View allAll Photos Tagged LargeMagellanicCloud
Extremely intense radiation from newly born, ultra-bright stars has blown a glowing spherical bubble in the nebula N83B, also known as NGC 1748. This Hubble Space Telescope image has helped to decipher the complex interplay of gas and radiation of a star-forming region in a nearby galaxy. The image graphically illustrates just how these massive stars sculpt their environment by generating powerful winds that alter the shape of the parent gaseous nebula. These processes are also seen in our Milky Way in regions like the Orion Nebula.
Hubble is famous for its contribution to our knowledge about star formation in very distant galaxies. Although most of the stars in the universe were born several billions of years ago, when the universe was young, star formation still continues today. This Hubble image shows a very compact star-forming region in a small part of one of our neighboring galaxies — the Large Magellanic Cloud. This galaxy lies only 165,000 light-years from our Milky Way and can easily be seen with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.
Young, massive, ultra-bright stars are seen here just as they are born and emerge from the shelter of their pre-natal molecular cloud. Catching these hefty stars at their birthplace is not as easy as it may seem. Their high mass means that the young stars evolve very rapidly and are hard to find at this critical stage. Furthermore, they spend a good fraction of their youth hidden from view, shrouded by large quantities of dust in a molecular cloud. The only chance is to observe them just as they start to emerge from their cocoon — and then only with very high-resolution telescopes.
Astronomers used Hubble to study the fascinating interplay between gas, dust, and radiation from the newly born stars in this nebula. Its peculiar and turbulent structure has been revealed for the first time. This high-resolution study has also uncovered several individual stars that are responsible for lighting up this cloud of gas.
The apparently innocuous-looking star at the very center of the nebula, just below the brightest region, is actually about 30 times more massive and almost 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. The intense light and powerful stellar "winds" from this ultra-bright star have cleared away the surrounding gas to form a large cavity. The bubble is approximately 25 light-years in diameter — about the same size as the famous star-forming Orion Nebula. The Orion Nebula is sculpted by intense radiation from newly born stars in the same way as N83B. Astronomers estimate that the spherical void in N83B must have been carved out of the nebula very recently — in astronomical terms — maybe as little as 30,000 years ago.
The hottest star in N83B is 45 times more massive than the Sun and is embedded in the brightest region in the nebula. This bright region, situated just above the center, is only about 2 light-years across. The region's small size and its intense glow are telltale signs of a very young, massive star. This star is the youngest newcomer to this part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Hubble image shows a bright arc structure just below the luminous star. This impressive ridge may have been created in the glowing gas by the hot star's powerful wind.
Measurements of the age of this star and neighboring stars in the nebula show that they are younger than the nebula's central star. Their formation may have been "triggered" by the violent wind from the central star. This "chain-reaction" of stellar births seems to be common in the universe. About 20 young and luminous stars have been identified in the region, but it may well be that many more massive stars remain undetected in other areas of the Large Magellanic Cloud, hidden by dust in small clusters like N83B.
To the right of the glowing N83B is a much larger diffuse nebula, known as DEM 22d, which is partly obscured by an extended lane of dust and gas.
This image is composed of three narrow-band-filter images obtained with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in May 2000. The colors are red (ionized hydrogen, H-alpha), green (ionized oxygen), and blue (ionized hydrogen, H-beta). The blue corresponds to the warmest regions, the red to the coldest. The full image is 66 x 133 arcseconds, which corresponds to 55 x 108 light-years at the distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1039/news_release/2001-11
Credit: NASA, ESA, and Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris, France)
A delicate sphere of gas, photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, floats serenely in the depths of space. The pristine shell, or bubble, is the result of gas that is being shocked by the expanding blast wave from a supernova. Called SNR 0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short), the bubble is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth.
Ripples in the shell's surface may be caused by either subtle variations in the density of the ambient interstellar gas, or possibly driven from the interior by pieces of the ejecta. The bubble-shaped shroud of gas is 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 11 million miles per hour (5,000 kilometers per second).
Astronomers have concluded that the explosion was one of an especially energetic and bright variety of supernovae. Known as Type Ia, such supernova events are thought to result from a white dwarf star in a binary system that robs its partner of material, takes on much more mass than it is able to handle, and eventually explodes.
Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys observed the supernova remnant on October 28, 2006, with a filter that isolates light from glowing hydrogen seen in the expanding shell. These observations were then combined with visible-light images of the surrounding star field that were imaged with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on November 4, 2010.
With an age of about 400 years as seen from Earth, the supernova might have been visible to Southern Hemisphere observers around the year 1600. However, there are no known records of a "new star" in the direction of the LMC near that time. A more recent supernova in the LMC, SN 1987A, did catch the eye of Earth viewers and continues to be studied with ground- and space-based telescopes, including Hubble.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/2759/news_release/2010-27
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: J. Hughes (Rutgers University)
Star trail with glow of light pollution from the city, & resort.
The blur pinkish section is the LMC.
This is 96 images stacked together (f1.8 15 sec 800 iso 24mm)
Thanks for looking
Cheers Claire
thanks JB for your help, & the info on stacking. This one for you sweetie :)x
The Milky Way night sky filled with stars over the rural countryside in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Edited European Southern Observatory image of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Color/processing variant.
This is by far the largest image (in terms of file size) that I've gotten Flickr to upload (assuming it uploads successfully). [It uploaded - yay!]
Original caption: ESO’s VISTA telescope reveals a remarkable image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of our nearest galactic neighbours. VISTA has been surveying this galaxy and its sibling the Small Magellanic Cloud, as well as their surroundings, in unprecedented detail. This survey allows astronomers to observe a large number of stars, opening up new opportunities to study stellar evolution, galactic dynamics, and variable stars.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a small part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest galaxies to our own. In this region, a collection of small baby stars, most less massive than the Sun, form a young stellar cluster known as LH63. This cluster is still half-embedded in the cloud from which it was born, a bright star-forming region known as the emission nebula LHA 120-N 51, or N51. This is just one of the hundreds of star-forming regions filled with young stars spread throughout the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The burning red glow of the nebulae at the bottom of the picture illuminates wisps of gas and dark dust, each spanning many light-years. Bright stars appear as radiant specks of light, giving the impression of pin-pricks in a cosmic cloak.
Studying low-mass stars can help us understand how these stars behave when they are in the early stages of formation, and can give us an idea of how the Sun might have looked billions of years ago.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1408a/
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Gouliermis (University of Heidelberg);
Acknowledgment: Luca Limatola
A mosaic of the main area of the southern Milky Way containing the best of the splendours of the southern hemisphere sky, from Puppis and Vela at top right to Centaurus at bottom left, and including Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud at lower right. Crux, the Southern Cross, and the Carina Nebula are at left of centre. The False Cross is at centre. Alpha and Beta Centauri are at lower left. Omega Centauri is at the left edge of the frame. The huge faint and red Gum Nebula in Vela is at upper right, as is the smaller Vela Supernova Remnant. The dark Coal Sack is left of the Southern Cross. The Dark Doodad is below the Cross.
This a 4-panel mosaic, each panel being a stack of 4 x 2.5-minute exposures at f/2.2 with the 35mm lens and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600, with an additional exposure taken through the Kenko Softon A filter for each panel also blended in to add the accentuated star glows. All taken on the iOption Sky Tracker from the Warrumbungles Motel grounds at the 2016 OzSky Star Party. Stacked and stitched in Photoshop CC 2015. The original is 8500 x 5400 pixels.
30-sec, ISO 4000 | Nikon D3 + 24mm f/1.4G
An observer shuts down the Lunar Scintillometer used for the 8-m ALPACA telescope seeing tests. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), East of La Serena, Chile, 13 April 2011
© 2011 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
The Small Magellanic Cloud and Large Magellanic Cloud in the Night Sky at Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Maki Yanagimachi - Location: Mt John University Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand
For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to MakiTKP on You Tube.
My first attempt at creating a planet like panorama. This is a link to the tutorial I used for CS6 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECvNFxjymaM
This is a total of 27 photographs taken in portrait mode. 25 second exposures at ISO 4000 - 16mm f/2.8
Nuestro planeta es simplemente hermoso.
A la izquierda se ve un satélite perdiéndose detrás de esta formación rocosa increíble. En el cielo también se puede ver la Vía Láctea y la Gran Nube de Magallanes (derecha), la última sólo visible desde el hemisferio sur.
Este es un frame de mi último corto titulado "Norte Argentino" que muestra algunos lugares que están cerca de mis pagos, Tinogasta.
Para ver el corto ingresá a la siguiente dirección: vimeo.com/51305369
Milky Way before the dawn, Cameron Valley, Ashburton Lakes, Canterbury, New Zealand. This photo is available under Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution license - see tomassobekphotography.co.nz/photos/picture.php?/3045/cate...
I composed this photo to look like some sort of precious jewel in the sky, framed by twisting tree branches, almost like a glowing gem set in a royal crown. A thorny crown. There are many aspects of photography that fascinate me and one of them is being able to set two objects in a photo like this to make them look like they’re close together even when they’re not. The tree branches were about five metres up above where my camera was placed. The jewel framed in the shot, the Large Magellanic Cloud, was around 163,000 light-years distant, or around 308,400,000,000,000,000,000 times further away than the tree.
If you go a’Googling you can find some very detailed photos of the Large (and its sibling the Small) Magellanic Cloud, showing many more stars and nebulae than you can see in this shot taken with my DSLR and a basic 50mm lens. To the lower left of the Cloud is the bright green smudge of light that’s known as the Tarantula Nebula, or its technical name of 30 Doradus. This is a nebula that has at its centre a star cluster that has an estimated mass of 450,000 times that of our Sun. You don’t have to know any of those facts to enjoy its beauty, fortunately.
A single shot captured with Canon EOS 6D Mk II, Canon 50mm @ f/2.2, 8.0 sec @ ISO 6400.
A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust is seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby supernova remnant. Denoted N 63A, the object is the remains of a massive star that exploded, spewing its gaseous layers out into an already turbulent region.
The supernova remnant is a member of N 63, a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Visible from the southern hemisphere, the LMC is an irregular galaxy lying 160,000 light-years from our own Milky Way Galaxy. The LMC provides excellent examples of active star formation and supernova remnants studied with Hubble.
Many of the stars in the immediate vicinity of N 63A are extremely massive. It is estimated that the progenitor of the supernova that produced the remnant seen here was about 50 times more massive than our own Sun. Such a massive star has strong stellar winds that can clear away its ambient medium, forming a wind-blown bubble. The supernova that formed N 63A is thought to have exploded inside the central cavity of such a wind-blown bubble, which was itself embedded in a clumpy portion of the LMC's interstellar medium.
Images of this supernova remnant in infrared, X-ray, and radio emission show the much more expanded bubble that totally encompasses the optical emission seen by Hubble. Odd-shaped mini-clouds, or cloudlets, that were too dense for the stellar wind to clear away are now engulfed in the bubble's interior. The supernova generated a propagating shock wave that continues to move rapidly through the bubble's low-density interior and shocks these cloudlets, shredding them fiercely.
Supernova remnants have long been thought to set off episodes of star formation when their expanding shock encounters nearby gas. As the Hubble images have illustrated, N 63A is still young and its ruthless shocks destroy the ambient gas clouds, rather than coercing them to collapse and form stars. Data obtained at various wavelengths from other detectors reveal ongoing formation of stars at 10 to 15 light-years from N 63A. In a few million years, the supernova ejecta from N 63A would reach this star-formation site and may be incorporated into the formation of planets around solar-type stars there, much like the early history of the solar system.
The Hubble image of N 63A is a color representation of data taken in 1997 and 2000 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by sulfur (shown in red), oxygen (shown in blue), and hydrogen (shown in green).
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1700/news_release/2005-15
Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: Y.-H. Chu and R. M. Williams (UIUC)
Processed using red, green, and blue filtered images of the Large Magellanic Cloud taken by Cassini on August 23 2017. Not true color.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the tattered debris of a star that exploded 3,000 years ago as a supernova. This supernova remnant, called N132D, lies 169,000 light-years away in a satellite galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 image of the inner regions of the supernova remnant shows the complex collisions that take place as fast moving ejecta slam into cool, dense interstellar clouds. This level of detail in the expanding filaments could only be seen previously in much closer supernova remnants. Hubble's capabilities extended the detailed study of supernovae out to the distance of a neighboring galaxy.
Material thrown out from the interior of the exploded star at velocities of more than four million miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second) plows into neighboring clouds to create luminescent shock fronts. The blue-green filaments in the image correspond to oxygen-rich gas ejected from the core of the star. The oxygen-rich filaments glow as they pass through a network of shock fronts reflected off dense interstellar clouds that surrounded the exploded star. These dense clouds, which appear as reddish filaments, also glow as the shock wave from the supernova crushes and heats the clouds.
Supernova remnants provide a rare opportunity to observe directly the interiors of stars that are far more massive than our Sun. The precursor star to this remnant, which was located slightly below and left of center in the image, is estimated to have been 25 times the mass of our Sun. These stars "cook" heavier elements through nuclear fusion, including oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, iron, etc., and the titanic supernova explosions scatter this material back into space where it is used to create new generations of stars. This is the mechanism by which the gas and dust that formed our solar system became enriched with the elements that sustain life on this planet. Spectroscopic observations can be used to determine the exact chemical composition of this nuclear- processed material, and thereby test theories of stellar evolution.
The image shows a region of the remnant 50 light-years across. The supernova explosion should have been visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere around 1000 B.C., but there are no known historical records that chronicle what would have appeared as a "new star" in the heavens.
This picture was made by superposing images taken on August 9-10, 1994, in three of the strongest optical emission lines: singly ionized sulfur (red), doubly ionized oxygen (green), and singly ionized oxygen (blue).
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/273/news_release/1995-13
Photo credit: Jon A. Morse (STScI) and NASA
Investigating team: William P. Blair (PI; JHU), Michael A. Dopita (MSSSO), Robert P. Kirshner (Harvard), Knox S. Long (STScI), Jon A. Morse (STScI), John C. Raymond (SAO), Ralph S. Sutherland (UC-Boulder), and P. Frank Winkler (Middlebury)
I debated posting this one, because there's not really anything that special about it - no foreground, no clouds to engage the viewer, but I went for it anyway because I still can't believe how bright those galaxies were! I know you Southern Hemisphere folk see them every night, but man, it's pretty special to me to be able to look up and so easily see right out of the Milky Way with my naked eyes! At first i thought I had smudges on my optics, and it was only until I shot this frame with my 24mm f/1.4 and zoomed into 10x til I realized what i was looking at was two other galactic clusters: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_Clouds
Processed using calibrated clear, infrared (IR1), green, and blue filtered images of the Large Magellanic Cloud taken by Cassini on August 23 2017.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
This image is the first high-resolution energy spectrum from the Resolve instrument on JAXA’s XRISM mission. It shows the energy of X-rays being produced within the remains of a massive star exploding in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, creating a ‘supernova remnant’ known as N132D. Spectra such as this one will enable scientists to measure the temperature and motion of X-ray emitting gas with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy.
The spectrum indicates which chemical elements exist in N132D. XRISM can identify each element by measuring the specific energy of X-ray light that it emits (the label 'keV' on the x axis of the graph refers to kiloelectronvolts, a unit of energy). The ‘energy resolution’ of XRISM (its capability to distinguish X-ray light arriving with different amounts of energy) is incredible. The faint grey line shows the same spectrum from the XIS instrument on JAXA’s Suzaku X-ray telescope (source). The energy resolution from XRISM is more than 40 times better over the energy range shown in this spectrum.
This energy range enables scientists to distinguish the elements Silicon (Si), Sulphur (S), Argon (Ar), Calcium (Ca) and Iron (Fe) – elements that are made only in supernova explosions. XRISM helps us measure their abundances and velocities. It also lets us put together a 3D map of the motion and distribution of the chemical elements as a result of the interaction between the supernova remnant and its surroundings. This provides clues on the nature of the explosion that created the supernova remnant, as well as on the distribution of elements that, ultimately, constitute the building blocks of planet Earth and life as we know it.
With this spectrum, XRISM separated sulphur and iron spikes that were previously indistinguishable, and it successfully detected silicon and calcium spikes with greater clarity than ever before. The incredibly sharp spectrum complements the top right image of the same supernova remnant taken simultaneously by XRISM’s Xtend instrument.
[Image description: Graph with the label 'keV' on the x axis, running from 2 to 7. There are two lines on the graph, one labelled 'XRISM/Resolve' and one labelled 'Suzaku/XIS'. There are peaks along the XRISM/Resolve line labelled (from left to right) Si, Si, SI, S, S, S, Ar, Ca, Fe; these are coloured in (from left to right) red, yellow, purple, green, blue. In the background is a colourful blob, coloured from red at the top left to purple at the bottom right; this blob is labelled 'Image: XRISM/Xtend'.]
Credits: JAXA
The Large Magellanic Cloud satellite galaxy to the Milky Way low in the sky amid trees and haze, with the stars fuzzy from the high cloud passing through, accentuating the colours of the stars. ..This is a stack of 5 x 2.5-minute exposures, tracked, with the 85mm Rokinon lens at f/2 and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 2500. Taken from Coonabarabran, Australia, April 18, 2017.
Star timelapse taken at the B2Gold Game farm in Namibia. Over 240 photos used to make this 10 second timelapse.
Post by Stephen Ball Photography.
Please don't use this image on websites, or other media without my explicit permission, blogs OK with notification and a link back, thanks! ©2016 Stephen Ball Photography, All rights reserved.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Igor Hoogerwerf - Location: University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand
For tips on capturing your own images of the night sky www.earthandskynz.com/window-to-the-universe/en/astrophot....
For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to Earth&Sky Ltd on You Tube.
Attention: Due to the overwhelmingly positive response we've had to our photo stream we’re having to pare down the amount of archived material we leave open to the public to make it easier for our valued guests to locate new images… As the “group photos” garner the most attention and appear most popular we’ll endeavor to keep access to these priceless pictures open for at least two months. Many kind thanks, Earth & Sky team.
A solitary laser beam cuts through the night sky. It streaks upwards from Unit Telescope 4 of ESO's Very Large Telescope, located at Paranal Observatory in Chile. The two Magellanic Clouds are visible to the left of the beam as faint, fuzzy patches against the starry background. The particularly bright star to the right of the beam is Canopus, the second brightest star in our night sky after Sirius.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1443a/
Credit:
ESO/J. Girard
This Hubble Space Telescope image captures hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood.
The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.
Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubbles-festive-view-of-...
Just to finish the night, I dropped the zoom right down to 168mm and took 3 x 300 seconds shots of the Large Magellanic Cloud at F6.3 and 3200ISO. I assumed the influence of the wind would be a lot less annoying and yeah, it looks interesting though close to Christchurch light pollution halo at that time of the night.
On the original photo I can see a bunch of globular clusters, details in the LMC's nebulas, etc …
A unique peanut-shaped cocoon of dust, called a reflection nebula, surrounds a cluster of young, hot stars in this view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The "double bubble," called N30B, is inside a larger nebula. The larger nebula, called DEM L 106, is embedded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way lying 160,000 light-years away. The wispy filaments of DEM L 106 fill much of the image. Hubble captures the glow of fluorescing hydrogen and sulfur, as well as the brilliant blue-white colors of the hot stars.
The very bright star at the top of the picture, called Henize S22, illuminates the dusty cocoon like a flashlight shining on smoke particles. This searing supergiant star is only 25 light-years from the N30B nebula. Viewed from N30B, the brilliant star would appear 250 times as bright as the planet Venus does in Earth's sky.
Astronomers have made a clever use of the reflection nebula around N30B. By obtaining spectroscopic observations at various points across the nebula, they can study the spectrum of S22 from different angles. Remarkably, they have found that the star's spectrum changes with the viewing angle, suggesting that the star is surrounded by a flattened disk of gas expelled from its equator.
Astronomers R. Davies, K. Elliot, and J. Meaburn, who created the "DEM" catalogs of both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, originally cataloged DEM L 106 in the 1970s. N30B was discovered in the 1950s by astronomer K. Henize, who later became a NASA astronaut.
DEM L 106 was imaged with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Hubble data taken in 1998 were combined with data taken by the Hubble Heritage Team in late 2001.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1272/news_release/2002-29
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: M.S. Oey (Lowell Observatory) and Y.-H. Chu (Univ. of Illinois)
Here is a shot from my 1st night shooting at the church, it was one of the few shots I managed to get of the church with the other tourists around throwing up their torch light. This framing is slightly different and I like the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) above the church. Loving the light capturing ability of the new lens, even this 15 sec shot made no star trails when the I zoom right in. This just means I need to spend alot more time at dark sky sites and utilise this beast :)
The southern sky and Milky Way from Canopus (at lower right) up to the Carina Nebula at upper left, with the False Cross in the centre, made of stars from Vela and Carina. The Large Magellanic Cloud is at lower left. NGC 2516 is the large open cluster at centre. The large magenta nebula is the Gum Nebula in Vela.
This is a stack of 4 x 2.5 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the 35mm Canon prime lens, and filter-modified Canon 5D Mark II at ISO 1600. Taken from Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia, April 2014. Star glows added with a separate exposure taken thru the Kenko Softon filter.
The Coalsack Dark Nebula (or simply the Coalsack) is the most prominent dark nebula in the skies, easily visible to the naked eye as a dark patch silhouetted against the southern Milky Way. The Coalsack is located at a distance of approximately 600 light years away from Earth, in the Crux constellation (The Southern Cross). [Source: Wikipedia]
© 2010 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
Edited European Southern Observatory image of the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Original caption: This image of the dramatic star formation region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, was created from a mosaic of images taken using the HAWK-I instrument working with the Adaptive optics Facility of ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The stars are significantly sharper than the same image without adaptive optics being used, and fainter stars can be seen.
This image from the Webb telescope shows N79, a massive star-forming region within the Large Magellanic Cloud (a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way). At mid-infrared wavelengths, Webb reveals glowing gas and dust deep within the clouds, as well as embedded baby stars.
N79 produces stars at a furious rate, much faster than star-forming regions found in our own galaxy. In fact, N79’s chemical composition is similar to those from the early universe, when star formation was at its peak.
Here, those vivid rays resembling sunlight are actually diffraction spikes. Most noticeable for bright, compact objects, diffraction spikes are somewhat like a telescope’s “signature.” The eight-point pattern is the result of the telescope’s hexagonal mirror design, combined with its secondary mirror struts. Meanwhile, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope produces a four-pointed diffraction spike pattern due to its circular mirror.
Learn more: esawebb.org/images/potm2401a/
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak, M. Meixner
[Image description: A bright young star, located in the upper left quadrant, shines through layers of wispy white and blue clouds on a dark background. The star is surrounded by thick orange spikes in an eight-pointed pattern, overlaid across the majority of the frame. A patch of greenish-yellow clouds appears in the top right area of the image. There are a couple other bright spots seen as glowing yellow dots among the clouds, as well as another bright star with smaller blue diffraction spikes in the bottom right corner.]
Getting better with the stars?
I went some kilometers away from downtown to a rural area where no electricity and it's lights can cover the sky.
Could be that I like sci-fi thingies so much... but during the total dark time I heard creepy noises in the bushes :S
Please, feel free to check my website: photo.juliopolito.com
This is a ground-based telescope's view of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The inset image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals one of many star clusters scattered throughout the dwarf galaxy.
The cluster members include a special class of pulsating star called a Cepheid variable, which brightens and dims at a predictable rate that corresponds to its intrinsic brightness. Once astronomers determine that value, they can measure the light from these stars to calculate an accurate distance to the galaxy. When the new Hubble observations are correlated with an independent distance measurement technique to the Large Magellanic Cloud (using straightforward trigonometry), the researchers were able to strengthen the foundation of the so-called "cosmic distance ladder." This "fine-tuning" has significantly improved the accuracy of the rate at which the universe is expanding, called the Hubble constant.
For more information, please visit:
www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/mystery-of-the-universe...
Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Riess (STScI/JHU) and Palomar Digitized Sky Survey
Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky, is located about 310 light-years from our planet Earth, which means its light travelled for 310 years until it came through our atmosphere, then bounced off the surface of the water in this tidal pool and up into my camera. Featuring in the oral and written histories of people-groups from several countries, Canopus has been called many names throughout history.
To Egyptians living in the time of the pharaoh Thutmose III (circa 1450 BC) the star was called “Karbana”. Xhosa people in Southern Africa named the fifth month of the year “UCanzibe”, the "month of Canopus". In my home country of Australia, Canopus features in the lore of many of our indigenous nations, going by at least six different names.
The bright could-like puffs floating in space up to the right of Canopus are the dwarf galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Between them, these two companion galaxies contain over 30 billion stars, but to the naked eye, they look like clouds of water vapour that are moving slowly across the night sky.
I created this image from six overlapping photos that I shot with a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm wide-angle lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Stopped on the side of the road between Brisbane and Boonah in Queensland, Australia. Set the camera up in a paddock with the moon behind lighting the fields and cows that dropped by for a look.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows rich detail in a pair of star clusters 166,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), in the southern constellation Doradus. The field of view is 130 light-years across and was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
About 60 percent of the stars belong to the dominant yellow cluster called NGC 1850, which is estimated to be 50 million years old. A scattering of white stars in the image are massive stars that are only about 4 million years old and represent about 20 percent of the stars in the image. (The remainder are field stars in the LMC.) Besides being much younger, the white stars are much more loosely distributed than the yellow cluster.
The significant difference between the two cluster ages suggests these are two separate star groups that lie along the same line of sight. The younger, more open cluster probably lies 200 light-years beyond the older cluster. If it were in the foreground, then dust contained in the white cluster would obscure stars in the older, yellow cluster.
The stair-shape of the image is caused by the design of the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 instrument, which captured it.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/1994/news-1994-40.html
Credit: R. Gilmozzi, Space Telescope Science Institute/European Space Agency; Shawn Ewald, JPL; and NASA
Sorry... I could not / do not know how to update an image without loosing anyones 'favs' or 'views' ... I have corrected the incorrectly labelled Achemar and added another highlight which really stands out to me, that is The Coalsack Nebula.
* The Coalsack Dark Nebula (or simply the Coalsack) is the most prominent dark nebula in the skies, easily visible to the naked eye as a dark patch silhouetted against the southern Milky Way. It was known pre-historically in the Southern Hemisphere and was observed by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón in 1499. The Coalsack is located at a distance of approximately 600 light years away from Earth, in the Crux constellation.
* The Carina Nebula (also known as the Great Nebula in Carina, the Eta Carina Nebula, or NGC 3372) is a large bright nebula that surrounds several open clusters of stars. Eta Carinae and HD 93129A, two of the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy, are among them. The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth. It appears in the constellation of Carina, and is located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm. The nebula contains multiple O-type stars.
* Alpha Centauri (α Centauri, α Cen; also known as Rigel Kent /ˈraɪdʒəl ˈkɛnt/—see Names) is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus, it is currently inside the G-cloud. Although it appears to the unaided eye as a single object, Alpha Centauri is actually a binary star system (designated Alpha Centauri AB or α Cen AB) whose combined visual magnitude of −0.27 makes it the third-brightest star in the night sky after the −1.46 magnitude Sirius and the −0.72 magnitude Canopus.
* Crux ( /ˈkrʌks/) is the smallest of the 88 modern constellations, but is one of the most distinctive. Its name is Latin for cross, and it is dominated by a cross-shaped asterism that is commonly known as the Southern Cross.
* IC 2602 (and Caldwell 102) (also known as the Theta Carinae Cluster or Southern Pleiades) is an open cluster in the constellation Carina. It was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751 from South Africa. The cluster is at a distance of about 479 light-years away from Earth and can be seen with the naked eye. The Southern Pleiades (IC 2602) has an overall apparent magnitude of 1.9, which is 70% fainter than the Taurean Pleiades, and contains about 60 stars. Theta Carinae, the brightest star within the open cluster, is a third-magnitude star with an apparent magnitude of +2.74. All the other stars within the cluster are of the fifth magnitude and fainter. Like its northern counterpart in Taurus, the Southern Pleiades spans a sizeable area of sky, approximately 50 arcminutes, so it is best viewed with large binoculars or telescope with a wide-angle eyepiece. The cluster is thought to have the same age as the open cluster IC 2391, which has a lithium depletion boundary age of 50 million years old.
* The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a nearby irregular galaxy, and a satellite of the Milky Way. At a distance of slightly less than 50 kiloparsecs (≈160,000 light-years), the LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way, with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (~ 16 kiloparsecs) and Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (~ 12.9 kiloparsecs) lying closer to the center of the Milky Way. It has a mass equivalent to approximately 10 billion times the mass of our Sun (1010 solar masses), making it roughly 1/100 as massive as the Milky Way, and a diameter of about 14,000 light-years (~ 4.3 kpc). The LMC is the fourth largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), our own Milky Way Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).
* The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy. It has a diameter of about 7,000 light-years and contains several hundred million stars. It has a total mass of approximately 7 billion times the mass of our Sun. Some speculate that the SMC was once a barred spiral galaxy that was disrupted by the Milky Way to become somewhat irregular. It contains a central bar structure.
At a distance of about 200,000 light-years, it is one of the Milky Way's nearest neighbors. It is also one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye.
* 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) or just 47 Tuc is a globular cluster located in the constellation Tucana. It is about 16,700 light years away from Earth, and 120 light years across. It can be seen with the naked eye, with a visual apparent magnitude of 4.9. Its number comes not from the Flamsteed catalogue, but the more obscure 1801 "Allgemeine Beschreibung und Nachweisung der Gestirne nebst Verzeichniss" compiled by Johann Elert Bode. 47 Tucanae is included in Sir Patrick Moore's Caldwell catalogue as C106.
Description: Chandra's image shows the drama of star formation and evolution as it is being played out in a nearby galaxy. At least eleven extremely massive stars with ages of about two million years are detected in the bright star cluster in the center of the primary image (left panel). The brightest source in this region is Mk 34, a 130 solar-mass star located slightly to the lower left of center. On the lower right of this panel is the supernova remnant N157B, with its central pulsar. Two off-axis ACIS-S chips (right panel) show the large shell-like supernova remnant SNR N157C. In the image, lower energy X-rays appear red, medium energy green and high-energy are blue.
Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray
Date: 2002
Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0057/
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Gift line: NASA/CXC/Penn State/L.Townsley et al.
Accession number: 30dor_02
Stars in the LMC have had their direct motion seen, giving astronomers a measure of how the galaxy is rotating.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a dusty yet sparkling scene from one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy situated about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.
Despite being only 10–20% as massive as the Milky Way galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud contains some of the most impressive nearby star-forming regions. The scene pictured here is on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula, the largest and most productive star-forming region in the local universe. At its center, the Tarantula Nebula hosts the most massive stars known, weighing roughly 200 times the mass of the Sun.
The section of the nebula shown here features serene blue gas, brownish-orange dust patches, and a sprinkling of multicolored stars. The stars within and behind the dust clouds appear redder than those that are unobscured by dust. Dust absorbs and scatters blue light more than red light, allowing more of the red light to reach our telescopes, which makes the stars appear redder than they are. This image incorporates ultraviolet and infrared light as well as visible light. Using Hubble observations of dusty nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud and other galaxies, researchers can study these distant dust grains, helping them better understand the role that cosmic dust plays in the formation of new stars and planets.
Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and C. Murray
For more information: science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-studies-the-taran...
Large Magellanic Cloud , LMC
77 Archivos Apilados en DeepSkyStacker
Procesados integramente en
PixInsight Core 1.8 Ripley
+ firma Photoshop
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Canon T3 + Helios 58mm f2
10 segundos, f2, iso 6400
Description: This is an X-ray image of two hot gas shells produced by supernova explosions. Although the shells appear to be colliding, it may be an illusion. Chandra X-ray spectra show that the shell of hot gas on the upper left contains considerably more iron than the one on the lower right. This implies that stars with very different ages exploded to produce these objects. The remnant on the upper left is from an old white dwarf star in a binary system, and the one on the lower right is from a much younger massive star, so the apparent proximity of the remnants is probably the result of a chance alignment.
Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray
Date: 2005
Persistent URL: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/d316/
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Illinois/R.Williams & Y.-H.Chu; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/U.Illinois/R.Williams & MCELS coll.
Accession number: d316
This is a giant bubble carved into a gas cloud by the combined winds of a huge cluster of massive stars born inside it.
Image credit: ESO/Manu Mejias
Blog post with details: blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/10/kali-m...
Resembling the hair in Botticelli's famous portrait of the birth of Venus, softly glowing filaments stream from a complex of hot young stars. This image of a nebula known as N44C comes from the archives of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in November 1996.
N44C is the designation for a region of glowing hydrogen gas surrounding an association of young stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby, small, companion galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
N44C is peculiar because the star mainly responsible for illuminating the nebula is unusually hot. The most massive stars, ranging from 10-50 times more massive than the Sun, have maximum temperatures of 54,000 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 to 50,000 Kelvin). The star illuminating N44C appears to be significantly hotter, with a temperature of about 135,000 degrees Fahrenheit (75,000 Kelvin)!
Ideas proposed to explain this unusually high temperature include the possibility of a neutron star or black hole that intermittently produces X-rays but is now "switched off."
In the top right of this Hubble image is a network of nebulous filaments that inspired comparison to Botticelli. The filaments surround a Wolf-Rayet star, another kind of rare star characterized by an exceptionally vigorous "wind" of charged particles. The shock of the wind colliding with the surrounding gas causes the gas to glow.
N44C is part of the larger N44 complex, which includes young, hot, massive stars, nebulae, and a "superbubble" blown out by multiple supernova explosions. Part of the superbubble is seen in red at the very bottom left of the image.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1193/news_release/2002-12
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: D. Garnett (University of Arizona)
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies that are travelling through space with it (well, with us, in fact). These are known as “satellite galaxies” or “companion galaxies” and of the approximately sixty that have been detected only two are visible with the unaided eye. Named the “Magellanic Clouds” (for Ferdinand Magellan, on whose round-the-world voyage they were cataloged) you can see them at the left of this image, looking like two hazy blobs in the sky. I always find it a bit of a buzz to capture the Magellanic Clouds in the same image as their much bigger brother and hope that you get the same buzz seeing the three galaxies together in a photo like this.
Unless you’re shooting with a very wide-angle lens you can’t get all three galaxies into the one shot but you can use the process of “stitching” to finish up with such a wide photo. For this image I shot thirteen overlapping images and then used software to blend them (via stitching) into this single scene.
Each of the photos that make up today’s image were shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400.