Heavyweight Stars Light Up Nebula NGC 6357

The small open star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357 in Sagittarius, about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Some of the stars in this cluster are extremely massive and emit intense ultraviolet radiation.

The brightest object in the picture is designated Pismis 24-1. It was once thought to weigh as much as 200 to 300 solar masses. This would not only have made it by far the most massive known star in the galaxy, but would have put it considerably above the currently believed upper mass limit of about 150 solar masses for individual stars.

However, Hubble Space Telescope high-resolution images of the star show that it is really two stars orbiting one another (inset pictures at top right and bottom right). They are estimated to each be 100 solar masses.

In addition, spectroscopic observations with ground-based telescopes further reveal that one of the stars is actually a tight binary that is too compact to be resolved even by Hubble. This divides the estimated mass for Pismis 24-1 among the three stars. Although the stars are still among the heaviest known, the mass limit has not been broken thanks to the multiplicity of the system.

The observations were performed by a team of astronomers led by J. Maíz Apellániz of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain. The team imaged Pismis 24-1 with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in April 2006.

The images of NGC 6357 were taken with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in April 2002.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain)

Hubble Finds Evidence for Dark Energy in the Young Universe

Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Riess (STScI)

Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that dark energy is not a new constituent of space, but rather has been present for most of the universe's history.
Dark energy is a mysterious repulsive force that causes the universe to expand at an increasing rate. Investigators used Hubble to find that dark energy was already boosting the expansion rate of the universe as long as nine billion years ago.
This picture of dark energy is consistent with Albert Einstein's prediction of nearly a century ago that a repulsive form of gravity emanates from empty space.
Data from Hubble provides supporting evidence to help astrophysicists to understand the nature of dark energy.
This will allow them to begin ruling out some competing explanations that predict that the strength of dark energy changes over time.

Cassini stares into the eye of monster storm on Saturn

NASA NEWS RELEASE
Posted: November 9, 2006

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has seen something never before seen on another planet -- a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's South Pole with a well-developed eye, ringed by towering clouds.

Cassini stares deep into the swirling hurricane-like vortex at Saturn's south pole, where the vertical structure of the clouds is highlighted by shadows. Such a storm, with a well-developed eye ringed by towering clouds, is a phenomenon never before seen on another planet.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The "hurricane" spans a dark area inside a thick, brighter ring of clouds. It is approximately 5,000 miles across, or two thirds the diameter of Earth.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there."

A movie taken by Cassini's camera over a three-hour period reveals winds around Saturn's South Pole blowing clockwise at 350 miles per hour. The camera also saw the shadow cast by a ring of towering clouds surrounding the pole, and two spiral arms of clouds extending from the central ring. These ring clouds, 20 to 45 miles above those in the center of the storm, are two to five times taller than the clouds of thunderstorms and hurricanes on Earth.

Eye-wall clouds are a distinguishing feature of hurricanes on Earth. They form where moist air flows inward across the ocean's surface, rising vertically and releasing a heavy rain around an interior circle of descending air that is the eye of the storm itself. Though it is uncertain whether such moist convection is driving Saturn's storm, the dark "eye" at the pole, the eye-wall clouds and the spiral arms together indicate a hurricane-like system.

These images of Saturn's south pole were taken by two different instruments on Cassini. The four monochrome images displayed here were acquired by the imaging science subsystem; the blue and red images in the bottom row were taken by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. The images are arranged in order of increasing wavelength in nanometers as follows: (top row) 460 nm, 752 nm, 728 nm; (bottom row) 890 nm, 2,800 nm, 5,000 nm.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/University of Arizona

Distinctive eye-wall clouds have not been seen on any planet other than Earth. Even Jupiter's Great Red Spot, much larger than Saturn's polar storm, has no eye or eye-wall, and is relatively calm at the center.

This giant Saturnian storm is apparently different than hurricanes on Earth because it is locked to the pole and does not drift around like terrestrial hurricanes. Also, since Saturn is a gaseous planet, the storm forms without an ocean at its base.

In the Cassini imagery the eye looks dark at light wavelengths where methane gas absorbs the light and only the highest clouds are visible.

"The clear skies over the eye appear to extend down to a level about twice as deep as the usual cloud level observed on Saturn," said Kevin H. Baines, of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This gives us the deepest view yet into Saturn over a wide range of wavelengths, and reveals a mysterious set of dark clouds at the bottom of the eye."
The Cassini data presented in this view appear to confirm a region of warm atmospheric descent into the eye of a hurricane-like storm locked to Saturn's south pole. The view shows temperature data from the Cassini spacecraft composite infrared spectrometer overlaid onto an image from the imaging science subsystem wide-angle camera.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/GSFC

Infrared images taken by the Keck I telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, had previously shown Saturn's South Pole to be warm. Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer has confirmed this with higher resolution temperature maps of the area. The spectrometer observed a temperature increase of about 4 degrees Fahrenheit at the pole. The instrument measured high temperatures in the upper troposphere and stratosphere, regions higher in the atmosphere than the clouds seen by the Cassini imaging instruments.

"The winds decrease with height, and the atmosphere is sinking, compressing and heating over the South Pole," said Richard Achterberg, a member of Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer team at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Observations taken over the next few years, as the South Pole season changes from summer to fall, will help scientists understand the role seasons play in driving the dramatic meteorology at the south pole of Saturn.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Light Echo from Star V838 Monocerotis

Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (STScI)

These are the most recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of an unusual phenomenon in space called a light echo. Light from a star that erupted nearly five years ago continues propagating outward through a cloud of dust surrounding the star. The light reflects or "echoes" off the dust and then travels to Earth.

Because of the extra distance the scattered light travels, it reaches the Earth long after the light from the stellar outburst itself. Therefore, a light echo is an analog of a sound echo produced, for example, when sound from an Alpine yodeler echoes off of the surrounding mountainsides.

The echo comes from the unusual variable star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon), located 20,000 light-years away on the periphery of our Galaxy. In early 2002, V838 Mon increased in brightness temporarily to become 600,000 times brighter than our Sun. The reason for the eruption is still unclear.

Hubble has been observing the V838 Mon light echo since 2002. Each new observation of the light echo reveals a new and unique "thin-section" through the interstellar dust around the star. The new images of the light echo were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in November 2005 (left) and September 2006 (right). Particularly noticeable in the images are numerous whorls and eddies in the interstellar dust, which are possibly produced by effects of magnetic fields.

In the Shadow of Saturn

Credit: SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

Markarian's Chain of Galaxies

Across the heart of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies lies a striking string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain. The chain, pictured above, is highlighted on the lower right with two large but featureless lenticular galaxies, M84 and M86, and connects through several large spiral to the upper left, including M88. The home Virgo Cluster is the nearest cluster of galaxies, contains over 2,000 galaxies, and has a noticeable gravitational pull on the galaxies of the Local Group of Galaxies surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. The center of the Virgo Cluster is located about 70 million light years away toward the constellation of Virgo. At least seven galaxies in the chain appear to move coherently, although others appear to be superposed by chance. The above image is just a small part of a mosaic dubbed the Big Picture taken by the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory, in California, USA. A mural of the Big Picture will be displayed at the newly renovated Griffith Observatory near Los Angeles, California.

Credit & Copyright: The Palomar-Quest Survey Team, CalTech

Hubble Exoplanet Search Field in Sagittarius

This is an image of one-half of the Hubble Space Telescope field of view in the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). The field contains approximately 150,000 stars, down to 30th magnitude. The stars in the Galactic disk and bulge have a mixture of colors and masses. The field is so crowded with stars because Hubble was looking across 26,000 light-years of space in the direction of the center of our galaxy.

Half of these stars are bright enough for Hubble to monitor for any small, brief and periodic dips in brightness caused by the passage of an exoplanet passing in front of the star, an event called a transit. Hubble took approximately 520 pictures of this field, at red and blue wavelengths, from Feb. 22-29, 2004. The green circles identify 9 stars that are orbited by planets with periods of a few days. Planets so close to their stars with such short orbital periods are called "hot Jupiters."

These are considered "candidate" exoplanets because most of them are too faint to allow for spectroscopic observations that would allow for a precise measure of the planet's mass. The Hubble observations allow for a robust statistical estimate of the possible "false positives," which suggests that at least 45 percent of the candidates must be genuine planets.

The bottom frame identifies one of two stars in the field where astronomers were able to spectroscopically measure the star's back-and-forth wobble due to the pull of the planet. The planet turns out to be less than 3.8 Jupiter masses.

The members of the SWEEPS science team are Kailash C. Sahu, Stefano Casertano, Howard E. Bond, Jeff Valenti, T. Ed Smith, Mario Livio, Nino Panagia, Thomas M. Brown, Will Clarkson and Stephen Lubow (Space Telescope Science Institute), Dante Minniti and Manuela Zoccali (Universidad Catolica de Chile), Nikolai Piskunov (Uppsala University), Timothy Brown (High Altitude Observatory), Alvio Renzini (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova), and R. Michael Rich (University of California at Los Angeles).

Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Sahu (STScI) and the SWEEPS Science Team

Distant Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Credit: NASA, ESA,R. Bouwens and G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz)

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows 28 of the more than 500 young galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 1 billion years old. The galaxies were uncovered in a study of two of the most distant surveys of the cosmos, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), completed in 2004, and the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), made in 2003.

Just a few years ago, astronomers had not spotted any galaxies that existed significantly less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The galaxies spied in the HUDF and GOODS surveys are blue galaxies brimming with star birth.

The large image at left shows the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, taken by the Hubble telescope. The numbers next to the small boxes correspond to close-up views of 28 of the newly found galaxies at right. The galaxies in the postage-stamp size images appear red because of their tremendous distance from Earth. The blue light from their young stars took nearly 13 billion years to arrive at Earth. During the journey, the blue light was shifted to red light due to the expansion of space.

Visible-Light and X-Ray Composite Image of Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657-556

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/M.Markevitch et al. Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al. Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

This composite image shows the galaxy cluster 1E 0657-556, also known as the "bullet cluster." This cluster was formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies, the most energetic event known in the universe since the Big Bang.

Hot gas detected by Chandra in X-rays is seen as two pink clumps in the image and contains most of the "normal," or baryonic, matter in the two clusters. The bullet-shaped clump on the right is the hot gas from one cluster, which passed through the hot gas from the other larger cluster during the collision. An optical image from Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxies in orange and white. The blue areas in this image depict where astronomers find most of the mass in the clusters. The concentration of mass is determined by analyzing the effect of so-called gravitational lensing, where light from the distant objects is distorted by intervening matter. Most of the matter in the clusters (blue) is clearly separate from the normal matter (pink), giving direct evidence that nearly all of the matter in the clusters is dark.

The hot gas in each cluster was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance, during the collision. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. Therefore, during the collision the dark matter clumps from the two clusters moved ahead of the hot gas, producing the separation of the dark and normal matter seen in the image. If hot gas was the most massive component in the clusters, as proposed by alternative theories of gravity, such an effect would not be seen. Instead, this result shows that dark matter is required.

Comparing the optical image with the blue emission shows that the most of the galaxies in each cluster are located near the two dark matter clumps. This shows that the galaxies in each cluster did not slow down because of the collision, unlike the hot gas.

N 180B - Large Magellanic Cloud

Credit: NASA ESA, and the Hubble Heritag Team (STScI/AURA)

This active region of star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), as photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, unveils wispy clouds of hydrogen and oxygen that swirl and mix with dust on a canvas of astronomical size. The LMC is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

This particular region within the LMC, referred to as N 180B, contains some of the brightest known star clusters. The hottest blue stars can be brighter than a million of our Suns. Their intense energy output generates not only harsh ultraviolet radiation but also incredibly strong stellar "winds" of high-speed, charged particles that blow into space. The ultraviolet radiation ionizes the interstellar gas and makes it glow, while the winds can disperse the interstellar gas across tens or hundreds of light-years. Both actions are evident in N 180B.

Also visible etched against the glowing hydrogen and oxygen gases are 100 light-year-long dust streamers that run the length of the nebula, intersecting the core of the cluster near the center of the image. Perpendicular to the direction of the dark streamers, bright orange rims of compact dust clouds appear near the bottom right of and top left corners of the image. These dark concentrations are on the order of a few light-years in size. Also visible among the dust clouds are so-called "elephant trunk" stalks of dust. If the pressure from the nearby stellar winds is great enough to compress this material and cause it to gravitationally contract, star formation might be triggered in these small dust clouds. These dust clouds are evidence that this is still a young star-formation region.

This image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1998 using filters that isolate light emitted by hydrogen and oxygen gas. To create a color composite, the data from the hydrogen filter were colorized red, the oxygen filter were colorized blue, and a combination of the two filters averaged together was colorized green. The amalgamation yields pink and orange hydrogen clouds set amid a field of soft blue oxygen gas. Dense dust clouds block starlight and glowing gas from our view point.

Orion's Inner Beauty

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ T. Megeath (University of Toledo)

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Orion nebula, our closest massive star-making factory, 1,450 light-years from Earth. The nebula is close enough to appear to the naked eye as a fuzzy star in the sword of the popular hunter constellation.

The nebula itself is located on the lower half of the image, surrounded by a ring of dust. It formed in a cold cloud of gas and dust and contains about 1,000 young stars. These stars illuminate the cloud, creating the beautiful nebulosity, or swirls of material, seen here in infrared.

This image shows infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Light with wavelengths of 8 and 5.8 microns (red and orange) comes mainly from dust that has been heated by starlight. Light of 4.5 microns (green) shows hot gas and dust; and light of 3.6 microns (blue) is from starlight.

NGC 2392 - Eskimo Nebula

Credit: Andrew Fruchter (STScI) et al., WFPC2, HST, NASA

In 1787, astronomer William Herschel discovered the Eskimo Nebula. From the ground, NGC 2392 resembles a person's head surrounded by a parka hood. In 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the Eskimo Nebula. From space, the nebula displays gas clouds so complex they are not fully understood. The Eskimo Nebula is clearly a planetary nebula, and the gas seen above composed the outer layers of a Sun-like star only 10,000 years ago. The inner filaments visible above are being ejected by strong wind of particles from the central star. The outer disk contains unusual light-year long orange filaments.

Pluto and Its Moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra

Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), and the HST Pluto

A pair of small moons that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope discovered orbiting Pluto now have official names: Nix and Hydra. Photographed by Hubble in 2005, Nix and Hydra are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto and are about two to three times farther from Pluto than its large moon, Charon, which was discovered in 1978.

The supernova remnant 1E0102.2-7219

Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, UC Berkeley

The supernova remnant 1E0102.2-7219 (inset) sits next to the emission-line nebula N76 in a bright, star-forming region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is located about 200,000 light years from Earth. Image on right shows glowing dust grains in three wavelengths of infrared radiation: 24 microns (red) measured by the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope; and 8.0 microns (green) and 3.6 micron (blue) measured by Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). The red bubble is the 120 Kelvin dust envelope around E0102 that is being heated by the shock wave created in the explosion of the 20-solar-mass progenitor star some 1,000 years ago. Most of the blue stars are in the SMC, though some are in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The closeup of E0102 on the left is a composite of the infrared observations by Spitzer (red), an optical image (0.5 micron oxygen emission line) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (green), and X-ray measurements by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite (blue). The X-ray ring is generated when the reverse shock slams into stellar material that was expelled during the explosion.

NGC 6164 - A Bipolar Emission Nebula

Credit & Copyright: Gemini Obs., AURA, NSF

How did a star form this beautiful nebula? In the middle of emission nebula NGC 6164-5 is an unusually massive star nearing the end of its life. The star, visible in the center of the above image and catalogued as HD 148937, is so hot that the ultraviolet light it emits heats up gas that surrounds it. That gas was likely thrown off from the star, possibly by its fast rotation, like a rotating lawn sprinkler. Expelled material might have been further channeled by the magnetic field of the star, creating the symmetric shape of the bipolar nebula. Several cometary knots of gas are also visible on the lower left. NGC 6164-5 spans about four light years and is located about 4,000 light years away toward the southern constellation Norma.

IC 443 - Supernova Remnant and Neutron Star

Credit: Chandra X-ray: NASA/CXC/B.Gaensler et al; ROSAT X-ray: NASA/ROSAT/Asaoka & Aschenbach; Radio Wide: NRC/DRAO/D.Leahy; Radio Detail: NRAO/VLA; Optical: DSS

IC 443 is typical of the aftermath of a stellar explosion, the ultimate fate of massive stars. Seen in this false-color composite image, the supernova remnant is still glowing, across the spectrum from radio (blue) to optical (red) to x-ray (green) energies -- even though light from the stellar explosion that created the expanding cosmic cloud first reached planet Earth thousands of years ago. The odd thing about IC 443 is the apparent motion of its dense neutron star, the collapsed remnant of the stellar core. The close-up inset shows the swept-back wake created as the neutron star hurtles through the hot gas, but that direction is not aligned with the direction toward the apparent center of the remnant. The misalignment suggests that the explosion site was offset from the center or that fast-moving gas in the nebula has influenced the wake. The wide view of IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish nebula, spans about 65 light-years at the supernova remnant's estimated distance of 5,000 light-years.

Gravitational Lens SDSS J1004+4112

Credit: ESA, NASA, K. Sharon (Tel Aviv University) and E. Ofek (Caltech)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first-ever picture of a group of five star-like images of a single distant quasar.

The multiple-image effect seen in the Hubble picture is produced by a process called gravitational lensing, in which the gravitational field of a massive object — in this case, a cluster of galaxies — bends and amplifies light from an object — in this case, a quasar — farther behind it.

Comet 73P /Schwassman-Wachmann 3

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/W. Reach (SSC/Caltech)

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the broken Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3 skimming along a trail of debris left during its multiple trips around the sun. The flame-like objects are the comet's fragments and their tails, while the dusty comet trail is the line bridging the fragments.

Comet 73P /Schwassman-Wachmann 3 began to splinter apart in 1995 during one of its voyages around the sweltering sun. Since then, the comet has continued to disintegrate into dozens of fragments, at least 36 of which can be seen here. Astronomers believe the icy comet cracked due the thermal stress from the sun.

The Spitzer image provides the best look yet at the trail of debris left in the comet's wake after its 1995 breakup. The observatory's infrared eyes were able to see the dusty comet bits and pieces, which are warmed by sunlight and glow at infrared wavelengths. This comet debris ranges in size from pebbles to large boulders. When Earth passes near this rocky trail every year, the comet rubble burns up in our atmosphere, lighting up the sky in meteor showers. In 2022, Earth is expected to cross close to the comet's trail, producing a noticeable meteor shower.

Astronomers are studying the Spitzer image for clues to the comet's composition and how it fell apart. Like NASA's Deep Impact experiment, in which a probe smashed into comet Tempel 1, the cracked Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3 provides a perfect laboratory for studying the pristine interior of a comet.

This image was taken from May 4 to May 6 by Spitzer's Multiband Imaging Photometer, using its 24-micron wavelength channel.

NGC 2440 - Cocoon of a New White Dwarf

Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a catepillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest of all! In the above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo's center. Our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf butterfly, but not for another 5 billion years. The false color image was post-processed by Forrest Hamilton.

Credit: H. Bond (STScI), R. Ciardullo (PSU), WFPC2,HST,NASA

Hubble Snaps Baby Pictures of Jupiter's "Red Spot Jr."

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers their most detailed view yet of a second red spot emerging on Jupiter. For the first time in history, astronomers have witnessed the birth of a new red spot on the giant planet, which is located half a billion miles away. The storm is roughly one-half the diameter of its bigger and legendary cousin, the Great Red Spot. Researchers suggest that the new spot may be related to a possible major climate change in Jupiter's atmosphere.

Credit: NASA,ESA, A. Simon-Miller (NASA/GSFC), and I. de Pater (University of California Berkeley)

NGC 2207 and IC 2163

Eyes in the Sky
 Credit: NASA, ESA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/D. Elmegreen (Vassar)

These shape-shifting galaxies have taken on the form of a giant mask. The icy blue eyes are actually the cores of two merging galaxies, called NGC 2207 and IC 2163, and the mask is their spiral arms. The false-colored image consists of infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (red) and visible data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (blue/green). 

NGC 2207 and IC 2163 met and began a sort of gravitational tango about 40 million years ago. The two galaxies are tugging at each other, stimulating new stars to form. Eventually, this cosmic ball will come to an end, when the galaxies meld into one. The dancing duo is located 140 million light-years away in the Canis Major constellation. 

The infrared data from Spitzer highlight the galaxies' dusty regions, while the visible data from Hubble indicates starlight. In the Hubble-only image (not pictured here), the dusty regions appear as dark lanes. 

The Hubble data correspond to light with wavelengths of .44 and .55 microns (blue and green, respectively). The Spitzer data represent light of 8 microns.

Molecular Cloud Barnard 68 - Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT Antu, ESO

Where did all the stars go? What used to be considered a hole in the sky is now known to astronomers as a dark molecular cloud . Here, a high concentration of dust and molecular gas absorb practically all the visible light emitted from background stars. The eerily dark surroundings help make the interiors of molecular cloudssome of the coldest and most isolated places in the universe. One of the most notable of these dark absorption nebulae is a cloud toward the constellation Ophiucus known as Barnard 68. That no stars are visible in the center indicates that Barnard 68 is relatively nearby, with measurements placing it about 500 light-years away and half al igth-year across. It is not known exactly how molecular clouds like Barnard 68 form, but it is known that these clouds are themselves likely placesfor new stars to form. It is possible to look right through the cloud in infrared light.

CG4 - A Ruptured Cometary Globule - Credit & Copyright: T. A. Rector (U. Alaska), T. Abbott, NOAO, AURA, NSF

Can a gas cloud eat a galaxy? It's not even close. The odd looking "creature" in the center of the photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule . This globule, however, has ruptured. Cometary globules are typically characterized by dusty heads and elongated tails . These features cause cometary globules to have visual similarities to comets, but in reality they are very much different. Globules are frequently the birthplaces of stars, and many show very young stars in their heads. The reason for the rupture in the head of this object is not completely known. The galaxy to the left of center is huge, very far in the distance, and only placed near CG4 by chance superposition.

Stephan’s Quintet Galaxy Cluster - Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Max Planck Institute

Stephan’s Quintet Galaxy Cluster

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Max Planck Institute

This false-color composite image of the Stephan’s Quintet galaxy cluster clearly shows one of the largest shock waves ever seen (green arc). The wave was produced by one galaxy falling toward another at speeds of more than one million miles per hour. The image is made up of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and a ground-based telescope in Spain.

Four of the five galaxies in this picture are involved in a violent collision, which has already stripped most of the hydrogen gas from the interiors of the galaxies. The centers of the galaxies appear as bright yellow-pink knots inside a blue haze of stars, and the galaxy producing all the turmoil, NGC7318b, is the left of two small bright regions in the middle right of the image. One galaxy, the large spiral at the bottom left of the image, is a foreground object and is not associated with the cluster.

The titanic shock wave, larger than our own Milky Way galaxy, was detected by the ground-based telescope using visible-light wavelengths. It consists of hot hydrogen gas. As NGC7318b collides with gas spread throughout the cluster, atoms of hydrogen are heated in the shock wave, producing the green glow.

Stephan's Quintet is located 300 million light-years away in the Pegasus constellation.

New Pluto's Moons - Credit Nasa/ESA

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of two new moons around the distant planet Pluto. The moons were first discovered by Hubble in May 2005, but the Pluto Companion Search team probed even deeper into the Pluto system with Hubble on Feb. 15 to look for additional satellites and to characterize the orbits of the moons. In the image, Pluto is in the center and Charon is just below it. The moons, provisionally designated S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, are located to the right of Pluto and Charon.

Kepler's Supernova Remnant - Credit Nasa/JPL-Caltech

Views from Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer

These images represent views of Kepler's supernova remnant taken in X-rays, visible light, and infrared radiation.

Each top panel shows the entire remnant. Each color in this image represents a different region of the electromagnetic spectrum, from X-rays to infrared light. The X-ray and infrared data cannot be seen with the human eye. Astronomers have color-coded those data so they can be seen in these images.

The bottom panels are close-up views of the remnant. In the bottom, center image, Hubble sees fine details in the brightest, densest areas of gas. The region seen in these images is outlined in the top, center panel.

View of Distant Galaxies - Courtesy Nasa/JPL-Caltech

The larger picture (top) depicts one-tenth of the Spitzer Wide-area Infrarede Extragalatic (SWIRE) survey field called ELAIS-N1. In this image, the bright blue sources are hot stars in our own Milky Way, which range anywhere from 3 to 60 times the mass of our Sun. The fainter green spots are cooler stars and galaxies beyond the Milky Way whose light is dominated by older stellar populations. The red dots are dusty galaxies that are undergoing intense star formation. The faintest specks of red-orange are galaxies billions of light-years away in the distant universe.

The three lower panels highlight several regions of interest within the ELAIS-N1 field.

The Tadpole galaxy (bottom left) is the result of a recent galactic interaction in the local universe. Although these galactic mergers are rare in the universe's recent history, astronomers believe that they were much more common in the early universe. Thus, SWIRE team members will use this detailed image of the Tadpole galaxy to help understand the nature of the "faint red-orange specks" of the early universe.

The middle panel features an unusual ring-like galaxy called CGCG 275-022. The red spiral arms indicate that this galaxy is very dusty and perhaps undergoing intense star formation. The star-forming activity could have been initiated by a near head-on collision with another galaxy.

The most distant galaxies that SWIRE is able to detect are revealed in a zoom of deep space (bottom right). The colors in this feature represent the same objects as those in the larger field image of ELAIS-N1.

Fire Within the Antennae Galaxies - Courtesy Nasa/JPL - Caltech/Z

Interacting Antennae Galaxies

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Z.Wang (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

This false-color image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals hidden populations of newborn stars at the heart of the colliding "Antennae" galaxies. These two galaxies, known individually as NGC 4038 and 4039, are located around 68 million light-years away and have been merging together for about the last 800 million years. The latest Spitzer observations provide a snapshot of the tremendous burst of star formation triggered in the process of this collision, particularly at the site where the two galaxies overlap.

Stellar Snowflake Cluster - Courtesy Nasa/JPL

Newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust, are revealed in this image of a section of the Christmas Tree Cluster from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, created in joint effort between Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) instruments.

The newly revealed infant stars appear as pink and red specks toward the center of the combined IRAC-MIPS image (left panel). The stars appear to have formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration that resembles the spokes of a wheel or the pattern of a snowflake. Hence, astronomers have nicknamed this the "Snowflake Cluster."

Star-forming clouds like this one are dynamic and evolving structures. Since the stars trace the straight line pattern of spokes of a wheel, scientists believe that these are newborn stars, or "protostars." At a mere 100,000 years old, these infant structures have yet to "crawl" away from their location of birth. Over time, the natural drifting motions of each star will break this order, and the snowflake design will be no more.

Cosmic Tornado - HH49/50 - Courtesy Nasa/JPL-Caltech

This "tornado," designated Herbig-Haro 49/50, is shaped by a cosmic jet packing a powerful punch as it plows through clouds of interstellar gas and dust.

The tornado-like feature is actually a shock front created by a jet of material flowing downward through the field of view. A still-forming star located off the upper edge of the image generates this outflow. The jet slams into neighboring dust clouds at a speed of more than 100 miles per second, heating the dust to incandescence and causing it to glow with infrared light detectable by Spitzer. The triangular shape results from the wake created by the jet's motion, similar to the wake behind a speeding boat.

HH 49/50 is located in the Chamaeleon I star-forming complex, a region containing more than 100 young stars. Most of the new stars are smaller than the sun, although some are more massive. Visible-light observations have found a number of outflows in the region, however most of those outflows have no infrared counterpart.

Andromeda Galaxy Nucleus - M31 - Courtesy Nasa/ESA

Eta Carinae Starforming Region - Courtesy Nasa/JPL-Caltech

Ring Nebula - Messier 57 - Courtesy Nasa/JPL-Caltech

Infra Red - Milky Way - Courtesy JPL/NASA

Core of Galaxy NGC 4314 - Courtesy Nasa/Hubblesite

Bluish-purple clumps of infant stars form a ring around the core of galaxy NGC 4314. It's unusual to find a galaxy with spiral arms full of young stars close to the core. Just outside the star-forming ring are two dark, wispy lanes of dust and an extra pair of blue spiral arms.

Nebula N83B - Courtesy Nasa/Esa

Intense radiation from newly born, ultra-bright stars in nebula N83B, also known as NGC 1748, carve out a large cavity in the gas surrounding them. The "bubble" of vanished gas is 25 light years in diameter.

The Southern Ring Nebula (NGC 3132) - Courtesy Nasa/Hubble Heritage

This planetary nebula, also known as the "Eight-Burst" Nebula because of its figure-8 appearance through amateur astronomer telescopes, is visible in the southern hemisphere. NGC 3132 is nearly half a light year in diameter and 2,000 light years away. Gases are moving away from the dying star at its center at a speed of nine miles per second (14.4 km/s).

The Ghost Head Nebula - NGC 2028 - Courtesy Nasa/Esa

This nebula is one of a chain of star-forming regions lying south of the 30 Doradus nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The red and blue light comes from regions of hydrogen gas heated by nearby stars. The green light comes from glowing oxygen, illuminated by the energy of a stellar wind. The white center shows a core of hot, massive stars.

Nebula DEM L 106 - Courtesy Nasa/Hubble Heritage

Within nebula DEM L 106 is a second nebula, N30B. The peanut-shaped cocoon of dust, called a reflection nebula, surrounds a cluster of young, hot stars. The bright, supergiant star at the top of the picture illuminates the dusty cocoon. Wispy filaments from DEM L 106 fill the rest of the image.

Boomerang Nebula

The Hubble Space Telescope has "caught" the Boomerang Nebula in these new images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes (or cones) of matter that are being ejected from a central star. Over the last 1,500 years, nearly one and a half times the mass of our Sun has been lost by the central star of the Boomerang Nebula in an ejection process known as a bipolar outflow. The nebula's name is derived from its symmetric structure as seen from ground-based telescopes. Hubble's sharp view is able to resolve patterns and ripples in the nebula very close to the central star that are not visible from the ground.

The Eagle Has Risen: Stellar Spire in the Eagle Nebula

A billowing tower of gas and dust rises from the stellar nursery known as the Eagle Nebula. This small piece of the Eagle Nebula is 57 trillion miles long (91.7 trillion km).

Supernova Remnant N 63A Menagerie

When a massive star exploded, spewing out its gaseous layers into a turbulent, star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, it left behind this chaotic cloud of gas and dust. The star that produced this supernova remnant was probably 50 times the mass of our Sun.

Cat's Eye Nebula - NGC 6543

The Cat's Eye Nebula, one of the first planetary nebulae discovered, also has one of the most complex forms known to this kind of nebula. Eleven rings, or shells, of gas make up the Cat's Eye.

Orion Nebula - Courtesy Nasa/Hubble Heritage

January 12, 2006—If beauty is in the details, this is one of the most beautiful pictures ever made.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured one of the most detailed astronomical images in history. Released yesterday, the original of this Orion Nebula image is a mosaic of a billion pixels—nearly 5,000 times sharper than the 212,521-pixel version on this page.

Despite their stunning depiction of stars still forming in wombs of gas and dust (as well as thousands of heretofore unseen stars), these details aren't simply in the service of beauty.

Cartwheel Galaxy

Image Left:

This false-color composite image shows the Cartwheel galaxy. Although astronomers have not identified exactly which galaxy collided with the Cartwheel, two of three candidate galaxies can be seen in this image to the bottom left of the ring, one as a neon blob and the other as a green spiral. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Planetary Nebula NGC 7293 - Courtesy Nasa/JPL

Color Composite of Solar Features - Courtesy Nasa/JPL

NGC 5128 (Centaurus-A) - Courtesy Nasa/JPL