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Lucas Newton for “Reconfigurable Multiband FarIR Notch Filter Employing Phase Change Material.” Co-authors: Varittha Sanphuang and Niru K. Nahar (advisor).
The destructive results of a mighty supernova explosion reveal themselves in a delicate blend of infrared and X-ray light, as seen in this image from NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton.
The bubbly cloud is an irregular shock wave, generated by a supernova that would have been witnessed on Earth 3,700 years ago. The remnant itself, called Puppis A, is around 7,000 light-years away, and the shock wave is about 10 light-years across.
The pastel hues in this image reveal that the infrared and X-ray structures trace each other closely. Warm dust particles are responsible for most of the infrared light wavelengths, assigned red and green colors in this view. Material heated by the supernovas shock wave emits X-rays, which are colored blue. Regions where the infrared and X-ray emissions blend together take on brighter, more pastel tones.
The shock wave appears to light up as it slams into surrounding clouds of dust and gas that fill the interstellar space in this region.
From the infrared glow, astronomers have found a total quantity of dust in the region equal to about a quarter of the mass of our sun. Data collected from Spitzers infrared spectrograph reveal how the shock wave is breaking apart the fragile dust grains that fill the surrounding space.
Supernova explosions forge the heavy elements that can provide the raw material from which future generations of stars and planets will form. Studying how supernova remnants expand into the galaxy and interact with other material provides critical clues into our own origins.
Infrared data from Spitzers multiband imaging photometer (MIPS) at wavelengths of 24 and 70 microns are rendered in green and red. X-ray data from XMM-Newton spanning an energy range of 0.3 to 8 keV (kiloelectron volts) are shown in blue.
Cradle of Cosmic Beginnings — The Embryo Nebula (NGC 1333)
In the quiet vastness of the Perseus Molecular Cloud, NGC 1333 — the Embryo Nebula — stirs with the breath of creation.
Glowing softly in hues of blue and amber, this reflection nebula shelters newborn stars wrapped in cocoons of cosmic dust. Their faint light dances through veils of interstellar mist, whispering stories of stellar infancy. Captured over five patient nights at Desert Bloom Observatory, this image gathers 88 frames of 600-second exposures — a tapestry woven from light and time. Every pixel speaks of formation, turbulence, and renewal — a glimpse into the universe’s eternal cycle of birth and becoming.
NGC 1333, located roughly 960 light-years away in the constellation Perseus, is a dense star-forming region within the Perseus Molecular Cloud Complex. It is dominated by reflection nebulosity — dust illuminated by young, hot stars — and marked by dark filaments and Herbig–Haro objects, where stellar jets collide with surrounding gas. The region teems with protostars, brown dwarfs, and protoplanetary disks, representing one of the most dynamic laboratories for studying early stellar evolution. The nebula’s distinctive structure resembles an embryo in a cosmic womb — a symbol of the universe’s relentless creativity.
Imaging Details:
Location: Desert Bloom Observatory, St. David, Arizona, USA
Telescope: Celestron Nexstar Evo 9.25" (235mm f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain)
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ-6R Pro Computerized Equatorial Mount S30300
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Guide Scope: ZWO 30F4 MiniScope
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI462MC Planetary Camera
Accessories: Starizona HyperStar 4 HS4-C9.25 White 10014, Starizona Telrad Reflex Sight, ZWO Electronic Automatic Focuser (EAF-5V), ZWO ASIAir Plus WiFi Controller, Optolong L-Pro 2” Multiband Pass Filter
Exposure: 88 frames × 600 sec (5 nights)
Processing: DeepSkyStacker, PixInsight, Adobe Photoshop
Captured with: Samsung Smartphone (control and monitoring)
This diagram highlights a slice of Saturn's largest ring. The ring (red band in inset photo) was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which detected infrared light, or heat, from the dusty ring material. Spitzer viewed the ring edge-on from its Earth-trailing orbit around the sun.
The ring has a diameter equivalent to 300 Saturns lined up side to side. And it's thick too -- about 20 Saturns could fit into its vertical height. The ring is tilted about 27 degrees from Saturn's main ring plane.
The Spitzer data were taken by its multiband imaging photometer and show infrared light with a wavelength of 24 microns.
The picture of Saturn was taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows infant stars "hatching" in the head of the hunter constellation, Orion. Astronomers suspect that shockwaves from a supernova explosion in Orion's head, nearly three million years ago, may have initiated this newfound birth.
The region featured in this Spitzer image is called Barnard 30. It is located approximately 1,300 light-years away and sits on the right side of Orion's head, just north of the massive star Lambda Orionis.
Wisps of green in the cloud are organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are formed anytime carbon-based materials are burned incompletely. On Earth, they can be found in the sooty exhaust from automobile and airplane engines. They also coat the grills where charcoal-broiled meats are cooked.
Tints of orange-red in the cloud are dust particles warmed by the newly forming stars. The reddish-pink dots at the top of the cloud are very young stars embedded in a cocoon of cosmic gas and dust. Blue spots throughout the image are background Milky Way along this line of sight.
This composite includes data from Spitzer's infrared array camera instrument, and multiband imaging photometer instrument. Light at 4.5 microns is shown as blue, 8.0 microns is green, and 24 microns is red.
Saturn's moon Titan is one of the most difficult objects to figure out true colors. To begin with, its surface is simply impossible to observe in the visible range because of the haze. Sufficiently transparent spectral bands begin only in the infrared, which means that only for the infrared it is possible to create a global map. Fortunately, we have Huygens landing probe, whose data was processed by Erich Karkoschka and Stefan E. Schröder [1]. The figure 6 was run through my program TrueColorTools (requiring some modifications along the way). The multiband images were interpolated and extrapolated (to blue range) there to a spectral cube and then convolved with the sensitivity of the human eye.
Having surface panoramas with a known color processing, all that is left is to extend that color to some infrared map. The best available option was a map from B. Seignovert et al. [2], which was first rid of artifacts and manually cleaned of pixilization. The Huygens landing site was selected from this map and matched to a previously processed projection of it in visible colors.
Now we need to find an unknown transformation over a piece of the infrared map so that it produces something as close as possible to the corresponding piece of the visible map, and then apply the found transformation to the entire infrared map. Assuming linearity of the transformation, it can be written in the form IR · X + C = VIS, where IR is a known 3-vector of some pixel color, X is an unknown 3x3 color transformation matrix, C is an unknown 3-vector and VIS is the resulted visible color 3-vector. The linearity assumption can be justified if the surface spectra in the visible and infrared are highly correlated with each other (which is true), but the infrared map used [2] contains nonlinear color transformations to highlight geologic features. Therefore, it was renormalized as follows before processing: R′ = G · B = 2.03/1.08 μm, G′ = R · B = 1.59/1.08 μm, B′ = B = 1.27/1.08 μm.
It turns out that we do not know the 3x3+3=12 parameters of X and C responsible for color conversion. They were found in 12-dimensional space as a result of optimization over all the landing site pieces pixels by the MNC method in Python. There was an attempt to add another matrix with quadratic form, but it failed: the result was too optimized and unrealistic.
Unfortunately, Huygens was only able to capture a small region of the surface, only one of two variations in the coloration of the dunes. Therefore, the unknown color of the second type of dunes had to be handpicked based on the assumption that there were no sharp brightness gradients on the surface, and run the optimization with this patch of handpicked influence. The color of the lakes is also handpicked, no suitable theoretical data has been found. Without these assumptions, the texture map cannot be completed. That's about as close to maximum color realism as we can achieve right now.
Lake delineations were obtained separately using radar data [3], which had noise and missing data. These regions were manually reconstructed from infrared data from Cassini, and the infrared map [2] itself was pre-warped to match the radar data (reprojected from the polar stereographic projection with another Python script).
Thanks to Pedro J. and Chara for their help and support!
History
August 2025: the Titan color map series was updated in accordance with the color processing updates in TrueColorTools (Tikhonov regularization for spectral reconstruction, color spaces management).
Contrast is slightly increased due to the darker presumed visible color of the second type of dunes.
January 2026: Did a little research on the color of liquid methane and ethane under Titan surface conditions. Turns out they're likely transparent, see this paper. The spherical albedo color was calculated from the refractive index "n" from [4] by integrating the Fresnel equations. The script makes the average color of the lakes calculated taking into account map distortions.
Info
Simple cylindrical projection, center longitude 0°.
Gamma corrected, albedo corrected.
Sources
[1] Karkoschka et al. (2016). Eight-color maps of Titan’s surface from spectroscopy with Huygens’ DISR
[2] B. Seignovert et al. (2019). Titan's global map combining VIMS and ISS mosaics (1.1). CaltechDATA
[4] Martonchik & Orton (1994). Optical constants of liquid and solid methane
Related
Saturn's moon Titan is one of the most difficult objects to figure out true colors. To begin with, its surface is simply impossible to observe in the visible range because of the haze. Sufficiently transparent spectral bands begin only in the infrared, which means that only for the infrared it is possible to create a global map. Fortunately, we have Huygens landing probe, whose data was processed by Erich Karkoschka and Stefan E. Schröder [1]. The figure 6 was run through my program TrueColorTools (requiring some modifications along the way). The multiband images were interpolated and extrapolated (to blue range) there to a spectral cube and then convolved with the sensitivity of the human eye.
Having surface panoramas with a known color processing, all that is left is to extend that color to some infrared map. The best available option was a map from B. Seignovert et al. [2], which was first rid of artifacts and manually cleaned of pixilization. The Huygens landing site was selected from this map and matched to a previously processed projection of it in visible colors.
Now we need to find an unknown transformation over a piece of the infrared map so that it produces something as close as possible to the corresponding piece of the visible map, and then apply the found transformation to the entire infrared map. Assuming linearity of the transformation, it can be written in the form IR · X + C = VIS, where IR is a known 3-vector of some pixel color, X is an unknown 3x3 color transformation matrix, C is an unknown 3-vector and VIS is the resulted visible color 3-vector. The linearity assumption can be justified if the surface spectra in the visible and infrared are highly correlated with each other (which is true), but the infrared map used [2] contains nonlinear color transformations to highlight geologic features. Therefore, it was renormalized as follows before processing: R′ = G · B = 2.03/1.08 μm, G′ = R · B = 1.59/1.08 μm, B′ = B = 1.27/1.08 μm.
It turns out that we do not know the 3x3+3=12 parameters of X and C responsible for color conversion. They were found in 12-dimensional space as a result of optimization over all the landing site pieces pixels by the MNC method in Python. There was an attempt to add another matrix with quadratic form, but it failed: the result was too optimized and unrealistic.
Unfortunately, Huygens was only able to capture a small region of the surface, only one of two variations in the coloration of the dunes. Therefore, the unknown color of the second type of dunes had to be handpicked based on the assumption that there were no sharp brightness gradients on the surface, and run the optimization with this patch of handpicked influence. The color of the lakes is also handpicked, no suitable theoretical data has been found. Without these assumptions, the texture map cannot be completed. That's about as close to maximum color realism as we can achieve right now.
Lake delineations were obtained separately using radar data [3], which had noise and missing data. These regions were manually reconstructed from infrared data from Cassini, and the infrared map [2] itself was pre-warped to match the radar data (reprojected from the polar stereographic projection with another Python script).
Thanks to Pedro J. and Chara for their help and support!
History
August 2025: the Titan color map series was updated in accordance with the color processing updates in TrueColorTools (Tikhonov regularization for spectral reconstruction, color spaces management).
Contrast is slightly increased due to the darker presumed visible color of the second type of dunes.
January 2026: Did a little research on the color of liquid methane and ethane under Titan surface conditions. Turns out they're likely transparent, see this paper. The spherical albedo color was calculated from the refractive index "n" from [4] by integrating the Fresnel equations. The script makes the average color of the lakes calculated taking into account map distortions.
Info
Simple cylindrical projection, center longitude 0°.
Gamma corrected, albedo corrected.
Sources
[1] Karkoschka et al. (2016). Eight-color maps of Titan’s surface from spectroscopy with Huygens’ DISR
[2] B. Seignovert et al. (2019). Titan's global map combining VIMS and ISS mosaics (1.1). CaltechDATA
[4] Martonchik & Orton (1994). Optical constants of liquid and solid methane
Related
Title
“Witch’s Broom in the Void: NGC 6960 (Western Veil Nebula)”
Description
Beneath the wing of the celestial swan, I captured the ghostly filaments of the Western Veil Nebula (NGC 6960) — a breath of cosmic memory from a star that died thousands of years ago. This delicate lacework of ionized hydrogen and oxygen drifts across space, the remnant of a supernova whose shock-wave, sweeping through the interstellar medium, carved and illuminated the shell we now see.
AstroBackyard
+3
Wikipedia
+3
Sky & Telescope
+3
At an estimated distance of ~2,100–2,400 light-years and spanning roughly 110 light-years across, this structure stretches nearly six moon-diameters across our sky.
NASA Science
+2
astro.nightsky.at
+2
The bright star 52 Cygni that appears embedded in the nebula is in fact a foreground star, giving us only the illusion of association.
Sky & Telescope
+1
Captured from the dark desert skies of the Desert Bloom Observatory (Bortle Class 2) on October 19, 20, 23, I used a Celestron NexStar EVO 9.25 f/10 and ZWO ASI2600MC PRO on a Sky-Watcher EQ-6R Pro mount, guided by a ZWO 30F4 Miniscope and ASI462 MC, with a ZWO ASIAir Plus controlling acquisition. A 2″ Optolong L-Pro multiband-pass filter was used to isolate emission detail, and exposures of 600 s each were stacked over 58 subs with DeepSkyStacker, then processed via PixInsight and Photoshop to bring out the fragile filament texture and subtle colour gradients.
The final frame reveals the interplay of glowing hydrogen (H-α) and doubly-ionised oxygen (O III) gas, sculpted by shock-fronts and cosmic currents into gossamer strands. It is a snapshot of stellar death and cosmic rebirth — a lament and a celebration, frozen in light.
May this image be a whisper from the universe: that even in destruction, there is beauty; even in silence, there is story.
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Contact us at 1877-259-4629 or www.quantum-wireless.com/store/index.php/manufacturers/di...
Fourth annual Irish Sound, Science and Technology Convocation (ISSTC 2014) at Maynooth University, 28-29 August 2014.
The infrared portrait of the Small Magellanic Cloud, taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, reveals the stars and dust in this galaxy as never seen before. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a nearby satellite galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, approximately 200,000 light-years away..
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The image shows the main body of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is comprised of the "bar" and "wing" on the left and the "tail" extending to the right. The bar contains both old stars (in blue) and young stars lighting up their natal dust (green/red). The wing mainly contains young stars. The tail contains only gas, dust and newly formed stars. Spitzer data has confirmed that the tail region was recently torn off the main body of the galaxy. Two of the tail clusters, which are still embedded in their birth clouds, can be seen as red dots..
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In addition, the image contains a galactic globular cluster in the lower left (blue cluster of stars) and emission from dust in our own galaxy (green in the upper right and lower right corners)..
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The data in this image are being used by astronomers to study the lifecycle of dust in the entire galaxy: from the formation in stellar atmospheres, to the reservoir containing the present day interstellar medium, and the dust consumed in forming new stars. The dust being formed in old, evolved stars (blue stars with a red tinge) is measured using mid-infrared wavelengths. The present day interstellar dust is weighed by measuring the intensity and color of emission at longer infrared wavelengths. The rate at which the raw material is being consumed is determined by studying ionized gas regions and the younger stars (yellow/red extended regions). The Small Magellanic Cloud, and its companion galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, are the two galaxies where this type of study is possible, and the research could not be done without Spitzer..
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This image was captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer (blue is 3.6-micron light; green is 8.0 microns; and red is combination of 24-, 70- and 160-micron light). The blue color mainly traces old stars. The green color traces emission from organic dust grains (mainly polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). The red traces emission from larger, cooler dust grains..
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The image was taken as part of the Spitzer Legacy program known as SAGE-SMC: Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally-Stripped, Low Metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud.