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The Sculptor Galaxy is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor and a stardust galaxy, which means that is is currently undergoing a period of intense star formation.
The Galaxy was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783 during one of her systematic comet searches.
The Sculptor Galaxy is located at the center of the Sculptor Group, one of the nearest groups of galaxies to the Milky Way.
It is the brightest one in the group and one of the intrinsically brightest galaxies in the vicinity of ours, only surpassed by the Andromeda Galaxy and the Sombrero Galaxy.
Equipment:
Celestron 9.25” 2350mm Edge-HD Telescope
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro Computerized GoTo Telescope Mount
Orion 50mm Helical Guide Scope & StarShoot AutoGuider
Celestron 9x50 Finder Scope
ZWO ASI294MC Pro Color Camera
Celestron .7 EdgeHD Reducer Lens
PHD2 Guiding Software
SharpCap Pro
Thank you for your comments.
Gemma
Messier 94 (also known as NGC 4736) is a spiral galaxy in the mid-northern constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781, and catalogued by Charles Messier two days later. The galaxy has two ring structures. There is an inner ring about 5400 light years in diameter and an outer ring nearly 10 times that! Distance from Earth is around 16 million light years.
The inner ring is the site of strong star formation activity and is sometimes referred to as a starburst ring. This star formation is fueled by gas driven dynamically into the ring by the inner oval-shaped structure. The outer ring is not closed as was thought for many years until a study in 2009 confirmed that the outer ring is a complex structure of spiral arms when viewed in mid-infrared and ultraviolet. The study found that the outer disk of this galaxy is very active and contains close to 1/4 of the galaxy's total stellar mass and contributes about 10% of the galaxy's new stars.
Some of the outer spiral arm structure is evident in this image.
M94 is one of the brightest galaxies within the M94 Group, a group of galaxies that contains between 16 and 24 galaxies. Several of these can be seen scattered in this image.
This group is one of many that lie within the Virgo Supercluster (i.e. the Local Supercluster).
Capture info:
Location: SkyPi Remote Observatory, Pie Town NM US
Telescope: RiDK 400mm
Mount: Paramount MEII
Camera: SBIG STX 16803
Data: LRGB 10,8.5,6,7.25 hours respectively
Processing: Pixinsight
2006 images from three of NASA's Great Observatories were combined to create this spectacular, multiwavelength view of the starburst galaxy M82. Optical light from stars (yellow-green/Hubble Space Telescope) shows the disk of a modest-sized, apparently normal galaxy.
Another Hubble observation designed to image 10,000 degree Celsius hydrogen gas (orange) reveals a startlingly different picture of matter blasting out of the galaxy. The Spitzer Space Telescope infrared image (red) shows that cool gas and dust are also being ejected. Chandra's X-ray image (blue) reveals gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by the violent outflow. The eruption can be traced back to the central regions of the galaxy where stars are forming at a furious rate, some 10 times faster than in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Many of these newly formed stars are very massive and race through their evolution to explode as supernovas. Vigorous mass loss from these stars before they explode, and the heat generated by the supernovas drive the gas out of the galaxy at millions of miles per hour. It is thought that the expulsion of matter from a galaxy during bursts of star formation is one of the main ways of spreading elements like carbon and oxygen throughout the universe.
The burst of star formation in M82 is thought to have been initiated by shock waves generated in a close encounter with a large nearby galaxy, M81, about 100 million years ago. These shock waves triggered the collapse of giant clouds of dust and gas in M82. In another 100 million years or so, most of the gas and dust will have been used to form stars, or blown out of the galaxy, so the starburst will subside.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/JHU/D.Strickland; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA/The Hubble Heritage Team; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of AZ/C. Engelbracht
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #ChandraXrayObservatory #cxo #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #SpitzerSpaceTelescope #JPL #JetPropulsionLaboratory #galaxy #starburstgalaxy
NGC 253 is a starburst galaxy and the largest member of the Sculptor Group. It is located about 12 million light years away. This galaxy was explored in depth as part of ANGST (ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury, Dalcanton, et al, 2009). There are many open star clusters in the central region, including one that has a high number of Wolf-Rayet stars. Somehow, only one supernova (SN 1940E) has been observed in visible light in this galaxy. I think it's worth keeping an eye on.
This is a combination of 18 5 min RGB frames shot from dark skies during two previous imaging sessions, and 20 4 min H-alpha frames shot from my backyard on 2021-09-05. This was all done with a Celestron Edge HD 925 with a HyperStar to bring the focal length to 535 mm. RGB frames were taken with an Atik 314L+ color CCD, and H-alpha frames were taken with an Atik 414EX mono with Atik H-alpha filter. Preprocessing in Nebulosity; frames were registered and stacked in PixInsight, then channels were combined and initial processing done; final touches in Photoshop.
NGC 6946, sometimes referred to as the Fireworks Galaxy, is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its distance from Earth is about 25.2 million light-years , similar to the distance of M101 (NGC 5457) in the constellation Ursa Major. Both were once considered to be part of the Local Group , but are now known to be among the dozen bright spiral galaxies near the Milky Way but beyond the confines of the Local Group. NGC 6946 lies within the Virgo Supercluster.
Discovered by William Herschel on 9 September 1798, this well-studied galaxy has a diameter of approximately 40,000 light-years, about one-third of the Milky Way's size, and it contains roughly half the number of stars as the Milky Way. It is heavily obscured by interstellar matter due to its location close to the galactic plane of the Milky Way. Due to its prodigious star formation it has been classified as an active starburst galaxy. (Courtesy Wikipedia)
An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically a cloud in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place. These can be seen in distant spiral galaxies as red-pink star-like “knots” in the spiral arms, several of which are evident in this image.
Capture info:
Location: Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory, Mayhill NM
Telescope: Officina Stellare RiDK 400mm
Camera: SBIG STX 16803
Mount: Paramount MEII
Data: LRGB HA 5,6,4, 5,5 hours respectively
Processing: Pixinsight 1.8.8-11
Lonely galaxies watch a passing comet slip away through the integrated flux.
This is a shot from May of this year. The comet is C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS), not the current superstar comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). T2 PANSTARRS spent three nights drifting past galaxies M81 and M82 before moving on. I caught this on the middle of those three nights. Unlike NEOWISE, T2 PANSTARRS was never bright enough to see unaided, and required a very long lens or small telescope to effectively photograph, so images of T2 PANSTARRS are comparatively rare. As you can see, the two comets feature very different tails. 2020 has already proven to be quite the year for Comets.
See on Fluidr
To see more of my work and to buy prints visit www.jklovelacephotography.com/pages/space
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the iridescent interior of one of the most active galaxies in our local neighbourhood — NGC 1569, a small galaxy located about eleven million light-years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe). This galaxy is currently a hotbed of vigorous star formation. NGC 1569 is a starburst galaxy, meaning that — as the name suggests — it is bursting at the seams with stars, and is currently producing them at a rate far higher than that observed in most other galaxies. For almost 100 million years, NGC 1569 has pumped out stars over 100 times faster than the Milky Way! As a result, this glittering galaxy is home to super star clusters, three of which are visible in this image — one of the two bright clusters is actually the superposition of two massive clusters. Each containing more than a million stars, these brilliant blue clusters reside within a large cavity of gas carved out by multiple supernovae, the energetic remnants of massive stars. In 2008, Hubble observed the galaxy's cluttered core and sparsely populated outer fringes. By pinpointing individual red giant stars, Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys enabled astronomers to calculate a new — and much more precise — estimate for NGC 1569’s distance. This revealed that the galaxy is actually one and a half times further away than previously thought, and a member of the IC 342 galaxy group. Astronomers suspect that the IC 342 cosmic congregation is responsible for the star-forming frenzy observed in NGC 1569. Gravitational interactions between this galactic group are believed to be compressing the gas within NGC 1569. As it is compressed, the gas collapses, heats up and forms new stars.
More info here: spacetelescope.org/images/potw1626a/?utm_medium=social&am...
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Aloisi, Ford
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
This Ha-only image is probably a little soft. It was captured while testing filter offset focusing. I found that offset focusing does not work well going from my wideband filters, which vary by just a few focuser steps from one wideband filter to the next, to my Ha (narrowband) filter that differs by 50 to 60 focuser steps.
The reason for this is that my optical configration has the main camera behind the filters, and the guide camera is before the filters. If the main and guide cameras are perfectly co-focused behind one of the wideband filters, there is no problem switching to another wideband filter that is offset by just a few focuser position steps, because moving the main camera into focus after the filter change does not move the guide camera enough out of focus to affect guiding.
If the switch is from a wideband filter to the Ha filter, then the 50-step movement moves the guide camera enough out of focus to seriously degrade guiding.
What I learned from this test is that a manual refocus of the main and guide cameras is necessary when changing between narrowband and wideband filters. Better to learn while testing at home than to find out the day after returning from a dark sky site.
ZWO ASI6200MM-P/EFW 2" x 7 (Ha)
Tele Vue NP101is/LFC
Losmandy G11
Captured in NINA (20 subs x 420s with Ha filter for 02:20 total integration time.)
Processed in PixInsight
I have an updated version where I added some hydrogen-alpha data and reduced the blue tinge:
This is a stack of 23 images of NGC 2903, a barred spiral galaxy that is about 28 million light years away (Drozdovsky, I. O., & Karachentsev, I. D. 2000, A&AS, 142, 425). I originally thought, "Hey, here's a barred spiral, like the Milky Way is a barred spiral, so our galaxies are twinsies, right?" Wrong! NGC 2903 is a starburst galaxy - there is an enormous rate of star formation, especially within the central bar. Stellarium refers to this as an active galaxy, but that is incorrect. It does have several ultra-luminous X-ray binaries in the central region (Yukita, et al, ApJ, 758, 105, (2012)). There is a also an outflow of gas from the added energy of rapid star formation and X-ray binaries - this galaxy is losing material for making stars.
I have shot this numerous times, with exposures of typically 6 minutes and 8 minutes. The latest data, with better guiding, was taken in Lone Pine, CA on 2018-02-17 and has noticeably reduced how oblong the stars were from previous attempts. I may need to do a stack with only the better data, once I have more. (Yes, I'm sure I will shoot this again - it's one of my favorites.) Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with HyperStar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Pre-processing in Nebulosity; stacking and initial processing in PixInsight; final touches in PS CS 5.1.
The center (J2000) of this image is at
RA 9h 32m 10s
DEC +21° 30' 24"
The image spans 47' x36'. North is toward the left and east is at the top.
My first wide field Galaxy photo, 6 months after getting my first Telescope (a small inexpensive GSO 6" Newtonian Reflector) .
Ancient light from a Galaxy far, far away (situated 11.42 million light years from Earth).
The Sculptor Galaxy, also known as the Silver Coin or Silver Dollar Galaxy (NGC 253), is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. It is a Starburst galaxy, which means that it is undergoing a period of intense star formation (well it was 11.42 million years ago, as the light took that long to reach us).
Recent research suggests the presence in the centre of this Galaxy of a Supermassive Black Hole, with a mass estimated to be 5 million times that of our Sun.
Photographed at the West Rand Astronomy Club's Annual Star Party at Mountain Sanctuary Park (North-West Province, South Africa). A special thank you to Neil Viljoen from "The Telescope Shop" for his assistance.
Astrometry info:
Center RA, Dec: 11.885, -25.297
Center RA, hms: 00h 47m 32.295s
Center Dec, dms: -25° 17' 48.899"
Size: 74.4 x 56.8 arcmin
Radius: 0.780 deg
Pixel scale: 4.36 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: Up is 18.2 degrees E of N
View the Annotated Astrometry Sky Chart.
View in the World Wide Telescope.
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Gear:
GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope (Astrograph).
Celestron Advanced VX Equatorial Mount.
Orion 50mm Guide Scope.
Orion StarShoot AutoGuider (Guiding in PHD2).
Image Acquisition via Sequence Generator Pro.
Canon 60Da DSLR (sensitive to IR light at 656.28 nm).
Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.
Processed in PixInsight & Photoshop.
Lights/Subs:
30 x Stacked 5 min. RAW exposures at ISO 1600.
Calibration Frames:
30 x Darks (Dark frames)
30 x Flats (Flat-field frames)
40 x Bias (Offset frames)
Martin
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Sweeping spiral arms extend from NGC 4536, littered with bright blue clusters of star formation and red clumps of hydrogen gas shining among dark lanes of dust. The galaxy’s shape may seem a little unusual, and that’s because it’s what’s known as an “intermediate galaxy”: not quite a barred spiral, but not exactly an unbarred spiral, either - a hybrid of the two.
NGC 4536 is also a starburst galaxy, in which star formation is happening at a tremendous rate that uses up the gas in the galaxy relatively quickly, by galactic standards. Starburst galaxies can happen due to gravitational interactions with other galaxies or - as seems to be the case for NGC 4536 - when gas is packed into a small region. The bar-like structure of NGC 4536 may be driving gas inwards toward the nucleus, giving rise to a crescendo of star formation in a ring around the nucleus. Starburst galaxies birth lots of hot blue stars that burn fast and die quickly in explosions that unleash intense ultraviolet light (visible in blue), turning their surroundings into glowing clouds of ionized hydrogen, called HII regions (visible in red).
NGC 4536 is approximately 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered in 1784 by astronomer William Herschel. Hubble took this image of NGC 4536 as part of a project to study galactic environments to understand connections between young stars and cold gas, particularly star clusters and molecular clouds, throughout the local universe.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lee (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
#NASAMarshall #NASA #NASAHubble #Hubble #NASAGoddard #galaxy #DwarfGalaxy #StarCluster #StarburstGalaxy #SpiralGalaxy
M82 galaxy
Hardware - Planewave 12.5" CDK, PME, QSI 583 CCD, Lodestar guider CCD, Astrodon LRGB filters.
Acquisition software - Maxim DL, TSX, PWI focusing.
Processing software - Pixinsight 1.6.
NGC 4945 es una galaxia espiral barrada, del tipo SBs cd, ubicada en la constelación del Centauro. Con sus 20x4 arcominutos de tamaño aparente es posible localizarla con unos buenos prismáticos y cielos oscuros a escasos 4 grados al sureste del famoso cúmulo globular Omega Centauri. La distancia de NGC 4945 al sistema solar es de aproximadamente 13 millones de años luz.
NGC 4945 pertenece al grupo particular de galaxias que los astrónomos clasifican como Seyfert, en honor al astrónomo americano Carl K.Seyfert, quien en 1943 realizó un estudio sobre las raras y potentes emisiones de luz que emanan de los núcleos de determinadas galaxias. Se estima que alrededor del 1% de todas las galaxias espirales brillantes son Seyfert. Las luminosidades de los núcleos de las Seyfert pueden ser extremadamente grandes, a veces mucho más grandes que el brillo del resto de la galaxia, lo que hace pensar a los astrónomos que este tipo de galaxias no forman una clase separada, sino que representan una etapa pasajera de su evolución.
A su vez NGC 4945 tiene la característica de ser una galaxia de explosión estelar, o Starburst Galaxy en inglés, es decir, una galaxia que experimenta una tasa de formación de estrellas excepcionalmente alta, en comparación con la tasa promedio de formación de estrellas a largo plazo de la mayoría de otras galaxias. En las Starburst la tasa de formación de estrellas es tan elevada que, de mantenerse ese ritmo, la galaxia consumiría todo su depósito de gas, a partir del cual se están formando las estrellas, en una escala de tiempo mucho más corta que su propia edad. Lo anterior parece indicar, al igual que ocurre con las Seyfert, que la explosión estelar es más una fase, que normalmente ocupa un breve período de tiempo, a lo largo de la evolución de las galaxias.
Fuentes consultadas:
- Fundamental Astronomy. Hannu Karttunen Pekka Kröger Heikki Oja Markku Poutanen Karl Johan Donner Editors
Observatory and Astrophysics Laboratory University of Helsinki
- Introductory Astronomy & Astrophysics. Zelik & Smith. Saunders College Publishing.
- NGC 4945: La prima -no muy distante- de la Vía Láctea. Nota de prensa de la ESO nº eso0931es.
- Galaxia Starburst. es.qaz.wiki/wiki/Starburst_galaxy
Daniel Verschatse Observatory
Hacienda los Andes. Chile.
Telescopio TEC 503mm (20") f/9 Ritchey-Chrétien
Cámara FLI Proline PL16803 (CCD), 16,7 Megapixel, Pixel size: 9 micron x 9 micron, Sensor size: 36,9 mm x 36,9 mm, Full Well: 100K
Montura ecuatorial Astro-Physics 1600GTO/AE
Enfocador FLI ATLAS large payload focuser
Sistema guiado Astrodon MMOAG Off-Axis Refractor
Cámara guiado Starlight Express Lodestar
Software de control TheSkyX professional edition
Automatización con Maxpilote
Procesado con Pixinsight y GIMP/GNU Linux
Tomas
23L - 19R - 13G - 12B de 720 s a bin x1
20 Ha 1.200 s a bin x1
Filtros FLI LRGB
Astrodon II Ha
Total tiempo de integración 20,07 h
Astrometry.net
Center (RA, hms):13h 05m 29.401s
Center (Dec, dms):-49° 28' 16.719"
Size:27.1 x 24.5 arcmin
Radius:0.304 deg
Pixel scale:0.207 arcsec/pixel
Orientation:Up is 91.6 degrees E of N
The Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631) is an edge-on barred spiral galaxy, which is also a starburst galaxy, and The Hockey Stick Galaxy (Galaxies?, NGC 4656/7) are a pair of interacting galaxies. Both lie in the constellation Canes Venatici, and are estimated to be about 30 million light years away.
This is a combination of previously shot color RGB data with the Atik 314L+ and hydrogen-alpha (Hα) data taken wit an Atik 414-EX monochrome camera and Atik narrowband filter. All were guided exposures with a Celestron Edge HD 9.25" scope at f/2.3 with Hyperstar. Preprocessing done in Nebulosity; stacking, channel combination, and processing done in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.
Image scale is 2.5"/pixel.
A team of astronomers has used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to survey the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82). Located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, this galaxy is relatively compact in size but hosts a frenzy of star formation activity. For comparison, M82 is sprouting new stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way galaxy.
Led by Alberto Bolatto at the University of Maryland, College Park, the team directed Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument toward the starburst galaxy's center, attaining a closer look at the physical conditions that foster the formation of new stars.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Bolatto (University of Maryland)
#NASA #STScI #jwst #jameswebbspacetelescope #NASAGoddard #NASAMarshall #astrophysics #space #galaxy
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...
The galaxy NGC 6946 is nothing short of spectacular. In the last century alone, NGC 6946 has experienced 10 observed supernovae, earning its nickname as the Fireworks Galaxy. In comparison, our Milky Way averages just one to two supernova events per century. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the stars, spiral arms, and various stellar environments of NGC 6946 in phenomenal detail.
We are able to marvel at NGC 6946 as it is a face-on galaxy, which means that we see the galaxy “facing” us, rather than seeing it from the side (known as edge-on). The Fireworks Galaxy is further classified as an intermediate spiral galaxy and as a starburst galaxy. The former means the structure of NGC 6946 sits between a full spiral and a barred spiral galaxy, with only a slight bar in its center, and the latter means it has an exceptionally high rate of star formation.
The galaxy resides 25.2 million light-years away, along the border of the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus (The Swan).
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Leroy, K.S. Long
An orange glow radiates from the center of NGC 1792, the heart of this stellar furnace. Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this intimate view of NGC 1792 gives us some insight into this galactic powerhouse. The vast swathes of tell-tale blue seen throughout the galaxy indicate areas that are full of young, hot stars, and it is in the shades of orange, seen nearer the center, that the older, cooler stars reside.
Nestled in the constellation of Columba (The Dove), NGC 1792 is both a spiral galaxy and a starburst galaxy. Within starburst galaxies, stars are forming at comparatively exorbitant rates. The rate of star formation can be more than 10 times faster in a starburst galaxy than in our galaxy, the Milky Way. When galaxies have a large reservoir of gas, like NGC 1792, these short-lived starburst phases can be sparked by galactic events such as mergers and tidal interactions. One might think that these starburst galaxies would easily consume all of their gas in a large forming event. However, supernova explosions and intense stellar winds produced in these powerful starbursts can inject energy into the gas and disperse it. This halts the star formation before it can completely deplete the galaxy of all its fuel. Scientists are actively working to understand this complex interplay between the dynamics that drive and quench these fierce bursts of star formation.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee; Acknowledgement: Leo Shatz
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-sees-a-ste...
In the last century alone, galaxy NGC 6946 has experienced 10 observed supernovae, earning its nickname as the Fireworks Galaxy. In comparison, our Milky Way averages just 1-2 supernova events per century. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the stars, spiral arms, and various stellar environments of NGC 6946 in phenomenal detail.
NGC 6946 is a face-on galaxy, which means that we see the galaxy facing us, rather than seeing it from the side (known as edge-on). The Fireworks Galaxy is further classified as an intermediate spiral galaxy and as a starburst galaxy. The former means the structure of NGC 6946 sits between a full spiral and a barred spiral galaxy, with only a slight bar in its center, and the latter means it has an exceptionally high rate of star formation.
The galaxy resides 25.2 million light-years away, along the border of the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus (The Swan).
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Leroy, K. S. Long
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2101a/
Description: This color-coded Chandra image (red/low energy, green/medium energy, and blue/high energy X-rays) shows the central region of the Andromeda Galaxy where a diffuse, X-ray emitting cloud of hot gas was discovered in the midst of a collection of point-like sources. The point sources are associated with binary star systems that contain a neutron star or black hole that is pulling matter away from a normal star. The diffuse X-ray cloud is due to gas that has accumulated in the central region and been heated to millions of degrees, probably by supernova explosions. The energy input from the supernovas could also be driving gas out of the central region. This process may affect both the shape and evolution of the galaxy.
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: c. 1999
Persistent URL: http://photography.si.edu/SearchImage.aspx?id=2506
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Collection: Normal Galaxies and Starburst Galaxies Collection
Gift line: NASA/UMass/Z.Li & Q.D.Wang
Accession number: m31
Seen here in incredible detail, thanks to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the starburst galaxy formally known as PLCK G045.1+61.1. The galaxy, which appears as multiple reddish dots near the center of the image, is being gravitationally lensed by a cluster of closer galaxies, also seen in the image.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us, creating stretched, magnified and sometimes multiple images of the lensed object. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
From 2009 to 2013, the European Space Agency’s Planck space observatory captured multiple all-sky surveys. In the course of these surveys, with complementary observations by the Herschel Space Observatory, Planck discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed, high-redshift galaxies in the night sky.
It was during the study of these Planck-Herschel selected sources using Hubble that the optical starlight emitted from this ultra-bright galaxy was found.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/hubble-makes-a-br...
Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Frye
M81 & M82; are two galaxies located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The last time we imaged these objects was over 5 years ago so they were due for a revisit. This image was made over two nights, both of which were curtailed by clouds.
Messier 81 (also known as NGC 3031 or Bode's Galaxy) is a grand design spiral galaxy that harbors a 70 million solar mass black hole in its nucleus.
Messier 82 (also known as NGC 3034, Cigar Galaxy, or M82) is a starburst galaxy and is about five times more luminous than the Milky Way with its central region about one hundred times more luminous.
15/05/2023
008 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -10°C
30/05/2023
018 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -10°C
55 x dark frames
050 x flat frames
100 x bias frames
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 2 hours and 10 minutes
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop
Equipment:
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: Zwo ASI 120 MC and SVBONY SV105 with ZWO USBST4 guider adapter
Imaging Camera: Zwo ASI 1600MC Pro with anti-dew heater
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Filter: Optolong L-Pro
Editor's note: all of these winter-themed images I've been posting are so beautiful, but they've made me feel cold! This bright image of some multi-million-degree star formation should take the chill from our bones...
A new Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Messier 82, or M82, shows the result of star formation on overdrive. M82 is located about 12 million light years from Earth and is the nearest place to us where the conditions are similar to those when the Universe was much younger with lots of stars forming.
M82 is a so-called starburst galaxy, where stars are forming at rates that are tens or even hundreds of times higher than in a normal galaxy. The burst of star birth may be caused by a close encounter or collision with another galaxy, which sends shock waves rushing through the galaxy. In the case of M82, astronomers think that a brush with its neighbor galaxy M81 millions of years ago set off this torrent of star formation.
M82 is seen nearly edge-on with its disk crossing from about 10 o'clock to about 4 o'clock in this image from Chandra (where low, medium, and high-energy X-rays are colored red, green, and blue respectively.) Among the 104 point-like X-ray sources in the image, eight so far have been observed to be very bright in X-rays and undergo clear changes in brightness over periods of weeks and years. This means they are excellent candidates to be black holes pulling material from companion stars that are much more massive than the Sun. Only a handful of such binary systems are known in the Local Group of galaxies containing the Milky Way and M31.
Chandra observations are also important in understanding the rapid rate at which supernovas explode in starburst galaxies like M82. When the shock waves travel through the galaxy, they push on giant clouds of gas and dust, which causes them to collapse and form massive stars. These stars, in turn, use up their fuel quickly and explode as supernovas. These supernovas produce expanding bubbles of multimillion-degree gas that extend for millions light years away from the galaxy's disk. These bubbles are seen as the large red areas to the upper right and lower left of the image.
Credits: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan/R.Kilgard et al.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/m82/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about 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!
The prototype of the starburst galaxies.
Discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1774, M82 is located approximately 12 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.
With an apparent dimension of 9x4 arc min and visual brightness of 8.4 mag It can easily be observed with a small telescope less than one degree apart from its close -and disturbing- companion Galaxy M81.
Narrow band and broadband data from NOAO Survey Programs 2012B-0201 and 2014B-0176 were combined to create this portrait.
In the original light frames, the field sourrounding the bright star adjacent to the galaxy was affected by a big streaking artifact due to satturated pixels in the CCD. I arbitrarily cloned this area to my own taste with nearby pixels.
Astrometry.net
Job 5544271:
Center (RA, Dec):(148.951, 69.686)
Center (RA, hms):09h 55m 48.352s
Center (Dec, dms):+69° 41' 08.453"
Size:15.3 x 8.67 arcmin
Radius:0.147 deg
Pixel scale:0.249 arcsec/pixel
Orientation:Up is 0.271 degrees E of N
This is some wonderful narrowband imagery of NGC 4449 captured by Hubble back in 2005. When I first found this, I thought for sure it had already been processed somewhere along the line but all I could find was a wideband mosaic, which is here if you want to check it out. Rob Gendler did his own take as well, more strongly emphasizing the narrowband but still utilizing the wideband. The wideband imagery is nice but wow, is there a lot of amazing emission structure revealed with the narrowband data isolated. There are simple, smallish spheres, larger complex clouds, and down the center, streaming outwards like a ruptured fissure, is some massive work being done by the prodigious number of young stars radiating fiercely along the seam.
Red here represents areas of H-alpha and [N II] while slightly bluer areas show where [O III] emissions are also present. Mediumband green data (F550M) was also available and I used this to bring the stars to slightly more natural, whiter colors. Rather than maximizing differentiation between emissions, this time I applied more "realistic" colors. There's so much overlapping that it hardly matters, anyhow.
Two HST Proposals are associated with these data:
NGC 4449: a Testbed for Starbursts in the Low- and High-Redshift Universe
Calibrating Star Formation: The Link between Feedback and Galaxy Evolution
Red: HST_10522_01_ACS_WFC_F660N_sci + HST_10585_03_ACS_WFC_F658N_sci
Green: HST_10585_03_ACS_WFC_F658N_sci + HST_10522_01_ACS_WFC_F550M_sci
Blue: HST_10522_01_ACS_WFC_F502N_sci1
North is NOT up. It is 47.5° counter-clockwise from up.
M82 Cigar Galaxy.
Starburst Galaxy in Ursa Major.
C11 reduced to F6.3
Atik 414X colour camera.
CLS filter.
Total of 3hrs exposures ranging from 90s to 210s.
Processed with nebulosity and Photoshop.
Galaxy Messier 82 (M82), also known as the Cigar Galaxy, is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds, and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions.
Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way Galaxy. The fierce galactic superwind generated from these stars compresses enough gas to make millions of more stars.
In M82, young stars are crammed into tiny but massive star clusters. These congregate by the dozens to make the bright patches, or "starburst clumps," in the central parts of M82. Most of the pale, white objects sprinkled around the body of M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually individual star clusters that contain up to a million stars. M82 is known to be gravitationally disturbed by its larger neighbor, Messier 81 (M81), a magnificent spiral galaxy.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/1876/news_release/2006-14
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);
Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI), and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)
This galaxy, called NGC 1569, sparkles with the light from millions of newly formed young stars. NGC 1569 is pumping out stars at a rate that is 100 times faster than the rate observed in our Milky Way Galaxy and has been almost continuously for the past 100 million years.
The core's centerpiece is a grouping of three giant star clusters, each containing more than a million stars. (Two of the clusters are so close they appear in this Hubble Space Telescope image as one grouping.) The clusters reside in a large, central cavity. The gas in the cavity has been blown out by the multitude of massive, young stars that already exploded as supernovas. These explosions also triggered a violent flow of gas and particles that is sculpting giant gaseous structures. The sculpted structure at lower right is about 3,700 light-years long.
Huge bubbles of gas, such as the two at left, appear like floating islands. They are being illuminated by the radiation from the bright, young stars within them.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/2424/news_release/2008-38
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and A. Aloisi (STScI/ESA)
NGC 5679 is a galaxy trio found in the constellation Virgo. Yellowish older stars can be seen in the central bulge of each galaxy. A bright central cluster of stars pinpoint each nucleus. Younger blue stars trace the spiral arms, along with pinkish nebulas that are illuminated by new star formation. Interstellar dust is silhouetted against the starry population. A pair of foreground stars inside our own Milky Way are at far right.
The center, slightly barred spiral is flanked by two smaller “starburst” galaxies, ones with high star-formation rates as evidenced by the many bright blue star clusters within them. It had been generally thought by scientists that tidal interaction among the three galaxies produced the compressed regions where the star formation burst forth.
In this view from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, however, no clear distortion in the galaxies’ shapes due to gravitational interaction is evident. In fact, spectroscopic measurements of the three objects indicate that all three lie at different distances and simply appear as a cluster due to their location along the same line of sight.
The system is also known as Arp 274, a designation from the noted U.S. astronomer Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a catalog of 338 unusual objects compiled in the years from 1962 through 1967. Many of these are multiple-galaxy systems.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/2523/news_release/2009-14
Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
This image shows the central section of galaxy Messier 94 (M94), which lies in the small northern constellation of Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs, about 16 million light-years away.
Within the bright ring around Messier 94 new stars are forming at a high rate, and many young, bright stars are present within it. This feature is called a starburst ring.
The cause of this peculiarly shaped star-forming region is likely a pressure wave going outward from the galactic center, compressing the gas and dust in the outer region. The compression of material means the gas starts to collapse into denser clouds. Inside these dense clouds, gravity pulls the gas and dust together until temperature and pressure are high enough for stars to be born.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1542a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
NGC 2146 is classified as a barred spiral because of its shape, but the most distinctive feature is the dusty spiral arm that has looped in front of the galaxy's core as seen from our perspective. The forces required to pull this structure out of its natural shape and twist it up to 45 degrees are colossal. The most likely explanation is that a neighboring galaxy is gravitationally perturbing it and distorting the orbits of many of NGC 2146's stars. It is probable that we are currently witnessing the end stages of a process that has been occurring for tens of millions of years.
NCG 2146 is undergoing intense bouts of star formation, to such an extent that it is referred to as a starburst galaxy. This is a common state for barred spirals, but the extra gravitational disruption that NGC 2146 is enduring no doubt exacerbates the situation, compressing hydrogen-rich nebulas and triggering stellar birth.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1134a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Images obtained with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in July 1997 reveal episodes of star formation that are occurring across the face of the nearby galaxy NGC 4214.
Located some 13 million light-years from Earth, NGC 4214 is currently forming clusters of new stars from its interstellar gas and dust. In the Hubble image, we can see a sequence of steps in the formation and evolution of stars and star clusters. The picture was created from exposures taken in several color filters with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
NGC 4214 contains a multitude of faint stars covering most of the frame, but the picture is dominated by filigreed clouds of glowing gas surrounding bright stellar clusters.
The youngest of these star clusters are located at the lower right of the picture, where they appear as about half a dozen bright clumps of glowing gas. Each cloud fluoresces because of the strong ultraviolet light emitted from the embedded young stars, which have formed within them due to gravitational collapse of the gas.
Young, hot stars have a whitish to bluish color in the Hubble image because of their high surface temperatures, ranging from 10,000 up to about 50,000 degrees Celsius. In addition to pouring out ultraviolet light, these hot stars eject fast "stellar winds," moving at thousands of kilometers per second, which plow out into the surrounding gas. The radiation and wind forces from the young stars literally blow bubbles in the gas. Over millions of years, the bubbles increase in size as the stars inside them grow older.
Moving to the left from the youngest clusters, we find an older star cluster, around which a gas bubble has inflated to the point that there is an obvious cavity around the central cluster.
The most spectacular feature in the Hubble picture lies near the center of NGC 4214. This object is a cluster of hundreds of massive blue stars, each of them more than 10,000 times brighter than our own Sun. A vast, heart-shaped bubble, inflated by the combined stellar winds and radiation pressure, surrounds the cluster. The expansion of the bubble is augmented as the most massive stars in the center reach the ends of their lives and explode as supernovae.
Deprived of gas, the cluster at the center of NGC 4214 will be unable to form further new stars, and its luminous stars will continue to go supernova and disappear. Elsewhere in the galaxy, however, gas will start to collapse and form yet another new generation of stars, even as the clusters visible today gradually fade away.
The faint stars covering most of the picture are much older than the bright blue supergiants, and show us that episodes of star birth have been occurring in NGC 4214 for billions of years.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/926/news_release/2000-01
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI)
This pair of galaxies in Ursa Major are about 12 million light years distant from us. M81 (on the right) is also known as "Bode's Galaxy". It is interacting with M82 (on the left), and the tidal forces it creates leads to a very high rate of star formation in M82.
This is a stack of 48 exposures of various lengths (some 300s, mostly 90s) shot from both Death Valley, CA and Joshua Tree, CA. A Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD were used to capture the images. Images were preprocessed in Nebulosity. Final processing was mostly in PixInsight, with some help from PS CS 5.1.
The image center is at:
RA: 09h 55m 31.6s Dec: +69° 19' 49.7", and it spans 56.5' by 34.5'.
NGC 4449 is a relatively nearby galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is classified as an irregular galaxy, as is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of the Milky Way. Both have distinctive bar-like shapes in their cores.
In this image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, hot bluish-white clusters of massive stars are seen scattered throughout the galaxy, interspersed with numerous dustier, reddish regions of current star formation. Massive dark clouds of gas and dust are silhouetted against the starlight.
NGC 4449 is experiencing unusually intense star formation. Such "starbursts" usually occur in the central regions of galaxies, but NGC 4449 has more widespread star formation activity, since the youngest stars are observed both in the nucleus and in streams surrounding the galaxy.
A "global" starburst like NGC 4449 resembles much older, "primordial" star-forming galaxies, which grew by merging with and accreting smaller stellar systems. It's likely that the current widespread starburst in NGC 4449 was triggered by interaction or merging with a smaller companion.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/2155/news_release/2007-26
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Aloisi (STScI/ESA), and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Three young, low-mass, star-forming galaxies highlighted by green boxes. The middle box encloses the galaxy dubbed 41028. 83 young, low-mass, starburst galaxies found in infrared images of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744 were studied. This composite incorporates images taken through three NIRCam filters (F200W as blue, F410M as green, and F444W as red). The F410M filter is highly sensitive to light emitted by doubly ionized oxygen — oxygen atoms that have been stripped of two electrons — at a time when reionization was well underway. Emitted as green light, the glow was stretched into the infrared as it traversed the expanding universe over billions of years. The cluster’s mass acts as a natural magnifying glass, allowing astronomers to see these tiny galaxies as they were when the universe was about 800 million years old.
Read more in this feature: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-uncovers-galaxy...
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Bezanson et al. 2024 and Wold et al. 2025
Image description: White and yellow galaxies of various sizes and shapes appear against the blackness of space. Two bright stars in our own galaxy display prominent six-spike diffraction patterns with bluish rays, visible at center left and lower left. Superimposed on the infrared image are, at right, three green diamonds, each representing a young galaxy investigated in greater detail.
An enlarged view of a single young starburst galaxy. One of the most interesting galaxies of the "little green galaxy" study, dubbed 41028 (the green oval at center), has an estimated stellar mass of just 2 million Suns — comparable to the masses of the largest star clusters in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Read more about this galaxy and the study in this feature: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-uncovers-galaxy...
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Bezanson et al. 2024 and Wold et al. 2025
Image description:
A pixelated green oval extending from upper left to lower right sits in the middle of a red and green checked background. A large white blob is visible at center right.
M81 (on the right) and M82 - a pair of galaxies we have haven't imaged for over two years so it was fun to re-visit them. This was the first proper deep sky imaging session of 2020 (a couple of earlier ones were curtailed by cloud). It was a beautifully clear night with reasonable seeing and everything was working properly so we managed to get nearly 4 hours of exposure on the target. The only slip-up was an inexplicable computer crash just after we completed the meridian flip. Re-booting and re-aligning cost us about 20 minutes but we still got plenty of good data and we didn't have to throw out any subs. Both galaxies are approximately 12 million light years away and can be found in the constellation Ursa Major. M82 (also known as NGC 3034, Cigar Galaxy or Messier 82) is a starburst galaxy and is about five times more luminous than the whole Milky Way with has a center one hundred times more luminous than our galaxy's center. The starburst activity is thought to have been triggered by interaction with neighboring galaxy M81. As the closest starburst galaxy to Earth, M82 is the prototypical example of this galaxy type. SN 2014J, a type Ia supernova, was discovered in the galaxy on 21 January 2014. M81 (also known as NGC 3031 or Bode's Galaxy) is a grand design spiral galaxy with a diameter of 90,000 light years, about half the size of the Milky Way. We calculated the distance between M81 and M82 to be approximately 129,300 light years.
More information here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_82
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_81
045 x 300 second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
050 x dark frames
050 x flat frames
100 x bias frames (subtracted from flat frames)
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 3 hours and 45 minutes
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop
Equipment:
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI120MC
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC Pro
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Light pollution filter
Galaxy MCG+07-33-027 is seen face-on in this Hubble Space Telescope image, and the galaxy’s spiral arms and the bright star-forming regions within them are clearly visible. The dazzling object to the right is a foreground star much closer to Earth.
The galaxy lies some 300 million light-years away from us in the direction of the constellation Hercules and is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high rate of star formation — a starburst. Normal galaxies produce only a couple of new stars per year, but starburst galaxies like MCG+07-33-027 can produce a hundred times more.
In order to form stars, a parent galaxy has to hold a large reservoir of gas, which is slowly depleted to spawn stars over time. For galaxies in a state of starburst, this intense period of star formation has to be triggered somehow, often due to a collision with another galaxy. MCG+07-33-027, however, appears different; while many galaxies are located within a large cluster of galaxies, MCG+07-33-027 is rather isolated. Thus, the triggering of the starburst was most likely not due to a collision with a neighboring or passing galaxy. Astronomers are still speculating about the cause.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1628a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and N. Grogin (STScI)
Spiral galaxy NGC 278 lies some 38 million light-years away in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. The galaxy is currently undergoing an immense burst of star formation. This flurry of activity is shown by the unmistakable blue-hued knots speckling the galaxy’s spiral arms, each of which marks a clump of hot newborn stars.
However, NGC 278’s star formation is somewhat unusual; it does not extend to the galaxy’s outer edges, but is only taking place within an inner ring some 6,500 light-years across. This two-tiered structure is visible in this image — while the galaxy’s center is bright, its extremities are much darker. This odd configuration is thought to have been caused by a merger with a smaller, gas-rich galaxy — while the turbulent event ignited the center of NGC 278, the dusty remains of the small snack then dispersed into the galaxy’s outer regions.
Whatever the cause, such a ring of star formation, called a nuclear ring, is extremely unusual in galaxies without a bar at their center, making NGC 278 a unique and intriguing sight.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1641a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast)
The galaxy NGC 3310 is a member of a rare class known as "starburst" galaxies, which blaze with extremely active star formation.
There are several hundred star clusters in NGC 3310, visible in this Hubble image as the bright blue, diffuse objects that trace the galaxy's spiral arms. Each of these star clusters represents the formation of up to about a million stars, a process that takes less than 100,000 years. In addition, hundreds of individual young, luminous stars can be seen throughout the galaxy.
Once formed, the star clusters become redder with age as the most massive and bluest stars exhaust their fuel and burn out. Measurements in this image of the wide range of cluster colors show that they have ages ranging from about one million up to more than one hundred million years. This suggests that the starburst "turned on" over 100 million years ago.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/1094/news_release/2001-26
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);
Acknowledgment: G.R. Meurer and T.M. Heckman (JHU), C. Leitherer, J. Harris, and D. Calzetti (STScI), and M. Sirianni (JHU)
A still picture taken from the SLOOH citizen astronomer project live webcam for 16th January 2014. This project uses the observatory high on Mount Teide on the island of Tenerife, Spain.
This is a screen snapshot taken of the webcam broadcast. A couple of days after taking this picture a Type 1a or white dwarf supernova was observed in this galaxy.
More about M82 at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_82
More details of the project at events.slooh.com/overview
Also just playing around with the idea of what does it mean to claim ownership of an image. My only contribution was to locate a live webcam, press on my keyboard and then trim the screenshot in GraphicConverter. Does that make it 'my' image? Would it have been mine if I had attached my camera to someone else's telescope or used my camera to photograph my computer screen?
Dwarf galaxy NGC 1140 has an irregular form, much like the Large Magellanic Cloud — a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. This small galaxy is undergoing what is known as a starburst. Despite being almost ten times smaller than the Milky Way, it is creating stars at about the same rate, with the equivalent of one star the size of the Sun being created per year. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy illuminated by bright, blue-white, young stars.
Galaxies like NGC 1140 — small, starbursting, and containing large amounts of primordial gas with significantly fewer elements heavier than hydrogen and helium than present in our Sun — are of particular interest to astronomers. Their composition makes them similar to the intensely star-forming galaxies in the early universe. And these early universe galaxies were the building blocks of present-day large galaxies like our galaxy, the Milky Way. But, as they are so far away, these early universe galaxies are much harder to study than NGC 1140.
The vigorous star formation will ultimately have a destructive effect on this dwarf galaxy, however. When its larger stars explode as supernovas, their gases will be blown into space at such velocities that they will escape the gravitational pull of the galaxy itself and be lost to intergalactic space. The ejection of gas from the galaxy thus means throwing out its potential for making future stars.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1529a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
🌌 NGC 1313 – The Topsy-Turvy Galaxy 🔭✨
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www.instagram.com/ale_motta_astrofotografia
Meet NGC 1313, a peculiar barred spiral galaxy located 15 million light-years away in the constellation Reticulum. Unlike most spiral galaxies, NGC 1313 appears distorted and asymmetrical, possibly due to past gravitational interactions or internal instabilities.
📍 Constellation: Reticulum 🌠
🌍 Distance: ~15 million light-years
💫 Type: Barred Spiral Galaxy (SBd)
🔭 Apparent Magnitude: 9.2
📏 Apparent Size: 9.1' × 6.9'
️ Coordinates (J2000): RA 03h 18m 16s | Dec -66° 29′ 56″
✨ Fun Facts:
NGC 1313 is a starburst galaxy, meaning it has intense star formation happening in its spiral arms. 💥🌟
Its irregular shape suggests it may have undergone a past galactic collision, yet no interacting neighbor has been found!
Home to numerous supernova remnants and ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), indicating the presence of black holes and neutron stars.
A chaotic beauty in deep space—what mysteries do you think NGC 1313 still hides? 🔭💭
Lights: 125x300" (LRGB)
Telescope: Planewave CDK24
Camera: QHY 600M
Filters: LRGB Astrodon
Processed: Pixinsight
Date: 11/10/2023
We spy something little, green, and hard to see.
Deep in this Webb image are little green galaxies, and they’re possibly the cause of an extreme cosmic makeover!
For its first billion or so years, the universe was immersed in a fog of neutral hydrogen gas. Today, this gas is ionized, or stripped of its electrons. Which cosmic objects are most responsible for this? One thing that can drive the ionization process is ultraviolet light, and one process that emits a lot of ultraviolet light is star formation.
The team searched images of a giant galaxy cluster, captured by Webb’s NIRCam instrument, for small galaxies of the right cosmic age that showed signs of extreme star formation, called starbursts. These galaxies are rare today, but were much more common when the universe was about 800 million years old (when reionization was well underway). In these Webb images, filters sensitive to the light of doubly ionized oxygen reveal these galaxies as tiny green blobs. Their light was originally emitted in the visible part of the spectrum in the early universe, but has been stretched into the infrared as it traversed the expanding universe and eventually reached Webb’s instruments. Next, scientists will verify that these low-mass starburst galaxies can account for all the ultraviolet light needed to convert the universe’s neutral hydrogen to its ionized form. Being able to detect them using Webb is an important first step.
Read more: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-uncovers-galaxy...
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Bezanson et al. 2024 and Wold et al. 2025
Image description: White and yellow galaxies of various sizes and shapes appear against the blackness of space. Two bright stars in our own galaxy display prominent six-spike diffraction patterns with bluish rays, visible at center left and lower left. Then 20 white diamonds sweep across the image. One diamond enlarges to reveal an image of a young, low-mass, star-forming galaxy. It looks like a green oval against a red and green checked background. The enlarged image then shrinks back, and the diamonds sweep away. The sequence loops.
At left is an enlarged infrared view of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 with three young, star-forming galaxies highlighted by green diamonds. The center column shows close-ups of each galaxy, along with their designations, the amount of magnification provided by the cluster’s gravitational lens, their redshifts (shown as z — all correspond to a cosmic age of about 790 million years), and their estimated mass of stars. At right, measurements from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec instrument confirm that the galaxies produce strong emission in the light of doubly ionized oxygen (green bars), indicating vigorous star formation is taking place.
Read more in this feature: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-uncovers-galaxy...
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Bezanson et al. 2024 and Wold et al. 2025
Image description: Three columns of images and information appear on a black background. At left is an infrared image showing white and yellow galaxies of various shapes and sizes, with three green diamonds superimposed on it. Light gray shading extends from each diamond to a square image in the center column. The top image is labeled 41038, the middle one is 41028, and at bottom is 41006. Each image shows a green blob on a red and green checked background, while the middle and bottom images include a large white blob as well. Next to each image is textual information. For the top image, it reads “Magnified 13 X, z = 6.8690, Stellar mass 10 million Suns”; for the middle image, “Magnified 11 X, z = 6.8697, Stellar mass 2 million Suns”; for the bottom image, “Magnified 3 X, z= 6.8717, Stellar mass 160 million Suns.” At right is a column of line graphs and colored bars representing a spectrum of each galaxy. The colored bars align with peaks in a squiggly line running horizontally across each graph. There is one blue bar, labelled “Hydrogen,” and two green bars, labeled “Oxygen,” in each graph. The vertical axis of the graphs reads “Brightness,” while the horizontal axis reads “Wavelength (µm),” with numbers ranging from 3.82 to 3.94.
White diamonds show the locations of 20 of the 83 young, low-mass, starburst galaxies found in infrared images of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744. This composite incorporates images taken through three NIRCam filters (F200W as blue, F410M as green, and F444W as red). The F410M filter is highly sensitive to light emitted by doubly ionized oxygen — oxygen atoms that have been stripped of two electrons — at a time when reionization was well underway. Emitted as green light, the glow was stretched into the infrared as it traversed the expanding universe over billions of years. The cluster’s mass acts as a natural magnifying glass, allowing astronomers to see these tiny galaxies as they were when the universe was about 800 million years old.
Read more in this feature: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-uncovers-galaxy...
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Bezanson et al. 2024 and Wold et al. 2025
Image description: White and yellow galaxies of various sizes and shapes appear against the blackness of space. Two bright stars in our own galaxy display prominent six-spike diffraction patterns with bluish rays, visible at center left and lower left. Superimposed on the infrared image are 20 white diamonds, each representing a young galaxy investigated in greater detail.
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa