Date: 2023-08-25

Location: Krivaja Vojnicka, Croatia

Telescope: SW 130 PDS

Camera: Canon 2000D

Mount: SW EQ3 (Asterion mod)

Exp: 200x120s

Additional Ha signal provided by Luka Faltis

(Editor's Note: This is an archive image from 2006)

W3 is a region where many massive stars are forming in a string of stellar clusters, located about 6,000 light years from Earth in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way galaxy. W3 is part of a vast molecular cloud complex that also contains the W4 superbubble (not seen in this image). Scientists believe that the extraordinary amount of star formation in W3 has possibly been influenced by neighboring W4, an inflating bubble of gas over 100 light years across. W4 may directly trigger the birth of W3's massive stellar clusters as it expands and sweeps up molecular gas into a high-density layer at its edge, within which stars can form. Another possible scenario is that W4's expansion has caused a domino effect of star formation, forming the cluster IC 1795 (seen as a clump of X-ray sources in the bottom left corner of this image) which in turn triggered formation of the young, massive clusters in W3.

In this composite image of one of the many star-forming complexes of W3, called W3 Main, green and blue represent lower and higher-energy X-rays, respectively, while red shows optical emission. Hundreds of X-ray sources are revealed in this central region of W3 Main. These bright point-like objects are an extensive population of several hundred young stars, many of which were not found in earlier infrared studies. These Chandra data show that W3 Main is the dominant star formation region of W3. Because its X-ray sources are all at the same distance, yet span a range of masses, ages, and other properties, W3 is an ideal laboratory for understanding recent and ongoing star formation in one of the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/w3/

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/L.Townsley et al.; Optical: Pal Obs. DSS

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

A beautiful spiral galaxy, flecked with blue clusters of young stars, and striped with intertwining dust.

I had to remove a rather significant red light scatter caused by a bright star just outside the field of view. Luckily it was almost completely contained in the red filter (it's a very red star) so I could borrow some data from the green filter to fill in where the glint was too harsh to remove otherwise.

Data from the PHANGS-HST program were used to create this image.

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

More on PHANGS here:

phangs.stsci.edu/

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F438W+F336W+F275W

North is 20.00° clockwise from up.

This was an experiment to see how PixInsight would handle combining images from different sessions shot at two slightly different focal lengths. I took several exposures between 270 s and 300 s from Joshua Tree, CA, on 2017-11-17, and I had some data from the same region of the sky from a March 2015 trip to Death Valley. After star alignment and image integration, the results looked decent enought to work with.

All data taken with an Nikon D80 with 18.0-135.0mm lens piggybacked on a Celestron Edge HD scope and Celestron CGEM mount. The Death Valley data was shot at a 22.0 mm focal length, and the Joshua Tree data at 24.0 mm focal length. All shots at ISO 1600.

Image size is 28.2° x 47.6°

Image center (J2000):

RA 6h 7m

DEC -1° 9'

This frames the variety of bright nebulas and dark dust clouds in and around the Belt and Sword of Orion.

It shows how the bright Orion Nebula is really just the visible tip of a vast complex of gas and dust in Orion.

Above centre is the trio of Belt stars surrounded by dust clouds, many reflecting starlight. Below the left star of the Belt, Alnitak, is the famous dark protrusion of the Horsehead Nebula, B33, small on this scale. Above Alnitak is the pinkish Flame Nebula, NGC 2024. Above that are the reflection nebulas Messier 78 and NGC 2071 embedded in lanes of brownish dust. At left is the large curving arc of Barnard's Loop, aka Sharpless 2-276, which extends down under Orion at bottom where it is more obscured by dust and so redder.

Below the Belt is the Sword of Orion marked by the cyan tinted Orion Nebula, Messier 42 and 43, with the Running Man Nebula, NGC 1975, above, and all embedded in dim red and brownish dust clouds.

This is a stack of 14 x 2 minute exposures with the Canon RF135mm lens at f/2 and on the Canon Ra at ISO 800. The lens had an 82mm URTH Night broadband filter on it to enhance nebulas somewhat. But I shot this under superb skies in Australia in March 2024. Tracked but not guided on the Astro-Physics AP400 mount. The Nik Collection Color EFX Detail Extactor filter and Photokemi Actions Nebula Filter set were used to bring out the dim dust clouds in processing.

Here's an old favorite galaxy that I'm glad to have had the chance to process some new observations for. This is also known as the Black Eye galaxy, and is among the most striking galaxies that Hubble has looked at. Previously a Hubble Heritage image release, new imagery is around 2.5 times the resolution of the old WF/PC2 imagery. That means more refined details are visible, especially If you are able to zoom all the way in. In fact, the texture of the individual stars forming even the smooth, redder, non star-forming parts the galaxy are now revealed. If you do zoom in, don't mistake that grainy, noisy texture as actual noise. Those are stars!

I went ahead and did use some old WFPC2 data just to show glowing hydrogen gas. This usually works well without lowering the image quality, despite the disparity in resolution.

Data from the following proposals were used to create this image:

PHANGS-HST: Linking Stars and Gas throughout the Scales of Star Formation

The Smallest Nuclear Black Holes

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W+WFPC2 F656N

Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F438W+F336W+F275W

North is 142.85° clockwise from up.

2017 May 30 - replaced previous version with a brighter, more saturated one.

Note: I updated this image to remove a few cosmic rays and do a few other very minor things around 12 hours after I uploaded it. ...And again a few hours later to fix another silly mistake made in the lower right corner.

Hubble's view of a near-infrared mosaic of a large and dusty star-forming region in Chamaeleon. Here rests the dream of the chameleon...

I will not go into great detail about processing. Know that it took a lot of work. There were a lot of coverage gaps filled with DSS data I reworked so much that it is virtually unrecognizable. It did help to guide the interpolation of data within the gaps, though.

I worked non-stop on it for about four days. If you would like to see what it looks like with the gaps and artifacts left, see The Great Mosaic Disaster in Chamaeleon by Renaud Houdinet.

If you should happen to want to print it in large format, there is a bigger version available than Flickr will allow me to upload. Just ask and I'll send it along... It could potentially be printed over 1.2 m (4 ft) tall at 300 dpi.

Searching for the Bottom of the Initial Mass Function

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

Red: F850LP

Green: Pseudo

Blue: F775W

North is 17.1° counter-clockwise from up.

This composite image, combining data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope shows the molecular cloud Cepheus B, located in our Galaxy about 2,400 light years from the Earth. A molecular cloud is a region containing cool interstellar gas and dust left over from the formation of the galaxy and mostly contains molecular hydrogen. The Spitzer data, in red, green and blue shows the molecular cloud (in the bottom part of the image) plus young stars in and around Cepheus B, and the Chandra data in violet shows the young stars in the field.

The Chandra observations allowed the astronomers to pick out young stars within and near Cepheus B, identified by their strong X-ray emission. The Spitzer data showed whether the young stars have a so-called "protoplanetary" disk around them. Such disks only exist in very young systems where planets are still forming, so their presence is an indication of the age of a star system.

These data provide an excellent opportunity to test a model for how stars form. The new study suggests that star formation in Cepheus B is mainly triggered by radiation from one bright, massive star (HD 217086) outside the molecular cloud. According to the particular model of triggered star formation that was tested -- called the radiation- driven implosion (RDI) model -- radiation from this massive star drives a compression wave into the cloud triggering star formation in the interior, while evaporating the cloud's outer layers.

The labeled version of the image shows important regions in and around Cepheus B. The "inner layer" shows the Cepheus B region itself, where the stars are mostly about one million years old and about 70-80% of them have protoplanetary disks. The "intermediate layer" shows the area immediately next to Cepheus B, where the stars are two to three million years old and about 60% of them have disks, while in the "outer layer" the stars are about three to five million years old and about 30% of them have disks. This increase in age as the stars are further away from Cepheus B is exactly what is predicted from the RDI model of triggered star formation.

Different types of triggered star formation have been observed in other environments. For example, the formation of our solar system was thought to have been triggered by a supernova explosion, In the star- forming region W5, a "collect-and-collapse" mechanism is thought to apply, where shock fronts generated by massive stars sweep up material as they progress outwards. Eventually the accumulated gas becomes dense enough to collapse and form hundreds of stars. The RDI mechanism is also thought to be responsible for the formation of dozens of stars in W5. The main cause of star formation that does not involve triggering is where a cloud of gas cools, gravity gets the upper hand, and the cloud falls in on itself.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/K. Getman et al.; IRL NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J. Wang et al.

Read more about this image:

www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/cepb/

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

Put this together rather quickly this morning while the little one was distracted by Badanamu... Kind of a difficult target. Not the brightest galaxy, but the spiral pattern is very nice. I wish the signal to noise ratio was a bit better.

Data from the PHANGS-HST program were used to create this image.

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

More on PHANGS here:

phangs.stsci.edu/

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F438W+F336W+F275W

North is 35.43° counter-clockwise from up.

I have had this data since December 2016, but neglected it for other objects I shot that night. I was hoping to make this part of a mosaic with the Running Man Nebula, but could not quite get that to work. What brought this data to mind was thinking about shooting this nebula from my backyard, which has a background irradiance of 27 x10^(-9) W/m^2/sr. The location I shot this from has a background irradiance of less than 0.6 x10^(-9) W/m^2/sr. That's about the best baseline for comparison from where I can go and take my own data.

I also wanted to see if I could work with a technique that keeps the Trapezium stars visible while bringing out the faint outer details.

This is a stack of 23 15s (yes - only 15 second) exposures with a Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with HyperStar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Preprocessing in Nebulosity; stacking and initial processing in PixInsight; final touches in PS CS 5.1.

Image center (J2000) is at:

RA 5h 35m 21s

DEC -5° 24' 52"

Another version of the anniversary dataset, this time with visible and near-infrared imagery combined into a single image. The pinks and cyans in the visible light version give way for near-infrared wavelengths by shifting into greens and deep blues. Now the near-infrared wavelengths comprise all the reds and oranges of the image. The gas and dust fade like ghosts, becoming nearly transparent, revealing many hundreds of stars once hidden from view.

One of my favorite things to do is to combine unusual or complicated datasets together.

ps - The original news release for the near-infrared only image is here, just in case you missed it. hubblesite.org/image/4151/news_release/2018-21

Data from the following proposal comprises this image:

ptical and infrared imaging of the Lagoon Nebula (M8)

There is also a WOW page providing direct access to data:

STScI Outreach Imaging of M8 (Lagoon Nebula) - April 2018

Red: WFC3/IR F160W

Orange: WFC3/IR F125W

Yellow-Green: WFC3/UVIS F658N

Green-Blue: WFC3/UVIS F656N

Cyan: WFC3/UVIS F547M

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F502N

North is NOT up. It is 133.99° clockwise from up.

Also catalogued (accidentally?) as NGC 1318, NGC 1317 is a barred spiral galaxy with a wreath of bright star formation around its nucleus. These Hubble observations are not especially deep, but are still adequate to make out some of the fainter outer arms of the spiral. A much deeper view is available from ESO, also showing its line-of-sight companion NGC 1316. It's possible that the two are interacting, but also possible that they are too far away from one another, since NGC 1317 appears unperturbed, even while NGC 1316 has clearly interacted recently, given its obvious and multiple tidal tails.

Data from the illustrious PHANGS-HST program were used to create this image.

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

More on PHANGS here:

phangs.stsci.edu/

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F438W+F336W+F275W

North is 68.0° clockwise from up.

(From 2007) NGC 281 is a bustling hub of star formation about 10,000 light years away. This composite image of optical and X-ray emission includes regions where new stars are forming and older regions containing stars about 3 million years old.

The optical data (seen in red, orange, and yellow) show a small open cluster of stars, large lanes of obscuring gas and dust, and dense knots where stars may still be forming. The X-ray data (purple), based on a Chandra observation lasting more than a day, shows a different view. More than 300 individual X-ray sources are seen, most of them associated with IC 1590, the central cluster. The edge-on aspect of NGC 281 allows scientists to study the effects of powerful X-rays on the gas in the region, the raw material for star formation.

A second group of X-ray sources is seen on either side of a dense molecular cloud, known as NGC 281 West, a cool cloud of dust grains and gas, much of which is in the form of molecules. The bulk of the sources around the molecular cloud are coincident with emission from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a family of organic molecules containing carbon and hydrogen. There also appears to be cool diffuse gas associated with IC 1590 that extends toward NGC 281 West. The X-ray spectrum of this region shows that the gas is a few million degrees and contains significant amounts of magnesium, sulfur and silicon. The presence of these elements suggests that supernova recently went off in that area.

Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2007/ngc281/

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk et al; Optical: NSF/AURA/WIYN/Univ. of Alaska/T.A.Rector

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

You can also get Twitter updates whenever there's a new image:

www.twitter.com/nasa1fan

The Milky Way and other galaxies in the universe harbor many young star clusters and associations that each contain hundreds to thousands of hot, massive, young stars known as O and B stars. The star cluster Cygnus OB2 contains more than 60 O-type stars and about a thousand B-type stars. Deep observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have been used to detect the X-ray emission from the hot outer atmospheres, or coronas, of young stars in the cluster and to probe how these fascinating star factories form and evolve. About 1,700 X-ray sources were detected, including about 1,450 thought to be stars in the cluster. In this image, X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been combined with infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (red) and optical data from the Isaac Newton Telescope (orange).

Young stars ranging in age from one million to seven million years were found. The infrared data indicates that a very low fraction of the stars have circumstellar disks of dust and gas. Even fewer disks were found close to the massive OB stars, betraying the corrosive power of their intense radiation that leads to early destruction of their disks. There is also evidence that the older population of stars has lost its most massive members because of supernova explosions. Finally, a total mass of about 30,000 times the mass of the sun is derived for Cygnus OB2, similar to that of the most massive star forming regions in our Galaxy. This means that Cygnus OB2, located only about 5,000 light years from Earth, is the closest massive star cluster.

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's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/cygob2/

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Drake et al, Optical: Univ. of Hertfordshire/INT/IPHAS, Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

_____________________________________________

These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...

The very bright Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus or the Doradus Nebula) is an H II region in the very dense Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The Tarantula Nebula is the most active starburst region known in the Local Group of Galaxies.

About this image:

This wide field image consists of 14 x 2 minute exposures at ISO 6400. Photographed in the rural dark skies of the Karoo (Northern Cape, South Africa).

About the Star Colors:

You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.

Gear:

GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope.

Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.

Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.

Orion StarShoot Autoguider.

Aurora Flatfield Panel.

Celestron AVX Mount.

Celestron StarSense.

Canon 60Da DSLR.

Tech:

Guiding in Open PHD 2.6.1.

Image acquisition in Sequence Generator Pro.

Lights/Subs: 14 x 120 sec. ISO 6400 CFA FIT Files.

Calibration Frames:

50 x Bias

30 x Darks

20 x Flats

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop.

Astrometry Info:

nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1191958#annotated

RA, Dec center: 84.5358996211, -69.1714612158 degrees

Orientation: 1.16214860863 deg E of N

Pixel scale: 6.80102321917 arcsec/pixel

Martin

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Video release June 22, 2010

This zoom sequence begins with a very wide-field view of the southern sky including both the Milky Way and the two Magellanic Clouds. We then close in on a bright region in the outer part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This is the rich star formation region N11. As the zoom finishes the full majesty of this complex of gas, dust and young stars is revealed in a very detailed picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit:

NASA/ESA, ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2, Akira Fujii and Eckhard Slawik. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

To learn more about Hubble go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.

The galaxy featured in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has a shape unlike many of the galaxies familiar to Hubble. Its thousands of bright stars evoke a spiral galaxy, but it lacks the characteristic ‘winding’ structure. The shining red blossoms stand out as well, twisted by clouds of dust – these are the locations of intense star formation. The galaxy also radiates a diffuse glow, much like an elliptical galaxy and its core of older, redder stars. This galactic marvel is known to astronomers as NGC 1156.

NGC 1156 is located around 25 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries. It has a variety of different features that are of interest to astronomers. A dwarf irregular galaxy, it’s also classified as isolated, meaning no other galaxies are nearby enough to influence its odd shape and continuing star formation. The extreme energy of freshly formed young stars gives color to the galaxy, against the red glow of ionized hydrogen gas, while its center is densely packed with older generations of stars.

Hubble has captured NGC 1156 before. This new image features data from a galactic gap-filling program simply titled “Every Known Nearby Galaxy.” Astronomers noticed that Hubble had observed only three quarters of the galaxies within just over 30 million light-years of Earth in sufficient detail to study the makeup of the stars within them. They proposed that in between larger projects, Hubble could take snapshots of the remaining quarter, including NGC 1156. Gap-filling programs like this ensure the best use of Hubble’s valuable observing time.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. B. Tully, R. Jansen, R. Windhorst

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-views-a-ga...

The Pacman Nebula, NGC281, is an H-II region in the constellation Cassiopeia and lies some 9500 light years away. It contains an open cluster as well as several Bok globules, small dark nebulae where dust and gas condense to form a molecular cloud where star formation can occur.

Details:

Scope: TMB130SS

Camera: QSI683-wsg8

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Ultrastar

Mount: Mach1 GTO

Ha: 28x15min

The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust. As well as the usual bright bands of stars, the spiral arms of M61 are studded with ruby-red patches of light. Tell-tale signs of recent star formation, these glowing regions lead to M61’s classification as a starburst galaxy.

Though the gleaming spiral of this galaxy makes for a spectacular sight, one of the most interesting features of M61 lurks unseen at the center of this image. The heart of the galaxy shows widespread pockets of star formation, and hosts a supermassive black hole more than five million times as massive as the Sun.

M61 appears almost face-on, making it a popular subject for astronomical images, even though the galaxy lies more than 52 million light-years from Earth. This particular astronomical image incorporates data from not only Hubble, but also the FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph 2 camera at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, together revealing M61 in unprecedented detail. This striking image is one of many examples of telescope teamwork – astronomers frequently combine data from ground-based and space-based telescopes to learn more about the universe.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-takes-a-sp...

A spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy, as captured in a new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

The interacting galaxy duo is collectively called Arp 143. The pair contains the glittery, distorted, star-forming spiral galaxy NGC 2445 at right, along with its less flashy companion, NGC 2444 at left.

Astronomers suggest that the galaxies passed through each other, igniting the uniquely shaped star-formation firestorm in NGC 2445, where thousands of stars are bursting to life on the right-hand side of the image. This galaxy is awash in starbirth because it is rich in gas, the fuel that makes stars. However, it hasn’t yet escaped the gravitational clutches of its partner NGC 2444, shown on the left side of the image. The pair is waging a cosmic tug-of-war, which NGC 2444 appears to be winning. The galaxy has pulled gas from NGC 2445, forming the oddball triangle of newly minted stars.

“Simulations show that head-on collisions between two galaxies is one way of making rings of new stars,” said astronomer Julianne Dalcanton of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York and the University of Washington in Seattle. “Therefore, rings of star formation are not uncommon. However, what’s weird about this system is that it’s a triangle of star formation. Part of the reason for that shape is that these galaxies are still so close to each other and NGC 2444 is still holding on to the other galaxy gravitationally. NGC 2444 may also have an invisible hot halo of gas that could help to pull NGC 2445’s gas away from its nucleus. So they’re not completely free of each other yet, and their unusual interaction is distorting the ring into this triangle.”

NGC 2444 is also responsible for yanking taffy-like strands of gas from its partner, stoking the streamers of young, blue stars that appear to form a bridge between the two galaxies.

These streamers are among the first in what appears to be a wave of star formation that started on NGC 2445’s outskirts and continued inward. Researchers estimate the streamer stars were born between about 50 million and 100 million years ago. But these infant stars are being left behind as NGC 2445 continues to pull slowly away from NGC 2444.

Stars no older than 1 million to 2 million years are forming closer to the center of NGC 2445. Hubble’s keen sharpness reveals some individual stars. They are the brightest and most massive in the galaxy. Most of the brilliant blue clumps are groupings of stars. The pink blobs are giant, young, star clusters still enshrouded in dust and gas.

Although most of the action is happening in NGC 2445, it doesn’t mean the other half of the interacting pair has escaped unscathed. The gravitational tussle has stretched NGC 2444 into an odd shape. The galaxy contains old stars and no new starbirth because it lost its gas long ago, well before this galactic encounter.

“This is a nearby example of the kinds of interactions that happened long ago. It’s a fantastic sandbox to understand star formation and interacting galaxies,” said Elena Sabbi of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

Image Credits: NASA, ESA, Julianne Dalcanton (Center for Computational Astrophysics / Flatiron Inst. and University of Washington); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Writer: Donna Weaver (STScI)

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/galaxy-collision-...

The N44 superbubble is a beautiful region of star formation near the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a bit north of the bar. The gas and dust within the center of the nebula have been blown away by young stellar winds to form a dark void filled with stars.

In this visible and near-infrared view, brown and reddish clouds of dust contrast against white and blue areas of glowing gas and reflection. If you look closely, many reddish background galaxies are visible through the nebula. Pinpricks of reddened stars are visible within the clouds of dust, but this view with red at 814 nm barely reaches below the dusty surface. Even more stars and young stellar objects are visible in this image of one of the dustier areas that includes some near-infrared data from 1600 nm.

I don't know if the people who take these observations ever look at my work or read these descriptions, but I just have to say they did an incredible job with this... there were several moments I had to pause and wipe away tears just looking at it.

A Gigapan is available here: www.gigapan.com/gigapans/205220

Data from Proposal 14689 were used to create this image.

MYSST: Mapping Young Stars in Space and Time - The HII Complex N44 in the LMC

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Green: Pseudo

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F555W

North is NOT up. It is 19.6° counter-clockwise from up.

NGC 4666 takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This majestic spiral galaxy lies about 80 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo and is undergoing a particularly intense episode of star formation. Astronomers refer to galaxies that rapidly form stars as starburst galaxies. NGC 4666’s starburst is likely due to gravitational interactions with its unruly neighbors – including the nearby galaxy NGC 4668 and a dwarf galaxy, which is a small galaxy made up of a few billion stars.

NGC 4666’s burst of star formation is driving an unusual form of extreme galactic weather known as a superwind – a gigantic transfer of gas from the bright central heart of the galaxy out into space. This superwind is the result of driving winds from short-lived massive stars formed during NGC 4666’s starburst as well as spectacularly energetic supernova explosions. Two supernovae occurred in NGC 4666 within the last decade – one in 2014 and the other in 2019. The star that led to the 2019 supernova was 19 times as massive as our Sun!

Though the torrent of superheated gas emanating from NGC 4666 is truly vast in scale – extending for tens of thousands of light-years – it is invisible in this image. The superwind’s extremely high temperature makes it stand out as a luminous plume in X-ray or radio observations, but it doesn’t show up at the visible wavelengths imaged by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Graur; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-uncovers-a...

For your enjoyment. A low-surface brightness spiral galaxy with many bright blue clusters of star formation in its arms. Despite its dimness, or perhaps because of it, the young star clusters are very apparent in this galaxy.

Data from the illustrious PHANGS-HST program were used to create this image.

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

More on PHANGS here:

phangs.stsci.edu/

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F438W+F336W+F275W

North is 19° counter-clockwise from up.

A deep image of the central dust lanes running across the the Rosette Nebula.

Image taken in H-alpha (red) and r-band (yellow).

These silhouetted dust lanes are particularly cold and dense regions, blocking light from the illuminated nebula behind it. They are often the locations of star formation and the build-up of molecular material. The combination of interstellar dust and molecules is necessary for the formation of planets around young stars and the evolution of life.

Visible in this image are a number of dark globules (particularly lower left) which may be the sites of forming stars.

Messier 17 (M17), also known as the Omega Nebula, Swan Nebula, or Horseshoe Nebula, is a bright emission nebula located in the constellation Sagittarius. It lies about 5,000–6,000 light-years from Earth in the Milky Way and is part of a large star-forming region. The nebula spans approximately 15 light-years across and is rich in hydrogen gas, which gives it its characteristic red-pink glow due to ionization from nearby young, massive stars. M17 is one of the brightest and most massive star-forming regions in the galaxy, making it a popular target for amateur and professional astronomers alike.

Here pictured with 14 hours of exposure with Telescope Live in Chile using narrow band photograpy

NGC 3603 is a bustling region of star birth in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, about 20,000 light years from Earth. For the first time, this 2001 Chandra image resolves the multitude of individual X-ray sources in this star-forming region. (The intensity of the X-rays observed by Chandra are depicted by the various colors in this image. Green represents lower intensity sources, while purple and red indicate increasing X-ray intensity.) Specifically, the Chandra image reveals dozens of extremely massive stars born in a burst of star formation about two million years ago.

This region's activities may be indicative of what is happening in other distant "starburst" galaxies (bright galaxies flush with new stars). In the case of NGC 3603, scientists now believe that these X rays are emitted from massive stars and stellar winds, since the stars are too young to have produced supernovas or have evolved into neutron stars. The Chandra observations of NGC 3603 may provide new clues about X-ray emission in starburst galaxies as well as star formation itself.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/M.Corcoran et al.

Read more

More about the Chandra X-ray Observatory

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For your Friday, a beautiful barred spiral galaxy flecked with blue dots and splotches of star formation, along with plenty of dust floating about. About half or so of the galaxy is contained within the frame. The rest didn't fit, unfortunately.

Data from the illustrious PHANGS-HST program were used to create this image.

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

More on PHANGS here:

phangs.stsci.edu/

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F438W+F336W+F275W

North is 12.4° counter-clockwise from up.

A quick shot of M42, the Orion Nebula, from the past weekend. I would have liked to have taken more exposures to stack, but some thin clouds started to come through: ending my imaging for the night. Still, for the limited amount of sub-frames, I'm pretty pleased with the result! Two 5-min stacked with the core of M42 from 2-min and 30s exposures. Please press L to view the nebulosity better.

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Please, no banners/photos/awards in the comments.

Orion nebula from backgarden Bortle 5.

Pushing my humble setup to its limits, but i can not complain about the results.

Canon DSLR (Stock)

Sigma 150-600

Star Adventurer with guide scope an aisiar.

85 Lights @ 120s

iso 3200, f 7.1 @ 600mm

Often portrayed as destructive monsters that hold light captive, black holes take on a less villainous role in the latest research from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. A black hole at the heart of the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 is creating stars rather than gobbling them up. The black hole is apparently contributing to the firestorm of new star formation taking place in the galaxy. The dwarf galaxy lies 30 million light-years away, in the southern constellation Pyxis.

A decade ago this small galaxy set off debate among astronomers as to whether dwarf galaxies were home to black holes proportional to the supermassive behemoths found in the hearts of larger galaxies. This new discovery has little Henize 2-10, containing only one-tenth the number of stars found in our Milky Way, poised to play a big part in solving the mystery of where supermassive black holes came from in the first place.

"Ten years ago, as a graduate student thinking I would spend my career on star formation, I looked at the data from Henize 2-10 and everything changed," said Amy Reines, who published the first evidence for a black hole in the galaxy in 2011 and is the principal investigator on the new Hubble observations, published in the January 19 issue of Nature.

"From the beginning I knew something unusual and special was happening in Henize 2-10, and now Hubble has provided a very clear picture of the connection between the black hole and a neighboring star forming region located 230 light-years from the black hole," Reines said.

That connection is an outflow of gas stretching across space like an umbilical cord to a bright stellar nursery. The region was already home to a dense cocoon of gas when the low-velocity outflow arrived. Hubble spectroscopy shows the outflow was moving about 1 million miles per hour, slamming into the dense gas like a garden hose hitting a pile of dirt and spreading out. Newborn star clusters dot the path of the outflow's spread, their ages also calculated by Hubble.

This is the opposite effect of what's seen in larger galaxies, where material falling toward the black hole is whisked away by surrounding magnetic fields, forming blazing jets of plasma moving at close to the speed of light. Gas clouds caught in the jets' path would be heated far beyond their ability to cool back down and form stars. But with the less-massive black hole in Henize 2-10, and its gentler outflow, gas was compressed just enough to precipitate new star formation.

"At only 30 million light-years away, Henize 2-10 is close enough that Hubble was able to capture both images and spectroscopic evidence of a black hole outflow very clearly. The additional surprise was that, rather than suppressing star formation, the outflow was triggering the birth of new stars," said Zachary Schutte, Reines' graduate student and lead author of the new study.

Ever since her first discovery of distinctive radio and X-ray emissions in Henize 2-10, Reines has thought they likely came from a massive black hole, but not as supermassive as those seen in larger galaxies. Other astronomers, however, thought that the radiation was more likely being emitted by a supernova remnant, which would be a familiar occurrence in a galaxy that is rapidly pumping out massive stars that quickly explode.

"Hubble's amazing resolution clearly shows a corkscrew-like pattern in the velocities of the gas, which we can fit to the model of a precessing, or wobbling, outflow from a black hole. A supernova remnant would not have that pattern, and so it is effectively our smoking-gun proof that this is a black hole," Reines said.

Reines expects that even more research will be directed at dwarf galaxy black holes in the future, with the aim of using them as clues to the mystery of how supermassive black holes came to be in the early universe. It's a persistent puzzle for astronomers. The relationship between the mass of the galaxy and its black hole can provide clues. The black hole in Henize 2-10 is around 1 million solar masses. In larger galaxies, black holes can be more than 1 billion times our Sun's mass. The more massive the host galaxy, the more massive the central black hole.

Current theories on the origin of supermassive black holes break down into three categories: 1) they formed just like smaller stellar-mass black holes, from the implosion of stars, and somehow gathered enough material to grow supermassive, 2) special conditions in the early universe allowed for the formation of supermassive stars, which collapsed to form massive black hole "seeds" right off the bat, or 3) the seeds of future supermassive black holes were born in dense star clusters, where the cluster's overall mass would have been enough to somehow create them from gravitational collapse.

So far, none of these black hole seeding theories has taken the lead. Dwarf galaxies like Henize 2-10 offer promising potential clues, because they have remained small over cosmic time, rather than undergoing the growth and mergers of large galaxies like the Milky Way. Astronomers think that dwarf galaxy black holes could serve as an analog for black holes in the early universe, when they were just beginning to form and grow.

"The era of the first black holes is not something that we have been able to see, so it really has become the big question: where did they come from? Dwarf galaxies may retain some memory of the black hole seeding scenario that has otherwise been lost to time and space," Reines said.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Zachary Schutte (XGI), Amy Reines (XGI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

For more information: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/hubble-finds-a-black-ho...

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and a suite of other telescopes to reveal one of the most powerful black holes known. The black hole has created enormous structures in the hot gas surrounding it and prevented trillions of stars from forming.

The black hole is in a galaxy cluster named RX J1532.9+3021 (RX J1532 for short), located about 3.9 billion light years from Earth. The image here is a composite of X-ray data from Chandra revealing hot gas in the cluster in purple and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope showing galaxies in yellow. The cluster is very bright in X-rays implying that it is extremely massive, with a mass about a quadrillion - a thousand trillion - times that of the sun. At the center of the cluster is a large elliptical galaxy containing the supermassive black hole.

The large amount of hot gas near the center of the cluster presents a puzzle. Hot gas glowing with X-rays should cool, and the dense gas in the center of the cluster should cool the fastest. The pressure in this cool central gas is then expected to drop, causing gas further out to sink in towards the galaxy, forming trillions of stars along the way. However, astronomers have found no such evidence for this burst of stars forming at the center of this cluster.

This problem has been noted in many galaxy clusters but RX J1532 is an extreme case, where the cooling of gas should be especially dramatic because of the high density of gas near the center. Out of the thousands of clusters known to date, less than a dozen are as extreme as RX J1532. The Phoenix Cluster is the most extreme, where, conversely, large numbers of stars have been observed to be forming.

What is stopping large numbers of stars from forming in RX J1532? Images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have provided an answer to this question. The X-ray image shows two large cavities in the hot gas on either side of the central galaxy. The Chandra image has been specially processed to emphasize the cavities. Both cavities are aligned with jets seen in radio images from the VLA. The location of the supermassive black hole between the cavities is strong evidence that the supersonic jets generated by the black hole have drilled into the hot gas and pushed it aside, forming the cavities.

Shock fronts - akin to sonic booms - caused by the expanding cavities and the release of energy by sound waves reverberating through the hot gas provide a source of heat that prevents most of the gas from cooling and forming new stars.

The cavities are each about 100,000 light years across, roughly equal to the width of the Milky Way galaxy. The power needed to generate them is among the largest known in galaxy clusters. For example, the power is almost 10 times greater than required to create the well-known cavities in Perseus.

Although the energy to power the jets must have been generated by matter falling toward the black hole, no X-ray emission has been detected from infalling material. This result can be explained if the black hole is "ultramassive" rather than supermassive, with a mass more than 10 billion times that of the sun. Such a black hole should be able to produce powerful jets without consuming large amounts of mass, resulting in very little radiation from material falling inwards.

Another possible explanation is that the black hole has a mass only about a billion times that of the sun but is spinning extremely rapidly. Such a black hole can produce more powerful jets than a slowly spinning black hole when consuming the same amount of matter. In both explanations the black hole is extremely massive.

A more distant cavity is also seen at a different angle with respect to the jets, along a north-south direction. This cavity is likely to have been produced by a jet from a much older outburst from the black hole. This raises the question of why this cavity is no longer aligned with the jets. There are two possible explanations. Either large-scale motion of the gas in the cluster has pushed it to the side or the black hole is precessing, that is, wobbling like a spinning top.

A paper describing this work was published in the November 10th, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal and is available online. The first author is Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo from Stanford University. The Hubble data used in this analysis were from the Cluster Lensing and Supernova survey, led by Marc Postman from Space Telescope Science Institute.

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 in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford/J.Hlavacek-Larrondo et al, Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/M.Postman & CLASH team

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

This is a portrait of the constellation of Orion, shot and processed to bring out the rich array of bright and dark nebulas within its boundaries.

The largest feature is the arc of Barnard's Loop, a possible supernova remnant or stellar wind-blown bubble that encircles Orion. It is officially catalogued as Sharpless 2-276, and is usually plotted as just the easternmost arc, though it extends down and below Orion, all the way over to blue Rigel at bottom right.

To the right of Rigel is the purply-blue Witch Head Nebula, IC 2118, a reflection nebula lit by Rigel. Fainter blue nebulosity extends above it.

Below the three stars of the Belt of Orion just below centre is the nebulosity in the Sword of Orion that includes the dark Horsehead Nebula and below that the very bright Orion Nebula complex, Messier 42/M43, plus the bluish Running Man Nebula, above it, catalogued as NGC 1973-5-7.

The Belt and Sword are wrapped in other fainter red emission nebulas, patches of blue reflection nebulas, all amid a backround of dark yellow-brown dust clouds. The latter are densest above the left star of the Belt, Alnitak, with a dark lane containing the small but bright reflection nebula Messier 78. Just above Alnitak is the orange Flame Nebula.

At top is the large circular emission nebula Sharpless 2-264, surrounding the head of Orion and the star Meissa and a loose open star cluster Collinder 69. The nebula has become known as the Angelfish Nebula. It sits above orange Betelgeuse (at left) and blue-white Bellatrix (at right), marking the shoulders of Orion.

This is a stack of 16 x 2-minute exposures with the Canon RF28-70mm f/2 lens stopped down to f/2.8, on the filter-modified (by AstroGear) Canon EOS R camera at ISO 1600. The lens was equipped with a 95mm URTH broadband light pollution reduction filter which helps improve contrast and reduce sky gradients. The camera was on the MSM Nomad tracker for tracked but unguided exposures over 30 minutes. To those I blended in a stack of 4 x 2-minute exposures that had light cloud that added the fuzzy stars glows naturally. I did not use a diffusion filter. Incoming thin clouds prevented more exposures.

Processing with PhotoKemi "Nebula Filter" action and Nik Collection Color EFX filters (Detail Extractor and Pro Contrast) helped bring out the faint nebulosity, and with luminosity masks created with Lumenzia applied to restrict the effects to mid to mid-darks tones.

Taken from home on February 1, 2024.

“Behold the cosmic masterpiece of the Orion and Horsehead Nebulae, two celestial wonders that epitomize the beauty of the winter night sky. 🌌✨ The Orion Nebula, a glowing cradle of star formation, radiates vibrant hues of red and violet, showcasing the life cycle of stars in action. Nearby, the enigmatic Horsehead Nebula emerges as a dark silhouette against a fiery red background, a striking contrast of light and shadow sculpted by interstellar winds. These neighboring regions invite us to marvel at the dynamic processes shaping our universe. 💫 #Astrophotography #OrionNebula #HorseheadNebula #CosmicWonders #StarFormation”

RGB 91 x 300” (7hr 35min)

DB Filter 167 x 300 (13hr 55min)

RGB 30 x 10” (00hr 05min)

Total integration time - (21hr 55min)

Gears:

M: AM5

T: RedCat51

C: ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro

F: Optolong L-extreme

Finally decided to stop frustrating myself with some 3D galaxy illustrations and got back to some Hubble processing I've been meaning to do for a while now. Last year, HST finished the PHAT survey of nearby galaxy M33, or the Triangulum galaxy. There are massive mosaics of this available, but the survey also enabled me to create a much more complete image of a nebula which is of particular interest. Let me just quote from Wikipedia since the sentence is so evocative already:

"It is over 6,300 times more luminous than the Orion Nebula, and if it were at the same distance it would outshine Venus."

Impressive as it is, the Orion Nebula can't compete with NGC 604. Orion is just lucky to be so close to us. NGC 604 is where the star-formation party is really at. It only takes a few million years for light from this cosmic rave party to reach us.

Note that the PHAT data alone wasn't enough to make this image. I went back and made use of older WFPC2/WFC data to really make this cloud of gas pop in bright pink colors. Otherwise it would have looked blueish since the nebula is most apparent within the F475W observations.

This image was made possible by the following Hubble programs:

A Legacy Imaging Survey of M33.

WFPC Augmentation - NGC 604 and M16 - Cycle 4 and Future-Cycle Contination

Stellar Populations in Local Group Galaxies (WC13): Cycle 4

Giant H II Regions and the Connection with Starbursts and Diffuse Ionized Gas

PHAT data:

Red: WFC3/IR F160W

Yellow-Green: ACS/WFC F814W

Cyan: ACS/WFC F475W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F336W

WFPC2/WFC data:

F673N, F658N, and F656N combined together into a pinkish "screen" layer

North is NOT up. It is 90° clockwise from up.

About this image

A widefield 2 panel mosaic of the region around the star-rich Coalsack Dark Nebula, also simply called the Coalsack (C99). It is the most prominent Dark Nebula in the sky, easily visible to the naked eye as a dark patch silhouetted against the Milky Way in the Southern Hemisphere. C99 is located at a distance of approximately 600 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Crux (The Southern Cross). The blue star cluster at the top left is called the Jewel Box Cluster (NGC 4755).

About Star Colors:

You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.

Gear:

William Optics Star 71mm f/4.9 Imaging APO Refractor Telescope.

William Optics 50mm Finder Scope.

Celestron SkySync GPS Accessory.

Orion Mini 50mm Guide Scope.

Orion StarShoot Autoguider.

Celestron AVX Mount.

QHYCCD PoleMaster.

Celestron StarSense.

Canon 60Da DSLR.

Astronomik Clip-In CLS Light Pollution Filter.

Tech:

Guiding in Open PHD 2.6.3.

Image acquisition in Sequence Generator Pro.

Lights/Subs:

18 x 180 sec. per Panel (2 Panel Mosaic)

ISO 3200 RGB (CLA FITS)

Calibration Frames:

30 x Bias/Offset.

30 x Darks.

30 x Flats & Dark Flats.

Image Acquisition:

Sequence Generator Pro with the Mosaic and Framing Wizard.

Plate Solving:

Astrometry.net ANSVR Solver via SGP.

Processing:

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop.

Astrometry Info:

View an Annotated Star Chart for this image.

Center RA, Dec:194.685, -62.563

Center RA, hms:12h 58m 44.469s

Center Dec, dms:-62° 33' 46.302"

Size:5.48 x 2.34 deg

Radius:2.981 deg

Pixel scale:9.64 arcsec/pixel

Orientation:Up is 87.1 degrees E of N

View this image in the World Wide Telescope.

Martin

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An attempt to visualize what a green pea galaxy might look like if we could see one up close. Hubble recently took an observation of one, and it left me a tad dissatisfied. Did you know that there is no nearby example of a green pea galaxy, or anything even similar? Actually, these tiny smudges are considered nearby compared to, say, something twice as far away. What I mean is they are small enough and far enough away that we can't see any details. They are near enough to do spectroscopy though, which tells us a lot about them.

I decided to illustrate how I thought it might look, but my first try needed some modification. After a brief Twitter exchange, Drs. Sangeeta Malhortra and William Keel set me in the right direction. Hate on Twitter all you want, but it's sometimes very useful!

I used a combination of clone stamp painting for the star clusters and free airbrushing with my pen tablet for the green clouds/streamers. The base galaxy I modified was a real dwarf galaxy I processed a while back: flic.kr/p/XgFVxh

There's a really great figure in this paper showing some pea galaxy details! They are still quite small and fuzzy, but some of the tendrils can be seen in some of them.

Data from Gems of the Galaxy Zoos inspired this work. Specifically, observations jds42kcfq and jds42kceq. The original observed galaxy takes up about 21x31 pixels on the detector.

If this was a real observation, it would probably use a combination of wideband near-infrared, visible green, and near-UV filters along with narrowband H-alpha and [OIII] filters.

North is technically 136.53° clockwise from up.

At around 60 million light-years from Earth, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, NGC 1365, is captured beautifully in this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), the blue and fiery orange swirls show us where stars have just formed and the dusty sites of future stellar nurseries.

At the outer edges of the image, enormous star-forming regions within NGC 1365 can be seen. The bright, light-blue regions indicate the presence of hundreds of baby stars that formed from coalescing gas and dust within the galaxy's outer arms.

This Hubble image was captured as part of a joint survey with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The survey will help scientists understand how the diversity of galaxy environments observed in the nearby universe, including NGC 1365 and other galaxies such as NGC 2835 and NGC 2775, influence the formation of stars and star clusters. Expected to image over 100,000 gas clouds and star-forming regions beyond our Milky Way, the PHANGS survey is expected to uncover and clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, star formation, and the overall shape and morphology of galaxies.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/hubble-sees-swirl...

Scientists have used Chandra to make a detailed study of an enormous cloud of hot gas enveloping two large, colliding galaxies. This unusually large reservoir of gas contains as much mass as 10 billion Suns, spans about 300,000 light years, and radiates at a temperature of more than 7 million degrees.

This giant gas cloud, which scientists call a "halo," is located in the system called NGC 6240. Astronomers have long known that NGC 6240 is the site of the merger of two large spiral galaxies similar in size to our own Milky Way. Each galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The black holes are spiraling toward one another, and may eventually merge to form a larger black hole.

Another consequence of the collision between the galaxies is that the gas contained in each individual galaxy has been violently stirred up. This caused a baby boom of new stars that has lasted for at least 200 million years. During this burst of stellar birth, some of the most massive stars raced through their evolution and exploded relatively quickly as supernovas.

The scientists involved with this study argue that this rush of supernova explosions dispersed relatively high amounts of important elements such as oxygen, neon, magnesium, and silicon into the hot gas of the newly combined galaxies. According to the researchers, the data suggest that this enriched gas has slowly expanded into and mixed with cooler gas that was already there.

During the extended baby boom, shorter bursts of star formation have occurred. For example, the most recent burst of star formation lasted for about five million years and occurred about 20 million years ago in Earth’s timeframe. However, the authors do not think that the hot gas was produced just by this shorter burst.

What does the future hold for observations of NGC 6240? Most likely the two spiral galaxies will form one young elliptical galaxy over the course of millions of years. It is unclear, however, how much of the hot gas can be retained by this newly formed galaxy, rather than lost to surrounding space. Regardless, the collision offers the opportunity to witness a relatively nearby version of an event that was common in the early Universe when galaxies were much closer together and merged more often.

In this new composite image of NGC 6240, the X-rays from Chandra that reveal the hot gas cloud are colored purple. These data have been combined with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, which shows long tidal tails from the merging galaxies, extending to the right and bottom of the image.

A paper describing these new results on NGC 6240 is available online and appeared in the March 10, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The authors in this study were Emanuele Nardini (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, or CfA, Cambridge, MA and currently at Keele University, UK), Junfeng Wang (CfA and currently at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL), Pepi Fabbiano (CfA), Martin Elvis (CfA), Silvia Pellegrini (University of Bologna, Italy), Guido Risalti (INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Italy and CfA), Margarita Karovska (CfA), and Andreas Zezas (University of Crete, Greece and CfA).

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's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/ngc6240/

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/E. Nardini et al; Optical: NASA/STScI

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...

Hello Flickr friends! Feb. 20 is a quirky holiday called "Love Your Pet Day." To celebrate, we looked up the top seven pets and searched for space images for each animal. Now we're up to #3: the lofty and soaring Bird. In their avian honor, here's a beautiful image of the Eagle Nebula.

There were actually a lot of great bird-themed images. You can also check out the Phoenix Cluster (chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/phoenix/) and the Columba (Latin for Dove) constellation (chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/a3376/ ).

Caption: A look at the famous "Pillars of Creation" with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has allowed astronomers to peer inside the dark columns of gas and dust. This penetrating view of the central region of the Eagle Nebula reveals how much star formation is happening inside these iconic structures.

The Chandra data shows bright X-ray sources in this field, most of which are young stars. In this image, red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high energy X-rays. The Chandra data have been overlaid on the Hubble Space Telescope image to show the context of these X-ray data.

Very few X-ray sources are found in the pillars themselves. This suggests that the Eagle Nebula may be past its star-forming prime, since young stars are usually bright X-ray sources. However, there are two X-ray objects found near the tips of the pillars. One is a young star about 4 or 5 times as massive as the Sun, visible as the blue source near the tip of the pillar on the left. The other is a lower mass star near the top of the other pillar that is so faint it is not visible in the composite image.

The Chandra observations did not detect X-rays from any of the so-called evaporating gaseous globules, or EGGs. The EGGs are dense, compact pockets of interstellar gas where stars are believed to be forming. The lack of X-rays from these objects may mean that most of the EGGs do not contain enshrouded stars. However, infrared observations have shown that 11 of the 73 EGGs contain infant stellar objects and 4 of these are massive enough to form a star. The stars embedded in these 4 EGGs might be so young that they have not generated X-rays yet and one of them (E42) - estimated to have about the mass of the Sun - could represent one of the earliest stages of evolution of our nearest star. The Sun was likely born in a region like the Pillars of Creation.

The pillars and the few stars forming inside them are the last vestiges of star formation in the Eagle Nebula, also known as M16, which peaked several million years earlier. This contrasts strongly with the active star forming regions in other clusters such as NGC 2024, where Chandra sees a dense cluster of embedded young stars.

The results were published in the January 1st issue of The Astrophysical Journal and the research team, led by Jeffrey Linsky of the University of Colorado, includes Marc Gagne and Anna Mytyk (West Chester University), Mark McCaughrean (University of Exeter) and Morten Andersen (University of Arizona).

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Colorado/Linsky et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/ASU/J.Hester & P.Scowen.

Original image: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2007/m16/

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

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The brightest x-ray object in this scene is an unknown object at the upper left. The next brightest thing seems to be a distant active galaxy nucleus (AGN) coincidentally positioned just above the nebula. In third place comes NGC 604 itself. It's hard to compete with an AGN, but these young stars are doing an admirable job. X-rays are generated when things get super hot, and that's what's happening within the cavernous interior bubble of the nebula.

There's a better explanation and additional imagery at Chandra's website here: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/n604/

This image was possible thanks to data from the following Chandra proposal:

The Giant Extragalactic Star-Forming Region NGC 604

In addition, all HST proposals listed under this image were also used: flic.kr/p/S5kLbG

Chandra data:

Violet / Magenta overlay: ACIS .30-7.00 keV

PHAT data:

Red: WFC3/IR F160W

Yellow-Green: ACS/WFC F814W

Cyan: ACS/WFC F475W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F336W

WFPC2/WFC data:

F673N, F658N, and F656N combined together into a pinkish "screen" layer

North is NOT up. It is 90° clockwise from up.

Located in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), around 50 million light-years from Earth, the galaxy NGC 4535 is truly a stunning sight to behold. Despite the incredible quality of this image, taken from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 4535 has a hazy, somewhat ghostly, appearance when viewed from a smaller telescope. This led amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland to nickname NGC 4535 the “Lost Galaxy” in the 1950s.

The bright colors in this image aren’t just beautiful to look at, as they actually tell us about the population of stars within this barred spiral galaxy. The bright blue-ish colors, seen nestled amongst NGC 4535’s long, spiral arms, indicate the presence of a greater number of younger and hotter stars. In contrast, the yellower tones of this galaxy’s bulge suggest that this central area is home to stars which are older and cooler.

This galaxy was studied as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) survey, which aims to clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, star formation, and the overall shape and other properties of galaxies. On January 11, 2021 the first release of the PHANGS-HST Collection was made publicly available.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-takes-port...

Description: In Chandra's X-ray image (blue) of RCW 108, over 400 sources of X-ray light are seen. Many of these X-ray sources are young stars undergoing massive flaring just as our Sun did billions of years ago. The infrared Spitzer image (red and orange) shows the clouds of dust and gas of this region. The bright knot just to the left of center is where a cluster of young stars is hidden behind a dense cloud of molecular hydrogen. Intense radiation from massive stars in another nearby cluster, just out of view to the left of this image, is destroying the cloud that contains this cluster. Ultimately, this will trigger a new generation of stars to form in RCW 108.

Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory

The 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. 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: 2008

Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/rcw108/

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk et al.

Accession number: rcw108

A small, dense cloud of gas and dust called CB 130-3 blots out the center of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. CB 130-3 is an object known as a dense core, a compact agglomeration of gas and dust. This particular dense core is in the constellation Serpens and seems to billow across a field of background stars.

Dense cores like CB 130-3 are the birthplaces of stars and are of particular interest to astronomers. During the collapse of these cores enough mass can accumulate in one place to reach the temperatures and densities required to ignite hydrogen fusion, marking the birth of a new star. While it may not be obvious from this image, a compact object teetering on the brink of becoming a star is embedded deep within CB 130-3.

Astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to better understand the environment surrounding this fledgling star. As this image shows, the density of CB 130-3 isn’t constant; the outer edges of the cloud consist of only tenuous wisps, whereas at its core CB 130-3 blots out background light entirely. The gas and dust making up CB 130-3 affect not only the brightness but also the apparent color of background stars, with stars toward the cloud’s center appearing redder than their counterparts at the outskirts of this image. Astronomers used Hubble to measure this reddening effect and chart out the density of CB 130-3, providing insights into the inner structure of this stellar nursery.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA & STScI, C. Britt, T. Huard, A. Pagan

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-views-a-bi...

A #star #formation of #pistil from #hibiscusrosasinesis #flower . #hibiscus called #kembangsepatu in my country ^o^

Taken with 50mm lens + 20mm MET.

A near-infrared colour composite image of the protostellar outflow system HH288, also known as The Dragon Jet, made using the NIRCam instrument on NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

The composite comprises five individual mosaics made in the F150W, F200W, F356W, F444W, and F470N filters, spanning the wavelength range from 1.3 to 5 microns. Bluer colours are shorter wavelengths; redder are longer wavelengths. The image is rotated by approximately 50º clockwise from North up, East left, and covers 378 x 259 arcseconds.

HH288 lies in galactic plane in the constellation of Cassiopeia at a distance of roughly 2 kiloparsecs or 6500 light years from Earth.

The nickname comes from its hopefully-obvious resemblance to a Chinese dragon, or loong / 龍 / 龙 / 🐉. The main horizontal flow comprising "the dragon", with its head and flames to the left and tail to the right, spans roughly 3 parsecs or 9.8 light years.

The red, orange, and yellow emission is mostly due to emission lines of shock-heated molecular hydrogen, although there is some additional emission from carbon monoxide, and the more diffuse yellow-orange glow around the waist of "the dragon" is likely reflection nebulosity from the central protostars driving the main flow. The wider blue and green glow in the image is likely a mixture of reflection nebulosity and emission from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons associated with dust in the region.

The gas in the main flow is moving at speeds of 100-200 kilometres per second from its protostar, which is thought to be significantly more massive than the Sun, and likely less than a million years old.

However, there are at least two other outflows seen associated with "the dragon", one linear running from lower left to upper right, and another more chaotic from lower right to upper right. Close inspection shows perhaps another two or three newly discovered small flows as well.

Also obvious is the small cluster of young embedded stars towards the bottom edge of the image, which also appear to be ejecting jets of molecular hydrogen gas. For obvious reasons, I'm calling this "the dragon's egg"

For more information on our original discovery of HH288 and millimetre wavelength studies of it, see this 2001 paper:

scixplorer.org/abs/2001A%26A...375.1018G/abstract

The original data making up this image were taken by JWST between 26 and 30 January 2025 as part of the Guaranteed Time Observation programme 4548, PI Mark McCaughrean, JWST Interdisciplinary Scientist for star formation.

Image credit and copyright:

Mark McCaughrean (MPIA) / NASA, ESA, CSA / CC BY-SA 4.0

An interacting pair of galaxies also known as NGC 2799 (left) & NGC 2798 (right). NGC 2799 appears warped, and seems to be getting ripped apart. Rain comes to mind when looking at this, like the stars and gas of the blue galaxy are mere particles condensing and falling into the red galaxy like rain. It's probably nothing like rain, though.

Color comes from SDSS this time, which is always a pleasure. As far as surveys go, it's very easy to work with. Data for this field can be found here:

dr12.sdss.org/fields/name?name=ngc+2799

NASA/ESA/SDSS/Judy Schmidt

Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems

Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W

Red: SDSS i

Green: SDSS r

Blue: SDSS g

North is 13.50° clockwise from up.

Finally I have managed to piece together a version of this object that is not only compositionally satisfying, but also includes three wideband filters, giving it some truly stunning colors. Cha IRN is an abbreviation of Chamaeleon near-infrared reflection nebula.

Previous versions were taken from the southern end of the Chamaeleon mosaic. While I have long been infatuated with this object, I have never felt satisfied with the available data. I am now quite pleased with it. Luckily for us, some astronomers wanted to look at it some more, too.

By combining Stapelfeldt's observations from 2012 with Megeath's from last July these rich, astonishing colors were revealed. I was able to fill a few places their observations didn't cover with data from the 2009 Chamaeleon mosaic. The time disparities meant that the stars had shifted position either due to parallax or proper motion, so I had to scoot them around to get them to match.

Herbig-Haro object HH909A is blue bit of gas near the upper right part of the image, which I have annotated using Flickr's notes. It has moved dramatically over the 8 year period, and puffed out a bit, as well.

What causes the vibrant red colors in the image? Infrared light collected by HST allows us to see through dust. The more dust there is, the more the shorter wavelengths are attenuated/blocked by the dust, allowing only longer wavelengths to shine through. So where the color is reddest, you know there is a lot more dust. Where the colors are whiter, there is less dust.

The Chamaeleon complex is home to a lot of star formation, and this is just a small part of the southern part of the complex. Here, between the two cones of light, is likely a place where young stellar objects reside. As they form, jets and outflows erupt from the poles of these objects, which push around and punch holes in the dust and gas they formed from. A thick, disk-shaped band remains around the middle and can be seen crossing the two cones vertically.

Data from the following proposals were used to create this image.

A Snapshot WFC3 IR Survey of Spitzer/Hershel-Identified Protostars in Nearby Molecular Clouds

Imaging of Newly-identified Edge-on Protoplanetary Disks in Nearby Star-Forming Regions

Searching for the Bottom of the Initial Mass Function

Red: WFC3/IR F160W

Green: ACS/WFC F814W

Blue: ACS/WFC F606W

North is NOT up. It is 26.06° counter-clockwise from up.

Don’t be fooled by the title; the mysterious, almost mystical bright light emerging from these thick, ominous clouds is actually a telltale sign of star formation. Here, a very young star is being born in the guts of the dark cloud LDN 43 — a massive blob of gas, dust, and ices, gathered 520 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer).

Stars are born from cosmic dust and gas, which floats freely in space until gravity forces it to bind together. The hidden newborn star in this image, revealed only by light reflected onto the plumes of the dark cloud, is named RNO 91. It is what astronomers call a pre-main sequence star, meaning that it has not yet started burning hydrogen in its core.

This image is based on data gathered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Judy Schmidt.

Read more on the ESA website: www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Sunset_in_Mordor

A rather quickly processed view of IRAS 20126+4104 from HST. IRAS was the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, and the name is from its catalog of discoveries. This is a fluff ball of dust with some young stellar objects (YSOs) in it. Specifically the reddish orange glowing areas near the center of the image are where a star is accreting whatever matter is in its locality.

These observations were collected as part of observation proposal 17188, PI Ruben Fedriani

Cosmic Beacons Towards a Theory of Massive Star Formation - A NIR View of the Most Luminous Protostars

Red: WFC3/IR F160W+F164N

Green: Pseudogreen

Blue: WFC3/IR F110W+F128N

North is 30.19° counter-clockwise from up.