#First image credit: Judy Schmidt

[celestialdaily]

The celestial object of the day is the Water Lily Nebula!

This pre-planetary nebula (the phase before becoming a planetary nebula) has been discovered to have organic hydrocarbons that constitute the base for life!

[thespacewirednews]

Blink and you’ll miss it 👀

The bright star taking center stage is a Wolf-Rayet star known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation of Carina (The Keel). Wolf-Rayet stars, named after astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet who discovered the first of these stars, are extremely hot and massive. Some can be around 20 times as massive as the Sun! However, their lifecycle is only a few hundred thousand years. In cosmic terms, that’s like the blink of an eye.

Wolf–Rayet stars typically lose half their mass in less than 100,000 years, and WR 31a is no exception. It will eventually end its life as a spectacular supernova, and the stellar material expelled from its explosion will later nourish a new generation of stars and planets.

The blue bubble that looks like it’s surrounding WR 31a and its unnamed companion is a Wolf-Rayet nebula. These typically round or ring-shaped interstellar clouds of dust and gas are created when speedy winds interact with the outer layers of hydrogen ejected by Wolf–Rayet stars.

Image description: A deep blue ring of dust circles around two bright stars with large diffraction spikes. Inside and outside the blue circle, stars of varying sizes dot the darkness of space.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

[spacenutspod]

One of the aspects of our study of the universe that fascinates me is the hunt for dark matter. That elusive material that doesn’t interact with much makes it difficult but not impossible to detect.  Gravitational lenses are one such phenomena that point to its existence indeed it allows us to estimate how much there is in galaxy clusters. A paper now suggests that observations of Jupiter by Cassini in 2000 suggest we may be able to detect it using planets too.  Dark matter is as its name suggests, mysterious and elusive. It is believed to account for about 27% of the universe’s mass and energy. However unlike ordinary matter – of the like that makes up you and me; the stars and planets, dark matter doesn’t emit, absorb or reflect light making it invisible and difficult to detect.  Its very existence is only inferred from the effect its gravity has on visible matter and the large scale structure of the universe.  The foundations for an interesting twist in the search for dark matter were laid in 1997 with the launch of the Cassini spacecraft from Cape Canaveral in the US. A seven year journey began that would take the probe from Earth to Saturn utilising gravitational slingshots from Venus, Earth and Jupiter. On board was a plethora of instruments to record data from radio waves through to extreme ultraviolet. En-route to Saturn, Cassini would be used to observe the planets using multiple wavelengths.  Of particular interest to the mission was using the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) to measure levels of hydrogen ions known as trihydrogen cations. They are a common ion found across the universe and are produced when molecular hydrogen interacts with cosmic rays,  extreme ultraviolet radiation, planetary lightning, or electrons accelerated in planetary magnetic fields.  The team explore how dark matter can also produce trihydrogen cation in the atmosphere of planets. Any dark matter that is captured by planetary atmospheres – in particular the ionosphere – and is consequently annihilated, can produce detectable ionising radiation.  Using data from Cassini VISM system, the team have searched for dark matter ionisation in the ionosphere of Jupiter. Due to Jupiter’s relatively cool core, it was identified as the most efficient dark matter captor in the Solar System allowing dark matter particles to be retained. The challenge was to identify the signals over the background ‘noise’ from other radiation so the team had to use data from 3 hours either side of Jovian midnight. Choosing this time meant solar extreme ultraviolet irradiation was at a minimum. They also focussed on lower latitudes, keeping away from the high magnetic fields around the polar regions.  This NIRCam composite image of Jupiter was created using three filters – F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green), and F150W2 (cyan), Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt. The detection of dark matter ionisation in the Jovian atmosphere reveals a whole new method for understanding this strange and mysterious cousin of normal matter. It is not just planets in our Solar System though, exoplanets are a new possible source especially those based in dark matter rich regions of the Galaxy.  Source : Search for Dark Matter Ionization on the Night Side of Jupiter with Cassini The post Dark Matter Could Cause Jupiter’s Night Side to Glow appeared first on Universe Today.

[everythingstarstuff]

Webb Telescope has taken this image of Wolf-Rayet 140 -- a star around 5,600 light-years away. The star is surrounded by what appear to be concentric rings of light radiating outward. This is WR140, a star of the rare Wolf-Rayet class, and this is the first time a Wolf-Rayet star has been so closely photographed. This star is in its death throes. It periodically ejects carbon, nitrogen and oxygen-rich dust from its outer layers, which is blown away and at the same time ionized by stellar winds, thus causing the rings around the star. Soon (in a few thousand years), the star will die in a spectacular supernova explosion. Scientists believe that wolf-rayet stars are the primary mode of dust production in space, and this image is part of a study of such dust production mechanisms. This is also the first time that dust ejection from a wolf-rayet star has been directly observed, thanks to JWST. JWST's raw data from the MAST portal, and my processing in GIMP. All data from JWST observations is available to the public if you want to see and produce images like this one here: https://mast.stsci.edu/.../Mashup/Clients/Mast/Portal.html Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Judy Schmidt

[apod]

2021 December 13

Meteors and Auroras over Iceland Image Credit & Copyright: James Boardman-Woodend; Annotation: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: What's going on behind that mountain? Quite a bit. First of all, the mountain itself, named Kirkjufell, is quite old and located in western Iceland near the town of Grundarfjörður. In front of the steeply-sloped structure lies a fjord that had just begun to freeze when the above image was taken -- in mid-December of 2012. Although quite faint to the unaided eye, the beautiful colors of background aurorae became quite apparent on the 25-second exposure. What makes this image of particular note, though, is that it also captures streaks from the Geminids meteor shower -- meteors that might not have been evident were the aurora much brighter. Far in the distance, on the left, is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while stars from our local part of the Milky Way appear spread across the background. Tonight the Geminids meteor shower peaks again and may well provide sky enthusiasts with their own memorable visual experiences.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap211213.html

[spaceexp]

Top Ten Discoveries from SOFIA

NASA & DLR - SOFIA Mission patch. May 18, 2020 Ten years ago, NASA’s telescope on an airplane, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, first peered into the cosmos. Since the night of May 26, 2010, SOFIA’s observations of infrared light, invisible to the human eye, have made many scientific discoveries about the hidden universe. SOFIA’s maiden flight, known as “first light,” observed heat pouring out of Jupiter’s interior through holes in the clouds and peered through the dense dust clouds of the Messier 82 galaxy to catch a glimpse of tens of thousands of stars forming. The observatory was declared fully operational in 2014 — the equivalent to the launch of a space telescope — but it began making discoveries even while completing the testing of its instruments and telescope.

Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA. Image Credit: NASA

The modified Boeing 747SP flies a nearly 9-foot diameter telescope up to 45,000 feet in altitude, above 99% of the Earth's water vapor to get a clear view of the infrared universe not observable by ground-based telescopes. Its mobility also allows it to capture transitory events in astronomy over remote locations like the open ocean. Because SOFIA lands after each flight, it can be upgraded with the latest technology to respond to some of most pressing questions in science. Using SOFIA, scientists detected the universe’s first type of molecule in space, unveiled new details about the birth and death of stars and planets, and explained what’s powering supermassive black holes, and how galaxies evolve and take shape, among other discoveries. Here are some of SOFIA’s top discoveries of the last decade: The Universe’s First Type of Molecule Found at Last SOFIA found the first type of molecule to form in the universe, called helium hydride. It was first formed only 100,000 years after the Big Bang as the first step in cosmic evolution that eventually led to the complex universe we know today. The same kind of molecule should be present in parts of the modern universe, but it had never been detected outside of a laboratory until SOFIA found it in a planetary nebula called NGC 7027. Finding it in the modern universe confirms a key part of our basic understanding of the early universe.​

Image above: Image of planetary nebula NGC 7027 with illustration of helium hydride molecules. In this planetary nebula, SOFIA detected helium hydride, a combination of helium (red) and hydrogen (blue), which was the first type of molecule to ever form in the early universe. This is the first time helium hydride has been found in the modern universe. Image Credits: NASA/ESA/Hubble Processing: Judy Schmidt. Newborn Star in Orion Nebula Prevents Birth of Stellar Siblings  The stellar wind from a newborn star in the Orion Nebula is preventing more new stars from forming nearby as it clears a bubble around it. Astronomers call these effects “feedback,” and they are key to understanding the stars we see today and those that may form in the future. Until this discovery, scientists thought that other processes, such as exploding stars called supernovas, were largely responsible for regulating the formation of stars. ​

Image above: The powerful wind from the newly formed star at the heart of the Orion Nebula is creating the bubble (black) and preventing new stars from forming in its neighborhood. At the same time, the wind is pushing molecular gas (color) to the edges, creating a dense shell around the bubble where future generations of stars can form. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Pabst et. al. Weighing a Galactic Wind Provides Clues to the Evolution of Galaxies SOFIA found that the wind flowing from the center of the Cigar Galaxy (M82) is aligned along a magnetic field and transports a huge amount of material. Magnetic fields are usually parallel to the plane of the galaxy, but the wind is dragging it so it’s perpendicular. The powerful wind, driven by the galaxy's high rate of star birth, could be one of the mechanisms for material to escape the galaxy. Similar processes in the early universe would have affected the fundamental evolution of the first galaxies.

Image above: Composite image of the Cigar Galaxy (also called M82), a starburst galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The magnetic field detected by SOFIA, shown as streamlines, appears to follow the bipolar outflows (red) generated by the intense nuclear starburst. The image combines visible starlight (gray) and a tracing of hydrogen gas (red) from the Kitt Peak Observatory, with near-infrared and mid-infrared starlight and dust (yellow) from SOFIA and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA; NASA/JPL-Caltech. Nearby Planetary System Similar to Our Own The planetary system around the star Epsilon Eridani, or eps Eri for short, is the closest planetary system around a star similar to the early Sun. SOFIA studied the infrared glow from the warm dust, confirming that the system has an architecture remarkably similar to our solar system. Its material is arranged in at least one narrow belt near a Jupiter-sized planet.​

Image above: Artist's illustration of the Epsilon Eridani system showing Epsilon Eridani b. In the right foreground, a Jupiter-mass planet is shown orbiting its parent star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our solar system's Kuiper Belt. The similarity of the structure of the Epsilon Eridani system to our solar system is remarkable, although Epsilon Eridani is much younger than our sun. SOFIA observations confirmed the existence of the asteroid belt adjacent to the orbit of the Jovian planet. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook. Magnetic Fields May Be Feeding Active Black Holes Magnetic fields in the Cygnus A galaxy are feeding material into the galaxy’s central black hole. SOFIA revealed that the invisible forces, shown as streamlines in this illustration, are trapping material close to the center of the galaxy where it is close enough the be devoured by the hungry black hole. However, magnetic fields in other galaxies may be preventing black holes from consuming material.

Image above: Artist’s conception of the core of Cygnus A, including the dusty donut-shaped surroundings, called a torus, and jets launching from its center. Magnetic fields are illustrated trapping the dust in the torus. These magnetic fields could be helping power the black hole hidden in the galaxy’s core by confining the dust in the torus and keeping it close enough to be gobbled up by the hungry black hole. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook. Magnetic Fields May Be Keeping Milky Way’s Black Hole Quiet This image shows the ring of material around the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. SOFIA detected magnetic fields, shown as streamlines, that may be channeling the gas into an orbit around the black hole, rather than directly into it. This may explain why our galaxy’s black hole is relatively quiet, while those in other galaxies are actively consuming material.

Image above: Streamlines showing magnetic fields layered over a color image of the dusty ring around the Milky Way’s massive black hole. The Y-shaped structure is warm material falling toward the black hole, which is located near where the two arms of the Y-shape intersect. The streamlines reveal that the magnetic field closely follows the shape of the dusty structure. Each of the blue arms has its own field that is totally distinct from the rest of the ring, shown in pink. Image Credits: Dust and magnetic fields: NASA/SOFIA; Star field image: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope. “Kitchen Smoke” Molecules in Nebula Offer Clues to Building Blocks of Life SOFIA found that the organic, complex molecules in the nebula NGC 7023 evolve into larger, more complex molecules when hit with radiation from nearby stars. Researchers were surprised to find that the radiation helped these molecules grow instead of destroying them. The growth of these molecules is one of the steps that could lead to the emergence of life under the right circumstances.

Image above: Combination of three color images of NGC 7023 from SOFIA (red & green) and Spitzer (blue) show different populations of PAH molecules. . (Credit: NASA/DLR/SOFIA/B. Croiset, Leiden Observatory, and O. Berné, CNRS; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer). Image Credits: Credit: NASA/DLR/SOFIA/B. Croiset, Leiden Observatory, and O. Berné, CNRS; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer. Dust Survives Obliteration in Supernova SOFIA discovered that a supernova explosion can produce a substantial amount of the material from which planets like Earth can form. Infrared observations of a cloud produced by a supernova 10,000 years ago contains enough dust to make 7,000 Earths. Scientists now know that material created by the first outward shock wave can survive the subsequent inward “rebound” wave generated when the first collides with surrounding interstellar gas and dust.

Image above: Illustration of a supernova as the powerful blast wave passes through its outer ring before a subsequent inward shock rebounds. SOFIA found the material produced from first outward wave can survive the second inward wave and can become seed material for new stars and planets. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Symbolic Pictures/The Casadonte Group. New View of Milky Way’s Center Reveals Birth of Massive Stars ​ SOFIA captured an extremely crisp infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Spanning a distance of more than 600 light-years, this panorama reveals details within the dense swirls of gas and dust in high resolution, opening the door to future research into how massive stars are forming and what’s feeding the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s core. Composite infrared image of the center of our Milky way Galaxy core.

Image above: Composite infrared image of the center of our Milky way Galaxy. It spans 600+ lightyears across and is helping scientists learn how many massive stars are forming in our galaxy’s center. New data from SOFIA taken at 25 and 37 microns, shown in blue and green, is combined with data from the Herschel Space Observatory, shown in red (70 microns), and the Spitzer Space Telescope, shown in white (8 microns). SOFIA’s view reveals features that have never been seen before. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Herschel. What Happens When Exoplanets Collide Known as BD +20 307, this double-star system is more than 300 light years from Earth likely had an extreme collision between rocky exoplanets. A decade ago, observations of this system gave the first hints of a collision when they found debris that was warmer than expected to be around mature stars that are at least one billion years old. SOFIA’s observations discovered the infrared brightness from the debris has increased by more than 10%,  a sign that there is now even more warm dust and that a collision occurred relatively recently. A similar event in our own solar system may have formed our Moon.

Image above: Artist’s concept illustrating a catastrophic collision between two rocky exoplanets in the planetary system BD +20 307, turning both into dusty debris. Ten years ago, scientists speculated that the warm dust in this system was a result of a planet-to-planet collision. Now, SOFIA found even more warm dust, further supporting that two rocky exoplanets collided. This helps build a more complete picture of our own solar system’s history. Such a collision could be similar to the type of catastrophic event that ultimately created our Moon. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook. SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 106-inch diameter telescope. It is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, DLR. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program, science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703, in Palmdale, California. Related link: SOFIA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/index.html Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Kassandra Bell/Felicia Chou. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

[andromeda1023]

N63A: Supernova Remnant in Visible and X-ray Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, Chandra; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt

What has this supernova left behind?   As little as 2,000 years ago, light from a massive stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) first reached planet Earth. The LMC is a close galactic neighbor of our Milky Way Galaxy and the rampaging explosion front is now seen moving out - destroying or displacing ambient gas clouds while leaving behind relatively dense knots of gas and dust.   What remains is one of the largest supernova remnants in the LMC: N63A.   Many of the surviving dense knots have been themselves compressed and may further contract to form new stars.   Some of the resulting stars may then explode in a supernova, continuing the cycle.   Featured here is a combined image of N63A in the X-ray from the Chandra Space Telescope and in visible light by Hubble. The prominent knot of gas and dust on the upper right -- informally dubbed the Firefox -- is very bright in visible light, while the larger supernova remnant shines most brightly in X-rays. N63A spans over 25 light years and lies about 150,000 light years away toward the southern constellation of Dorado.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191211.html?fbclid=IwAR1mlJwCJHR26StWmBDTUmbAb06cCAKZOlbLmzy2LkR93BN5lXcnqXZlGzQ

[starwalkapp]

APOD: 2018 December 30 - The Galaxy Tree First came the trees. In the town of Salamanca, Spain, the photographer noticed how distinctive a grove of oak trees looked after being pruned. Next came the galaxy. The photographer stayed up until 2 am, waiting until the Milky Way Galaxy rose above the level of a majestic looking oak. From this carefully chosen perspective, dust lanes in the galaxy appear to be natural continuations to branches of the tree. Last came the light. A flashlight was used on the far side of the tree to project a silhouette. By coincidence, other trees also appeared as similar silhouettes across the relatively bright horizon. The featured image was captured as a single 30-second frame in 2015 and processed to digitally enhance the Milky Way. Image Credit & Copyright: César Vega Toledano ; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt Text Credit: NASA, https://go.nasa.gov/2LLZcwp

[andromeda1023]

At first glance this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image seems to show an array of different cosmic objects, but the speckling of stars shown here actually forms a single body — a nearby dwarf galaxy known as Leo A. Its few million stars are so sparsely distributed that some distant background galaxies are visible through it. Leo A itself is at a distance of about 2.5 million light-years from Earth and a member of the Local Group of galaxies; a group that includes the Milky Way and the well-known Andromeda galaxy.

Astronomers study dwarf galaxies because they are very numerous and are  simpler in structure than their giant cousins. However, their small size makes them difficult to study at great distances. As a result, the dwarf galaxies of the Local Group are of particular interest, as they are close enough to study in detail.

As it turns out, Leo A is a rather unusual galaxy. It is one of the most isolated galaxies in the Local Group, has no obvious structural features beyond being a roughly spherical mass of stars, and shows no evidence for recent interactions with any of its few neighbours. However, the galaxy’s contents are overwhelmingly dominated by relatively young stars, something that would normally be the result of a recent interaction with another galaxy. Around 90% of the stars in Leo A are less than eight billion years old — young in cosmic terms! This raises a number of intriguing questions about why star formation in Leo A did not take place on the “usual” timescale, but instead waited until it was good and ready.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA;  Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1615a/

A case of suspended animation? by Hubble Space Telescope / ESA

[womeninspaceexploration]

Scenes from the STS-89/Mir 24 welcome ceremony

NASA ID: s89e5175

Date Created: 1998-03-04

S89-E-5175 (24 Jan 1998) --- This Electronic Still Camera (ESC) image shows astronaut Bonnie J. Dunbar, payload commander, shortly after Shuttle/Mir docking activities began. "Deja-vu" may have come to the mind of Dunbar as she boarded Russia's Mir Space Station. Dunbar was a member of the STS-71 crew -- the first United States aggregation to visit Mir -- along with cosmonaut Anatoliy Y. Solovyev, Mir-24 commander. The ESC view was taken at 22:37:23 GMT, on January 24, 1998.

Hubble Sees A Smiling Lens

NASA ID: GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000791

Date Created: 12/8/2017

In the center of this image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 — and it seems to be smiling. You can make out its two orange eyes and white button nose. In the case of this “happy face”, the two eyes are very bright galaxies and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing. Galaxy clusters are the most massive structures in the Universe and exert such a powerful gravitational pull that they warp the spacetime around them and act as cosmic lenses which can magnify, distort and bend the light behind them. This phenomenon, crucial to many of Hubble’s discoveries, can be explained by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In this special case of gravitational lensing, a ring — known as an Einstein Ring — is produced from this bending of light, a consequence of the exact and symmetrical alignment of the source, lens and observer and resulting in the ring-like structure we see here. Hubble has provided astronomers with the tools to probe these massive galaxies and model their lensing effects, allowing us to peer further into the early Universe than ever before. This object was studied by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) as part of a survey of strong lenses. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Judy Schmidt. Image Credit: NASA/ESA

[apod]

2021 May 26

The Outburst Clouds of Star AG Car Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI; Processing: Judy Schmidt; Text: Anders Nyholm

Explanation: What created these unusual clouds? At the center of this 2021 Hubble image sits AG Carinae, a supergiant star located about 20,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The star's emitted power is over a million times that of the Sun, making AG Carinae one of the most luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy. AG Carinae and its neighbor Eta Carinae belong to the scarce Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) class of stars, known for their rare but violent eruptions. The nebula that surrounds AG Car is interpreted as a remnant of one or more such outbursts. This nebula measures 5 light-years across, is estimated to contain about 10 solar masses of gas, and to be at least 10,000 years old. This Hubble image, taken to commemorate Hubble's 31st launch anniversary, is the first to capture the whole nebula, offering a new perspective on its structure and dust content. The LBVs represent a late and short stage in the lives of some supergiant stars, but explaining their restlessness remains a challenge to humanity's understanding of how massive stars work.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210526.html

[spaceexp]

Hubble's Frenzy of Stars

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch. March 5, 2018

Discovered in 1900 by astronomer DeLisle Stewart and here imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, IC 4710 is an undeniably spectacular sight. The galaxy is a busy cloud of bright stars, with bright pockets - marking bursts of new star formation - scattered around its edges. IC 4710 is a dwarf irregular galaxy. As the name suggests, such galaxies are irregular and chaotic in appearance, lacking central bulges and spiral arms - they are distinctly different from spirals or ellipticals. It is thought that irregular galaxies may once have been spirals or ellipticals, but became distorted over time through external gravitational forces during interactions or mergers with other galaxies. Dwarf irregulars in particular are important to our overall understanding of galactic evolution, as they are thought to be similar to the first galaxies that formed in the universe. IC 4710 lies roughly 25 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Pavo (the Peacock). This constellation also contains the third-brightest globular cluster in the sky, NGC 6752, the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, and six known planetary systems (including HD 181433, which is host to a super-Earth). The data used to create this image were gathered by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

For more information about Hubble, visit: http://hubblesite.org/ http://www.nasa.gov/hubble http://www.spacetelescope.org/ Image, Animation Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgements: Judy Schmidt/Text: European Space Agency/NASA/Karl Hille. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

[space--bot]

Milky Way Over the Spanish Peaks

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: That's not lightning, and it did not strike between those mountains. The diagonal band is actually the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while the twin peaks are actually called the Spanish Peaks -- but located in Colorado, USA. Although each Spanish peak is composed of a slightly different type of rock, both are approximately 25 million years old. This serene yet spirited image composite was meticulously created by merging a series of images all taken from the same location on one night and early last month. In the first series of exposures, the background sky was built up, with great detail being revealed in the Milky Way dust lanes as well as the large colorful region surrounding the star Rho Ophiuchus just right of center. One sky image, though, was taken using a fogging filter so that brighter stars would appear more spread out and so more prominent. As a bonus, the planets Mars and Saturn are placed right above peaks and make an orange triangle with the bright star Antares. Later that night, after the moonrise, the Moon itself naturally illuminated the snow covered mountain tops.

Taken from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Space--Bot is a computer program that searches for space images.

[starwalkapp]

#Repost @astronomypicturesdaily with @make_repost ・・・ The Galaxy Tree Image Credit & Copyright: César Vega Toledano ; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt Explanation: First came the trees. In the town of Salamanca, Spain, the photographer noticed how distinctive a grove of oak trees looked after being pruned. Next came the galaxy. The photographer stayed up until 2 am, waiting until the Milky Way Galaxy rose above the level of a majestic looking oak. From this carefully chosen perspective, dust lanes in the galaxy appear to be natural continuations to branches of the tree. Last came the light. A flashlight was used on the far side of the tree to project a silhouette. By coincidence, other trees also appeared as similar silhouettes across the relatively bright horizon. The featured image was captured as a single 30-second frame earlier this month and processed to digitally enhance the Milky Way. via Instagram http://bit.ly/2TpXzGZ

[space-777-girl]

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA,  Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

Shown here in a new image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the globular cluster NGC 1783. This is one of the biggest globular clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, in the southern hemisphere constellation of Dorado.

First observed by John Herschel in 1835, NGC 1783 is nearly 160,000 light-years from Earth, and has a mass around 170,000 times that of the sun.

Globular clusters are dense collections of stars held together by their own gravity, which orbit around galaxies like satellites. The image clearly shows the symmetrical shape of NGC 1783 and the concentration of stars towards the center, both typical features of globular clusters.

By measuring the color and brightness of individual stars, astronomers can deduce an overall age for a cluster and a picture of its star formation history. NGC 1783 is thought to be less than one and a half billion years old — which is very young for globular clusters, which are typically several billion years old. During that time, it is thought to have undergone at least two periods of star formation, separated by 50 to 100 million years.

This ebb and flow of star-forming activity is an indicator of how much gas is available for star formation at any one time. When the most massive stars created in the first burst of formation explode as supernovae they blow away the gas needed to form further stars, but the gas reservoir can later be replenished by less massive stars which last longer and shed their gas less violently. After this gas flows to the dense central regions of the star cluster, a second phase of star formation can take place and once again the short-lived massive stars blow away any leftover gas. This cycle can continue a few times, at which time the remaining gas reservoir is thought to be too small to form any new stars. Text credit: European Space Agency

[wigmund]

From SpaceTelescope.Org Picture of the Week; January 9, 2017:

A Black Hole of Puzzling Lightness

This image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a galaxy in the Virgo constellation. This camera was installed in 2002, and its wide field of view is double that of its predecessor, capturing superb images with sharp image quality and enhanced sensitivity that can be seen here.

The beautiful spiral galaxy visible in the center of the image is catchily known as RX J1140.1+0307, and it presents an interesting puzzle. At first glance, this galaxy appears to be a normal spiral galaxy, much like the Milky Way, but first appearances can be deceptive!

The Milky Way galaxy, like most large galaxies, has a supermassive black hole at its center, but some galaxies are centred on lighter, intermediate-mass black holes. RX J1140.1+0307 is such a galaxy — in fact, it is centerd on one of the lowest black hole masses known in any luminous galactic core. What puzzles scientists about this particular galaxy is that the calculations don’t add up. With such a relatively low mass for the central black hole, models for the emission from the object cannot explain the observed spectrum; unless there are other mechanisms at play in the interactions between the inner and outer parts of the accretion disc surrounding the black hole.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt