nebula emit an incredible amount of ultraviolet radiation ionising the hydrogen gas. The result, it glows. Within this invisibility, many things are concealed. Material ejected from violent supernova in the past provides new materials that allow for the formation of new stars. The cycle of stellar life and death continues as dust and gases collapse down, forming new stars.
The photo presented is a narrowband image created by combining filtered light from SII, Ha, and OIII filters. It allows us to reveal details of objects that we cannot see easily, or not at all. Often, the results can be very striking and dramatic. I tried to retain that pleasing gradient of yellow golds, through bands of teal, and hues of blue found in a traditional Hubble Palette image. I was pleased with the star colours ranging from blue to red, using only the narrowband filters. These colours appear very different from a traditional true colour image constructed with red, green, blue filtered light.
Instruments:
• 10 Inch RCOS fl 9.1
• Astro Physics AP-900 Mount
• SBIG STL 11000m
• FLI Filter Wheel
• Baader Planetarium H-alpha 7nm Narrowband-Filter
• Baader Planetarium OIII 8.5nm Narrowband-Filter
• Baader Planetarium SII 8.0nm Narrowband-Filter
Exposure Details:
• SII 22 X 1800
• Ha 22 X 1800
• OIII 24 X 1800
Total Exposure Time: 34.0 Hours
The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has also captured a smaller companion star in the upper left of this image. Both stars lie in the Orion Nebula, a colossal region of star formation roughly 1450 light years from Earth.
V 372 Orionis is a particular type of variable star known as an Orion Variable. These young stars experience some tempestuous moods and growing pains, which are visible to astronomers as irregular variations in luminosity. Orion Variables are often associated with diffuse nebulae, and V 372 Orionis is no exception; the patchy gas and dust of the Orion Nebula pervade this scene.
This image overlays data from two of Hubble’s instruments. Data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 at infrared and visible wavelengths were layered to reveal rich details of this corner of the Orion Nebula. Hubble also left its own subtle signature on this astronomical portrait in the form of the diffraction spikes surrounding the bright stars. These prominent artefacts are created by starlight interacting with Hubble’s inner workings, and as a result they reveal hints of Hubble’s structure. The four spikes surrounding the stars in this image are created by four vanes inside Hubble supporting the telescope’s secondary mirror. The diffraction spikes of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, on the other hand, are six-pointed as a result of Webb’s hexagonal mirror segments and 3-legged support structure for the secondary mirror.
[Image description: Two very bright stars with cross-shaped diffraction spikes are prominent: the larger is slightly lower-right of centre, the smaller lies towards the upper-left corner. Small red stars with short diffraction spikes are scattered around them. The background is covered nearly completely by gas: smoky, bright blue gas around the larger star in the centre and lower-right, and wispier red gas elsewhere.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Bally, M. Robberto; CC BY 4.0
In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a side-on view of NGC 3568, a barred spiral galaxy roughly 57 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Centaurus. In 2014 the light from a supernova explosion in NGC 3568 reached Earth — a sudden flare of light caused by the titanic explosion accompanying the death of a massive star. Whilst most astronomical discoveries are the work of teams of professional astronomers, this supernova was discovered by amateur astronomers from the Backyard Observatory Supernova Search in New Zealand. Dedicated amateur astronomers often make intriguing discoveries — particularly of fleeting astronomical phenomena such as supernovae.
This Hubble observation comes from a hoard of data built up to pave the way for future science with the upcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. By combining ground-based observations with data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers have built a treasure trove of data on the connections between young stars and the clouds of cold gas in which they form. One of Webb’s key science goals is to explore the life cycle of stars — particularly how and where stars are born. Since Webb observes at infrared wavelengths, it will be able to peer through the clouds of gas and dust in stellar nurseries and observe the fledgling stars within. Webb’s superb sensitivity will even allow astronomers to directly investigate faint protostellar cores — the earliest stages of star birth.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Sun; CC BY 4.0
This image shows the winding green filaments observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope within eight different galaxies. The ethereal wisps in these images were illuminated, perhaps briefly, by a blast of radiation from a quasar – a very luminous and compact region that surrounds a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy.
In each of these eight images a quasar beam has caused once-invisible filaments in deep space to glow through a process called photoionisation. Oxygen, helium, nitrogen, sulphur and neon in the filaments absorb light from the quasar and slowly re-emit it over many thousands of years.
Their unmistakable emerald hue is caused by ionised oxygen, which glows green.
The Hubble team found a total of twenty galaxies that had gas ionised by quasars; those featured here are (from left to right on top row) the Teacup (more formally known as 2MASX J14302986+1339117), NGC 5972, 2MASX J15100402+0740370 and UGC 7342, and (from left to right on bottom row) NGC 5252, Mrk 1498, UGC 11185 and 2MASX J22014163+1151237.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Galaxy Zoo Team and W. Keel (University of Alabama, USA)
The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is known as NGC 3597. It is the product of a collision between two good-sized galaxies, and is slowly evolving to become a giant elliptical galaxy. This type of galaxy has grown more and more common as the universe has evolved, with initially small galaxies merging and progressively building up into larger galactic structures over time.
NGC 3597 is located approximately 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Crater (The Cup). Astronomers study NGC 3597 to learn more about how elliptical galaxies form — many ellipticals began their lives far earlier in the history of the universe. Older ellipticals are nicknamed “red and dead” by astronomers because these bloated galaxies are not anymore producing new, bluer stars, and are thus packed full of old and redder stellar populations.
Before infirmity sets in, some freshly formed elliptical galaxies experience a final flush of youth, as is the case with NGC 3597. Galaxies smashing together pool their available gas and dust, triggering new rounds of star birth. Some of this material ends up in dense pockets initially called proto-globular clusters, dozens of which festoon NGC 3597. These pockets will go on to collapse and form fully-fledged globular clusters, large spheres that orbit the centers of galaxies like satellites, packed tightly full of millions of stars.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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The ultra-diffuse galaxy GAMA 526784 appears as a tenuous patch of light in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This wispy object resides in the constellation Hydra, roughly four billion light-years from Earth. Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of peculiarities. For example, their dark matter content can be either extremely low or extremely high — ultra-diffuse galaxies have been observed with an almost complete lack of dark matter, whereas others consist of almost nothing but dark matter. Another oddity of this class of galaxies is their anomalous abundance of bright globular clusters, something not observed in other types of galaxies.
Hubble captured GAMA 526784 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was installed in 2002 by astronauts during Hubble Servicing Mission 3B. Since then, the instrument has played a pivotal role in some of Hubble’s most impressive scientific results, including capturing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The ACS has also photographed Pluto in advance of the New Horizon mission, observed gargantuan gravitational lenses and found fully formed galaxies in the early Universe.
This image comes from a set of Hubble observations designed to shed light on the properties of ultra-diffuse galaxies. Hubble’s keen vision allowed astronomers to study GAMA 526784 in high resolution at ultraviolet wavelengths, helping to gauge the sizes and ages of the compact star-forming regions studding the galaxy.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. van der Burg; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
NGC 1672 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Dorado and is 60 million light-years away from earth.
This Data was taken from the Hubble Legacy Archive and processed by me.
Programms used for processing: Pixinsight, Darktable, GIMP
Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which is a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI/NASA), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF/ESA) and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC/NRC/CSA).
I have recently published an article on narrowband imaging, and creating Hubble Palette astrophotography images.
This post should be useful for those looking to get into this type of imaging - as it took me quite a while to get up to speed on the subject myself!
astrobackyard.com/narrowband-imaging/
Here is Melotte 15 inside of the Heart Nebula in SHO (SII, Ha, OIII)
The jellyfish galaxy JW39 hangs serenely in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies over 900 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, and is one of several jellyfish galaxies that Hubble has been studying over the past two years.
Despite this jellyfish galaxy’s serene appearance, it is adrift in a ferociously hostile environment; a galaxy cluster. Compared to their more isolated counterparts, the galaxies in galaxy clusters are often distorted by the gravitational pull of larger neighbours, which can twist galaxies into a variety of weird and wonderful shapes. If that was not enough, the space between galaxies in a cluster is also pervaded with a searingly hot plasma known as the intracluster medium. While this plasma is extremely tenuous, galaxies moving through it experience it almost like swimmers fighting against a current, and this interaction can strip galaxies of their star-forming gas.
This interaction between the intracluster medium and the galaxies is called ram-pressure stripping, and is the process responsible for the trailing tendrils of this jellyfish galaxy. As JW39 has moved through the cluster the pressure of the intracluster medium has stripped away gas and dust into long trailing ribbons of star formation that now stretch away from the disc of the galaxy.
Astronomers using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 studied these trailing tendrils in detail, as they are a particularly extreme environment for star formation. Surprisingly, they found that star formation in the ‘tentacles’ of jellyfish galaxies was not noticeably different from star formation in the galaxy disc.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy. It is large in the centre with a lot of detail visible. The core glows brightly and is surrounded by concentric rings of dark and light dust. The spiral arms are thick and puffy with grey dust and glowing blue areas of star formation. They wrap around the galaxy to form a ring. Part of the arm is drawn out into a dark thread above the galaxy, and dust from the arm trails off to the right.]
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team CC BY 4.0