Snowflakes in the
Universal Sky
Snowflakes in the Universal Sky
Like cascading snowflakes in the
interstellar night, the strange shapes
and textures of the stars in the
Snowflake Cluster abound in the Cone
Nebula. These patterns result from the
tumultuous unrest that accompanies the
formation of the open cluster of stars
known as NGC 2264. Bright stars from the
cluster dot the field and they soon heat
up and destroy the gas and dust
mountains in which they formed. One such
dust mountain is the famous Cone Nebula,
visible in the above image on the left,
pointing toward a bright star near the
center of the field.
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, P.
S. Teixeira (CfA)
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M51, whose name comes from being the
51st entry in Charles Messier's catalog,
is considered to be a classic example of
a spiral galaxy. At a distance of about
30 million light years from Earth, it is
also one of the brightest spirals in the
night sky. A composite image of M51,
also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy,
shows the majesty of its structure in a
dramatic new way through several of
NASA's orbiting observatories. X-ray
data from NASA's Chandra X-ray
Observatory reveals point-like sources
(purple) that are black holes and
neutron stars in binary star systems.
Chandra also detects a diffuse glow of
hot gas that permeates the space between
the stars. Optical data from the Hubble
Space Telescope (green) and infrared
emission from the Spitzer Space
Telescope (red) both highlight long
lanes in the spiral arms that consist of
stars and gas laced with dust. A view of
M51 with the GALEX telescope shows hot,
young stars that produce lots of
ultraviolet energy (blue).
The textbook spiral structure is thought
be the result of an interaction M51 is
experiencing with its close galactic
neighbor, NGC 5195, which is seen just
above (in the full size image).
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan
Univ./R. Kilgard; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech;
Optical: NASA/ESA/S. Beckwith & The
Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); IR:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Az/R.
Kennicutt
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Ghost Head Nebula
The Ghost Head Nebula, or NGC 2080, is a
star-forming region in the Large
Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of
our own Milky Way Galaxy. The nebula
spans about 50 light-years and this
image, taken by the Hubble Space
Telescope, is shown in representative
colors.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Mohammad
Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris)
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Bursting With Stars
and Black Holes
A growing black hole, called a quasar,
can be seen at the center of a faraway
galaxy in this artist's concept. Using
NASA's Spitzer and Chandra Space
Telescopes, astronomers discovered
swarms of similar quasars hiding in
dusty galaxies in the distant universe.
The new-found quasars belong to a
long-lost population that had been
theorized to be buried inside dusty,
distant galaxies, but were never
actually seen. While some quasars are
easy to detect because they are oriented
in such a way that their X-rays point
toward Earth, others are oriented with
their surrounding doughnut-clouds
blocking the X-rays from our point of
view. In addition, dust and gas in the
galaxy itself can block the X-rays.
Astronomers had observed the most
energetic of this dusty, or obscured,
bunch before, but the "masses," or more
typical members of the population,
remained missing. Using data from
Spitzer and Chandra, scientists
uncovered many of these lost quasars in
the bellies of massive galaxies between
9 and 11 billion light-years away.
Because the galaxies were also busy
making stars, the scientists now believe
most massive galaxies spent their
adolescence building stars and black
holes simultaneously.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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