Hubble witnesses the ever-changing life of Spiral Galaxy IC 391

Click on the image for full resolution (2.6 MB)

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has captured this moment in the ever-changing life of a spiral galaxy called IC 391. Although these massive star cities appear static and unchanging, their stellar inhabitants are constantly moving and evolving, with new stars being born and old stars reaching the ends of their lives - often in spectacular fashion, with an immense supernova explosion that can be viewed from Earth.
On 3 January 2001, members of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory discovered such an explosion within IC 391 and it was named SN 2001B. This was a Type Ib supernova, which occurs when a massive star runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion and collapses, emitting vast amounts of radiation and creating a powerful shock wave. Hubble has contributed much to our understanding of supernovae in recent years, and it has made an extensive study of supernova 1987A, the brightest such stellar explosion to be seen from Earth in over 400 years.
IC 391 lies about 80 million light-years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis (the Giraffe) in the far northern part of the sky. The British amateur observer William Denning discovered it in the late nineteenth century, and described it as faint, small and round.
This picture was assembled from images taken with Hubble's Wide Field Channel on the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images through a blue filter (F435W) were coloured blue, those through a green filter (F555W) are shown as green and those through a near-infrared filter (F814W) are shown in red. The exposure times were 800 s, 700 s and 700 s respectively and the field of view is 2.1 by 1.4 arcminutes.
The full resolution image weighs 2.6 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

The new Long Wavelength Array: probing the Universe in meters!

Click on the image for full resolution

An innovative new radio telescope array under construction in central New Mexico will eventually harness the power of more than 13,000 antennas and provide a fresh eye to the sky. The antennas, which resemble droopy ceiling fans, form the Long Wavelength Array, designed to survey the sky from horizon to horizon over a wide range of frequencies. The University of New Mexico leads the project, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., provides the advanced digital electronic systems, which represent a major component of the observatory. The first station in the Long Wavelength Array, with 256 antennas, is scheduled to start surveying the sky by this summer. When complete, the Long Wavelength Array will consist of 53 stations, with a total of 13,000 antennas strategically placed in an area nearly 400 kilometers (248 miles) in diameter. The antennas will provide sensitive, high-resolution images of a region of the sky hundreds of times larger than the full moon. These images could reveal radio waves coming from planets outside our solar system, and thus would turn out to be a new way to detect these worlds. In addition to planets, the telescope will pick up a host of other cosmic phenomena, like cosmic flashes. These flashes can be anything from explosions on surfaces of nearby stars, deaths of distant stars, exploding black holes, or even perhaps transmissions by other civilizations. JPL scientists are working with multi-institutional teams to explore this new area of astronomy. The new Long Wavelength Array will operate in the radio-frequency range of 20 to 80 megahertz, corresponding to wavelengths of 15 meters to 3.8 meters (49.2 feet to 12.5 feet). These frequencies represent one of the last and most poorly explored regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The predecessor Long Wavelength Demonstrator Array was also in New Mexico. It was successful in identifying radio flashes, but all of them came from non-astronomy targets - either the sun, or meteors reflecting TV signals high in Earth's atmosphere. Nonetheless, its findings indicate how future searches using the Long Wavelength Array technology might lead to new discoveries. Radio astronomy was born at frequencies below 100 megahertz and developed from there. The discoveries and innovations at this frequency range helped pave the way for modern astronomy. Perhaps one of the most important contributions made in radio astronomy was by a young graduate student at New Hall (since renamed Murray Edwards College) of the University of Cambridge, U.K. Jocelyn Bell discovered the first hints of radio pulsars in 1967, a finding that was later awarded a Nobel Prize. Pulsars are neutron stars that beam radio waves in a manner similar to a lighthouse beacon. Long before Bell's discovery, astronomers believed that neutron stars, remnants of certain types of supernova explosions, might exist. At the time, however, the prediction was that these cosmic objects would be far too faint to be detected. When Bell went looking for something else, she stumbled upon neutron stars that were in fact pulsing with radio waves - the pulsars. Today about 2,000 pulsars are known, but within the past decade, a number of discoveries have hinted that the radio sky might be far more dynamic than suggested by just pulsars. The image above shows multiple antennas of the LWA-1 station of the Long Wavelength Array in central New Mexico, photographed at sunset. Each antenna stands about 1.5 meters (5 feet) high and about 2.7 meters (9 feet) across the base.
Credit: NASA/JPL
Image Credit: LWA Project (at UNM)

Image of M78 taken by the AAO's 1.2-meter UK Schmidt telescope

Click on the image to enlarge

Yet another beautiful view of M78 in Orion! Which image do you prefer? This one or the ESO's one below? This image was acquired by the remarkable Anglo-Australian Observatory's 1.2-meter UK Schmidt telescope, hence the wider field than the ESO's M78 picture. This AAO image was made for the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2).
Credit & Copyright: Mike Halderman/Caltech/Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2
http://www.mrh.org/dss.html

ESO's beautiful new image of the Reflection Nebula M78 in Orion

Click on the image to enlarge

This is a beautiful APOD picture of the reflection nebula M78 in Orion. This image is ESO's winner of its Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography competition. The image shows off amazing details within bluish M78 (center) embraced in dark, dusty clouds, along with a smaller reflection nebula in the region, NGC 2071 (top). Yellowish and even more compact, the recently discovered, variable McNeil's Nebula is prominent in the scene below and right of center. This image was based on data from ESO's WFI camera and 2.2-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile. It spans just over 0.5 degrees on the sky. That corresponds to 15 light-years at the estimated distance of M78.
Credit: ESO / Igor Chekalin

The Challenger Memorial Station at Meridiani Planum on Mars

Click on the image to enlarge

This image taken by the panoramic camera aboard the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the rover's empty lander, the Challenger Memorial Station, at Meridiani Planum, Mars. The image was acquired on the rover's 24 sol, or Martian day. This mosaic image consists of 12 color images acquired with the camera's red, green and blue filters. The color balance has been set to approximate the colors that a human eye would see. Opportunity is celebrating its seventh anniversary on the Red Planet, having landed on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 24, Pacific Time), for what was to be a 90-day mission.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10: recreating the early Universe?

Click on the image for full resolution

Stars are forming in Henize 2-10, a dwarf starburst galaxy located about 30 million light years from Earth, at a prodigious rate, giving the star clusters in this galaxy their blue appearance. This combination of a burst of star formation and a massive black hole is analogous to conditions in the early Universe. Since Henize 2-10 does not contain a significant bulge of stars in its center, these results show that supermassive black hole growth may precede the growth of bulges in galaxies. This differs from the relatively nearby universe where the growth of galaxy bulges and supermassive black holes appears to occur in parallel.
The combined observations from multiple telescopes has provided astronomers with a detailed new look at how galaxy and black hole formation may have occurred in the early universe. This image shows optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope in red, green and blue, X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in purple, and radio data from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array in yellow. A compact X-ray source at the center of the galaxy coincides with a radio source, giving evidence for an actively growing supermassive black hole with a mass of about one million times that of the sun.
Credits:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Virginia/A.Reines et al
Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF
Optical: NASA/STScI

Hubble captures the young and unusual globular cluster Palomar 1

Click on the image for full resolution (7.6 MB)

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a clear view of the unusual globular cluster Palomar 1, whose youthful beauty is a puzzle for astronomers. This faint and sparse object is very different from the more familiar brilliant and very rich globular clusters and had to wait until 1954 for its discovery by George Abell on photographs from the Palomar Schmidt telescope.
Globular clusters are tightly bound conglomerations of stars, which are found in the outer reaches of the Milky Way, in its so-called halo. They are amongst the oldest objects in a galaxy, containing very old stars and no gas, which means there is no possibility of newborn stars introducing some fresh blood into the cluster.
However, at 6.3 to 8 billion years old, Palomar 1 is a youngster in globular cluster terms - little more than half the age of most the other globulars in our Milky Way, which formed during our galaxy’s violent early history. However, astronomers suspect that globular youngsters, such as Palomar 1, formed in a more sedate manner. Possibly a gas cloud meandered around in the Milky Way’s halo until a trigger kick-started star formation. Another possibility is that the Milky Way captured the stellar group; perhaps it was adrift in the Universe before it was gravitationally attracted to our galaxy, or maybe it had a violent beginning after all and is the remnant of a dwarf galaxy that was devoured by the Milky Way.
Behind the sparsely populated Palomar 1 several background galaxies are seen and a few nearby bright foreground Milky Way stars are also visible. Together with Palomar 1 these objects make up an attractive "family portrait".
This picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images through orange (F606W, coloured blue) and near-infrared (F814W, coloured red) filters were combined. The exposure times were 1965 s per filter and the field of view is 3.0 arcminutes across.
The full resolution image weighs 7.6 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is studying Santa Maria crater

Click on the image for full panorama (4.1 MB)

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending the seventh anniversary of its landing on Mars investigating a crater called "Santa Maria," which has a diameter about the length of a football field.
This scene looks eastward across the crater. Portions of the rim of a much larger crater, Endurance, appear on the horizon. The panorama spans 125 compass degrees, from north-northwest on the left to south-southwest on the right. It has been assembled from multiple frames taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity during the 2,453rd and 2,454th Martian days, or sols, of the rover's work on Mars (Dec. 18 and 19, 2010).
Opportunity landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 24, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 25, Pacific Time) for a mission originally planned to last for three months. Since that prime mission, the rover has continued to work in bonus-time extended missions. Both Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.
By mid-January 2011, Opportunity reached a location at the southeastern edge of Santa Maria crater. The rover team developed plans for Opportunity to spend a few weeks investigating rocks at that site during solar conjunction, a period when communications between Earth and Mars are curtailed because the sun is almost directly between the two planets.
After completion of its work at Santa Maria, the rover will resume a long-term trek toward Endeavour.
This view combines images taken through three different Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). This "natural color" is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if we were there and able to see it with our own eyes. Seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see. The full panorama image weighs 4.1 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU

New image of M42 by ESO's MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope

Click on the image for higher resolution (5.6 MB)

This beautiful new image of the Orion Nebula was captured using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory, Chile. This image is a composite of several exposures taken through a total of five different filters. Light that passed through a red filter, as well as light from a filter that shows the glowing hydrogen gas, is coloured red. Light in the yellow–green part of the spectrum is coloured green, blue light is coloured blue and light that passed through an ultraviolet filter has been coloured purple. The exposure times were about 52 minutes through each filter.

Image Credit: ESO and Igor Chekalin

Martian crater Schiaparelli with low Sun

Click on the image to enlarge

The Schiaparelli Crater is an impact crater on Mars named after Giovanni Schiaparelli located near Mars' equator. It is 461 km in diameter and located at latitude 3° South and longitude 344°. A crater within Schiaparelli shows many layers that may have formed by the wind, volcanoes, or deposition under water.
Layers can be a few meters thick or tens of meters think. Recent research on these layers by scientists at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggest that ancient climate change on Mars caused by regular variation in the planet's tilt, may have caused the patterns in layers. On Earth, similar changes (astronomical forcing) of climate results in ice-age cycles.
Like the rendering below, this image was made mainly with the digital elevation models of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and rendered with 3DEM data converter and Terragen 2 software.
Credit: Kees Veenenbos

The Martian volcano Olympus Mons seen from the Lycus Sulci

Click on the image to enlarge

This is an awesome rendering of the volcano Olympus Mons seen from the Lycus Sulci. This image was made mainly with the digital elevation models of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and rendered with 3DEM data converter and Terragen 2 software.
Olympus Mons is a volcanic mountain on Mars. It is a little under three times as tall as Mount Everest and is the tallest known volcano in the Solar System. Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large volcanoes on Mars, having formed during Mars' Amazonian Period. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, similar in morphology to the large volcanoes making up the Hawaiian Islands. The volcano is about 600 km wide and stands nearly 22 km above the surrounding plains - a little over twice the height of Mauna Kea as measured from its base on the Pacific ocean floor! The summit of the mountain has six nested calderas (collapse craters) forming an irregular depression 72 x 91 km across and up to 3.2 km deep. The volcano's outer edge consists of an escarpment, or cliff, up to 8 km tall, a feature unique among the shield volcanoes of Mars. Olympus Mons covers an area approximately the size of Arizona.
Credit: Kees Veenenbos

Advanced propulsion for next generation of robotic lunar landers!

Click on the image to enlarge

In October 2010, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and White Sands Test Facility worked with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to successfully complete a series of thruster tests that will aid in maneuvering and landing the next generation of robotic lunar landers that could be used to explore the moon's surface and other airless celestial bodies. The test results will allow the Robotic Lander Project to move forward with robotic lander designs using advanced propulsion technology.
In this image, the Divert Attitude Control System thruster fired under vacuum conditions to simulate operation in a space environment. The tests mimicked the lander mission profile and operation scenarios.
Credit: NASA/MSFC

Stunning near-infrared starless image of M51 as seen by Hubble

Click on the image for full resolution

This image by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a dramatic view of the spiral galaxy M51, dubbed the Whirlpool Galaxy. Seen in near-infrared light, most of the starlight has been removed, revealing the Whirlpool's dust structure. This new image is the sharpest view of the dense dust in M51. The narrow lanes of dust revealed by Hubble reflect the galaxy's moniker, the Whirlpool Galaxy, as if they were swirling toward the galaxy's core.
Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Regan and B. Whitmore (STScI), R. Chandar (University of Toledo), S. Beckwith (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures gigantic Saturn's storm

Click on the image to enlarge

This spectacular image of a huge Saturn's storm was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on January 15, 2011. The image was acquired through IR, Green, and Blue filters.
Credit: JPL/NASA

Spiral Galaxy NGC 1345 by Hubble: Islands of Stars in the River

Click on the image for full resolution (3.4 MB)

The spiral galaxy NGC 1345 and its loose and ragged arms dominate this rich image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It is a member of the Eridanus Galaxy Cluster - a group of about 70 galaxies that lies 85 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (the River). This region of the night sky is well populated with bright galaxies, with the Fornax Cluster of galaxies also nearby on the celestial sphere, although the two clusters are actually separated by about 20 million light-years. Collectively, they are known as the Fornax Supercluster or the Southern Supercluster. John Herschel discovered NGC 1345 in 1835 from South Africa. He described it as small and very faint and it is still far from easy to see it even with quite a large amateur telescope, where it appears as a small, circular fuzz. Apart from the main galaxy that dominates the picture, lots more distant galaxies of many shapes and sizes can be seen in this image, some shining right through the foreground galaxy. NGC 1345 itself features an elongated bar extending from the nucleus and spiral arms that emanate outwards, making it a barred spiral type. Classifying galaxy shapes is an important part of astronomical research as it tells us much about how the Universe has evolved. But computers aren't really ideal for the task; people are much better at recognising shapes, which is why a citizen-science project called Galaxy Zoo: Hubble is asking members of the public to help sift through the vast archive of images and classify galaxies by type. If you would like to join the cause, there's a link to the project below.
This picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images taken through a blue filter (F435W) were coloured blue and images through a near-infrared filter (F814W) were coloured red. The exposure times were 17.5 minutes per filter in total and the field of view is 3.2 by 1.6 arcminutes.
The full resolution image weighs 3.4 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

Merger of NGC 2207 and IC 2163: a not so fatal attraction!

Click on the image for full resolution (5.5 MB)

In this image, two spiral galaxies, similar in looks to the Milky Way, are participating in a cosmic ballet, which, in a few billion years, will end up in a complete galactic merger - the two galaxies will become a single, bigger one. Located about 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major (the Great Dog), NGC 2207 - the larger of the two - and its companion, IC 2163, form a magnificent pair. English astronomer John Herschel discovered them in 1835.
The fatal gravitational attraction of NGC 2207 is already wreaking havoc throughout its smaller partner, distorting IC 2163's shape and flinging out stars and gas into long streamers that extend over 100,000 light-years. The space between the individual stars in a galaxy is so vast, however, that when these galaxies collide, virtually none of the stars in them will actually physically smash into each other.
This image was captured with the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC2) through three wide band filters (B, V, R). EFOSC2 has a 4.1 x 4.1 arcminute field of view and is attached to the 3.6-meter telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile.
The full resolution image weighs 5.5 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: ESO

Space shuttle Buran on launchpad 110/37 in November 1988

Click on the image to enlarge

Soviet space shuttle Buran on launchpad 110/37 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in November 1988.
Credit: Roscosmos

NASA's WISE beholds M81 and M82, a pair of dancing galaxies

Click on the image for full resolution

This image from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, features two stunning galaxies engaged in an intergalactic dance. The galaxies, Messier 81 and Messier 82, swept by each other a few hundred million years ago, and will likely continue to twirl around each multiple times before eventually merging into a single galaxy. The relatively recent encounter triggered a spectacular burst of star formation visible in both galaxies. Messier 81 (bottom of image) is a prototypical "grand design" spiral galaxy with its pronounced and well-defined arms spiraling into its core. At the wavelengths WISE sees, these beautiful arms show areas of compressed interstellar gas and dust, which go hand-in-hand with areas of increased star formation. The spiral density waves that create this compression and star formation have been enhanced by the close gravitational interaction with its partner galaxy, Messier 82, causing the arms to appear more prominent than in a similarly isolated spiral galaxy. Messier 82 (top of image) is also a spiral galaxy, however it is seen edge-on from our point of view. It was originally classified as an irregular galaxy, until 2005, when astronomers were able to tease out spiral structure in near-infrared images (similar to wavelengths that WISE sees). Viewed in visible wavelengths, this galaxy appears to have a long thin bar shape, hence its common name the Cigar Galaxy. Messier 82 is also a starburst galaxy, meaning it is currently undergoing a period of exceptionally high rates of star formation. This huge burst of activity was caused by its close encounter with Messier 81, whose gravitational influence caused gas near the center of Messier 82 to rapidly compress. This compression triggered an explosion of star formation concentrated near the core. The intense radiation from all of the newly formed massive stars creates a galactic "superwind" that is blowing massive amounts of gas and dust out perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy. This ejected material (seen as the orange/yellow areas extending up and down) is made mostly of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are common products of combustion here on Earth. It can literally be thought of as the smoke from the cigar. A third, smaller galaxy, NGC 3077, can be seen at lower left. This spiral galaxy belongs to the same group as Messier 81 and Messier 82 - a group that includes at least a dozen gravitationally linked galaxies. NGC 3077 is also experiencing a burst of new star birth, likely triggered by its interaction with Messier 81. Messier 81 and Messier 82 are both very bright galaxies and can be seen on a clear, dark night with binoculars in the northern constellation Ursa Major, which contains the Big Dipper. In visible light Messier 81 is one of the brightest galaxies that can be seen. Messier 82 is not as bright at visible wavelengths, but in infrared light it is by far the brightest galaxy in the entire night sky. This image was made from observations by all four infrared detectors aboard WISE. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is primarily light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is primarily emission from warm dust.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

The God Particle: a stunning video by Catherine with NASA files!

Catherine Laplace-Builhe created this breathtaking video with animation files from NASA. The musical theme is the second track from Angels & Demons score, which was composed by Hans Zimmer. Angels & Demons is a 2009 American mystery-thriller film directed by Ron Howard and based on Dan Brown's novel by the same name. It is the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. Filming took place in Rome, Italy, and the Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Ca.

Video Credit: Catherine Laplace-Builhe
Catherine is also on Facebook !
Images Credit: NASA

The Boomerang Nebula, -272C: the coldest place in the Universe?

Click on the image for full resolution

The Boomerang Nebula is a young planetary nebula and the coldest object found in the Universe so far. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is yet another example of how Hubble's sharp eye reveals surprising details in celestial objects.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a young planetary nebula known (rather curiously) as the Boomerang Nebula. It is in the constellation of Centaurus, 5000 light-years from Earth. Planetary nebulae form around a bright, central star when it expels gas in the last stages of its life.
The Boomerang Nebula is one of the Universe's peculiar places. In 1995, using the 15-metre Swedish ESO Submillimetre Telescope in Chile, astronomers Sahai and Nyman revealed that it is the coldest place in the Universe found so far. With a temperature of -272C, it is only 1 degree warmer than absolute zero (the lowest limit for all temperatures). Even the -270C background glow from the Big Bang is warmer than this nebula. It is the only object found so far that has a temperature lower than the background radiation.
Keith Taylor and Mike Scarrott called it the Boomerang Nebula in 1980 after observing it with a large ground-based telescope in Australia. Unable to see the detail that only Hubble can reveal, the astronomers saw merely a slight asymmetry in the nebula's lobes suggesting a curved shape like a boomerang. The high-resolution Hubble images indicate that 'the Bow tie Nebula' would perhaps have been a better name.
The Hubble telescope took this image in 1998. It shows faint arcs and ghostly filaments embedded within the diffuse gas of the nebula's smooth 'bow tie' lobes. The diffuse bow-tie shape of this nebula makes it quite different from other observed planetary nebulae, which normally have lobes that look more like 'bubbles' blown in the gas. However, the Boomerang Nebula is so young that it may not have had time to develop these structures. Why planetary nebulae have so many different shapes is still a mystery.
The general bow-tie shape of the Boomerang appears to have been created by a very fierce 500 000 kilometre-per-hour wind blowing ultracold gas away from the dying central star. The star has been losing as much as one-thousandth of a solar mass of material per year for 1500 years. This is 10-100 times more than in other similar objects. The rapid expansion of the nebula has enabled it to become the coldest known region in the Universe.
The image was exposed for 1000 seconds through a green-yellow filter. The light in the image comes from starlight from the central star reflected by dust particles.
Credit: ESA, NASA

Open Star Cluster NGC 7380 as seen by NASA's WISE telescope

Click on the image to enlarge

This picture of the open star cluster NGC 7380 is a mosaic of images from the WISE mission spanning an area on the sky of about 5 times the size of the full Moon. NGC 7380 is located in the constellation Cepheus about 7,000 light-years from Earth within the Milky Way Galaxy. The star cluster is embedded in a nebula, sometimes called the Wizard Nebula, which spans some 110 light-years. The stars of NGC 7380 have emerged from this star forming region in the last 5 million years or so, making it a relatively young cluster.
NGC 7380 was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787. Her brother, William Herschel, discovered infrared light in 1800. All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this image. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is primarily light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is primarily emission from warm dust.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The mission's principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula, and surroundings in Cassiopeia

Click on the image to enlarge

Seemingly adrift in a cosmic sea of stars and gas, this delicate, floating apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635: the Bubble Nebula. In this wide-angle view, the Bubble Nebula lies at the center of a larger complex of shocked glowing gas about 11,000 light-years distant in the fair constellation Cassiopeia. NGC 7635 really is an interstellar bubble, blown by winds from the brightest star visible within the bubble's boundary. The bubble's expansion is constrained by the surrounding material. About 10 light-years in diameter, if the Bubble nebula were centered on the Sun, the Sun's nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, would also be enclosed.
This color image is based on data coming from several photographic plates taken between 1991 and 1992 through the Palomar Observatory's 48-inch (1,2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II). The photographs were recorded on two type of glass photographic plates - one sensitive to red light and the other to blue and later they were digitized.
Credit: Davide De Martin
http://www.skyfactory.org/

A Delta IV Heavy rocket lifts off with classified payload NROL-26

Click on the image to enlarge

A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral on January 18, 2009. This was the first Delta IV Heavy mission for the NRO, carrying a classified intelligence-gathering satellite, designated NROL-26, aka USA-202. This was the third Delta IV Heavy launch in Delta program history. A Delta IV Heavy demonstration flight occurred in December 2004, and the first Air Force operational mission was launched in November 2007.
The ULA Delta IV Heavy vehicle featured a center common booster core with two strap-on common booster cores. Each common booster core was powered by the RS-68 cryogenic engine. An RL10B-2 cryogenic engine powered the second stage. Both engines are built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. The payload was encased by a 5-meter diameter (16.7-foot diameter) aluminum, tri-sector payload fairing. ULA constructed the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle in Decatur, Ala.
The payload for this mission was highly classified and the NRO is providing few details about the spacecraft. However, Aviation Week & Space Technology and the website GlobalSecurity.org have reported that NROL-26 is a 12,000 pound signal intelligance satellite with an antenna as wide as 350 feet.
From its geostationary perch, the satellite provides key intelligence on the communications of hostile parties such as Iran and al Qeada for the White House, NSA and the Pentagon.
Credit: Pat Coprkery / ULA

Hubble captures a streamer of gas stretching 300 000 light-years!

Click on the image to enlarge

In this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, an unusual, ghostly green blob of gas appears to float near a normal-looking spiral galaxy.
The bizarre object, dubbed Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object in Dutch), is the only visible part of a streamer of gas stretching 300 000 light-years around the galaxy, called IC 2497. The greenish Voorwerp is visible because a searchlight beam of light from the galaxy’s core has illuminated it. This beam came from a quasar, a bright, energetic object that is powered by a black hole. The quasar may have turned off in the last 200 000 years.
This Hubble view uncovers a pocket of star clusters, the yellowish-orange area at the tip of Hanny's Voorwerp. The star clusters are confined to an area that is a few thousand light-years wide. The youngest stars are a couple of million years old. The Voorwerp is the size of the Milky Way, and its bright green colour is from glowing oxygen.
The image was made by combining data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) onboard Hubble, with data from the WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, USA. The ACS exposures were taken 12 April 2010; the WFC3 data, 4 April 2010.
Credit: NASA, ESA, William Keel (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), and the Galaxy Zoo team

Space Shuttle Enterprise First Historical Appearance: May 1, 1979

Click on the image to enlarge

Space shuttle Enterprise made its first appearance mated to supportive propellant containers/boosters cluster, as it was rolled from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center en route to the launch pad, some 3.5 miles away, on May 1, 1979. Enterprise underwent several weeks of fit and function checks on the pad in preparation for STS-1, on which its sister craft Columbia took astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen into space for a 54-hour test mission.
Credit: NASA

ESA's SMART-1 ion engine: 39-day trips to Mars in sights!

Click on the image to enlarge

SMART-1 was the European Space Agency's first mission to the Moon. SMART-1 was used to test solar electric propulsion and other deep-space technologies, while performing scientific observations of the Moon. SMART-1's primary propulsion system hearkens to Star Wars (the movie) technology! Remember the Galactic Empire's grey and black T.I.E fighters? Well, T.I.E stands for Twin Ion Engine. SMART-1 traveled the full distance and maneuvered for two years on a Xenon ion engine rather than a traditional rocket thruster. In contrast to a traditional rocket which directs a chemical explosion out of a nozzle to generate thrust, the ion engine strips electrons from Xenon gas, and then uses an electrostatic gun (a high-tech cousin to the one in your tube TV) to accelerate the ions out the back of the craft. While the volume of ionized gas is much smaller than what a chemical rocket would expel, the velocity of the ejected matter is over ten times greater, and there is much less wasted heat and energy. So while the thrust per second is lower, the total thrust can be many times greater for the long-burning ion engine.
SMART-1 had on board a range of instruments developed by international partnerships that are designed for studying the lunar surface and for carrying out science during the cruise phase in transit to the Moon. The mission ended on 3 September 2006 when the spacecraft, in a planned manoeuvre, impacted the lunar surface in the Lacus Excellentiae region. The ion drive propulsion is a highly efficient way to travel long distances through space and ESA plan to use this technology in future missions.
Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars!
Credit: ESA

There's so many different worlds, so many different suns...

Click on the image for full resolution

Artist's representation of a rocky moon orbiting a gas planet in a binary star system. Future missions to explore alien worlds could end up in solar systems quite different from our own.
Although it looks like science-fiction, this vision of sunset on an alien world is based on fact - the discovery in 2005 of a hot, Jupiter-sized planet orbiting in triple star system HD 188753. Only 149 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, HD 188553's massive planet was detected by astronomer Maciej Konacki after analyzing detailed spectroscopic data from the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The large planet itself is depicted at the upper left in this imagined view from the well-illuminated surface of a hypothetical rocky moon. From this perspective, the closest, hottest and most massive star in the triple system, a star only a little hotter than the Sun, has set below distant peaks. The two other suns nearing the horizon are both cooler and farther from the large planet. While other hot, jupiter-like planets are known to orbit nearby stars, the "crowded" multiple star nature of this system challenges current theories of planet formation.
Credit: JPL/NASA

NASA's vision of manned Mars exploration: more than a dream?

Click on the image for full resolution (6.6 MB)

In this artist's concept of a future Mars mission, two explorers stop to inspect a robotic lander and its small rover after driving a short distance from their landing site. This stop also allows the crew to check out the life support systems of their rover and space suits within walking distance of the base.
The Vision for Space Exploration calls for NASA to return to the Moon and eventually explore Mars and beyond.
The full resolution image weighs 6.6 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings, SAIC

Edge-on Galaxy NGC 5866 and dust lane captured by Hubble

Click on the image for full resolution (3.5 MB)

This is a unique NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope view of the disk galaxy NGC 5866 tilted nearly edge-on to our line-of-sight. This image was obtained using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Hubble's sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing the galaxy into two halves. The image highlights the galaxy's structure: a subtle, reddish bulge surrounding a bright nucleus, a blue disk of stars running parallel to the dust lane, and a transparent outer halo. Some faint, wispy trails of dust can be seen meandering away from the disk of the galaxy out into the bulge and inner halo of the galaxy. The outer halo is dotted with numerous gravitationally bound clusters of nearly a million stars each, known as globular clusters. Background galaxies that are millions to billions of light-years farther away than NGC 5866 are also seen through the halo.
The full resolution image weighs 3.5 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The magic of illumination geometry: Saturn's rings and shadows

Click on the image to enlarge

The shadows of Saturn's rings cast onto the planet appear as a thin band at the equator in this image taken as the planet approached its August 2009 equinox. The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun's angle to the ringplane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and to cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn's equinox which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. Before and after equinox, Cassini's cameras have spotted not only the predictable shadows of some of Saturn's moons, but also the shadows of newly revealed vertical structures in the rings themselves. For an earlier view of the rings' wide shadows draped high on the northern hemisphere. The planet's southern hemisphere can be seen through the transparent D ring in the lower right of the image. The rings have been brightened by a factor of 9.5 relative to the planet to enhance visibility. This view looks toward the northern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 30 degrees above the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 18, 2009 at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 122 kilometers (76 miles) per pixel.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

ESO's VISTA captures stunning view of star formation region M8

Click on the image for full resolution (11.7 MB)

This new infrared view of the star formation region Messier 8, often called the Lagoon Nebula, was captured by the VISTA telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. This colour picture was created from images taken through J, H and Ks near-infrared filters, and which were acquired as part of a huge survey of the central parts of the Milky Way. The field of view is about 34 by 15 arcminutes.
The full resolution image weighs 11.7 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: ESO/VVV
Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Magellan and Arecibo teamed up for the sharpest view of Venus

Click on the image for full resolution (4.5 MB)

This hemispheric view of Venus was created using more than a decade of radar investigations culminating in the 1990-1994 Magellan mission, and is centered on the planet's North Pole. The Magellan spacecraft imaged more than 98 percent of the planet Venus and a mosaic of the Magellan images (most with illumination from the west) forms the image base. Gaps in the Magellan coverage were filled with images from the Earth-based Arecibo radar in a region centered roughly on 0 degree latitude and longitude, and with a neutral tone elsewhere (primarily near the south pole). This composite image was processed to improve contrast and to emphasize small features, and was color-coded to represent elevation. Gaps in the elevation data from the Magellan radar altimeter were filled with altimetry from the Venera spacecraft and the Pioneer Venus missions.
The full resolution image weighs 4.5 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

On Jan. 4, 2004, the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover landed on Mars

Click on the image for full panorama

On Jan. 4, 2004, Spirit - the first of two NASA Mars Exploration Rovers - landed on the Red Planet for what was to be a 90-day mission. This image, acquired on sol 127 (May 12, 2004), shows the path the rover traveled on its way to the base of the "Columbia Hills". The hills can be seen silhouetted against the horizon on the far left side.
Since sol 2210 (March 22, 2010), Spirit has been silent, and the project's scientists continue to listen for Spirit with the Deep Space Network and Mars Odyssey orbiter. The project is also conducting a paging technique called "Sweep & Beep" to stimulate the rover. Since the period of peak solar activity occurs in mid-March 2011, leaving Spirit plenty of occasion to respond. Spirit's sister spacecraft Opportunity continues to explore Mars, arriving in December 2010 at the 80-meter (262-foot) diameter Santa Maria crater on its journey to Endeavour crater.
Credit: NASA

Young Open Star Cluster NGC 6611 as viewed by Hubble's ACS

Click on the image for full resolution (8.7 MB)

A spectacular section of the well-known Eagle Nebula has been targeted by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This collection of dazzling stars is called NGC 6611, an open star cluster that formed about 5.5 million years ago and is found approximately 6500 light-years from the Earth. It is a very young cluster, containing many hot, blue stars, whose fierce ultraviolet glow make the surrounding Eagle Nebula glow brightly. The cluster and the associated nebula together are also known as Messier 16.
Astronomers refer to areas like the Eagle Nebula as HII regions. This is the scientific notation for ionised hydrogen from which the region is largely made. Extrapolating far into the future, this HII region will eventually disperse, helped along by shockwaves from supernova explosions as the more massive young stars end their brief but brilliant lives.
In this image, dark patches can also be spotted, punctuating the stellar landscape. These areas of apparent nothingness are actually very dense regions of gas and dust, which obstruct light from passing through. Many of these may be hiding the sites of the early stages of star formation, before the fledgling stars clear away their surroundings and burst into view. Dark nebulae, large and small, are dotted throughout the Universe. If you look up to the Milky Way with the naked eye from a dark, remote site, you can easily spot some huge dark nebulae blocking the background starlight.
This picture was created from images from Hubble's Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys through the unusual combination of two near-infrared filters (F775W, coloured blue, and F850LP, coloured red). The image has also been subtly colourised using a ground-based image taken through more conventional filters. The Hubble exposure times were 2000 s in both cases and the field of view is about 3.2 arcminutes across.
The full resolution image weighs 8.7 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

Cassini spacecraft celebrates 10 years since Jupiter encounter

Click on the image for full resolution

This true color mosaic of Jupiter was constructed from images taken by the narrow angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft on December 29, 2000, during its closest approach to the giant planet at a distance of approximately 10 million kilometers (6.2 million miles).
It is the most detailed global color portrait of Jupiter ever produced; the smallest visible features are approximately 60 kilometers (37 miles) across. The mosaic is composed of 27 images: nine images were required to cover the entire planet in a tic-tac-toe pattern, and each of those locations was imaged in red, green, and blue to provide true color. Although Cassini's camera can see more colors than humans can, Jupiter's colors in this new view look very close to the way the human eye would see them.
Everything visible on the planet is a cloud. The parallel reddish-brown and white bands, the white ovals, and the large Great Red Spot persist over many years despite the intense turbulence visible in the atmosphere. The most energetic features are the small, bright clouds to the left of the Great Red Spot and in similar locations in the northern half of the planet. These clouds grow and disappear over a few days and generate lightning. Streaks form as clouds are sheared apart by Jupiter's intense jet streams that run parallel to the colored bands. The prominent dark band in the northern half of the planet is the location of Jupiter's fastest jet stream, with eastward winds of 480 kilometers (300 miles) per hour. Jupiter's diameter is eleven times that of Earth, so the smallest storms on this mosaic are comparable in size to the largest hurricanes on Earth.
Unlike Earth, where only water condenses to form clouds, Jupiter's clouds are made of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and water. The updrafts and downdrafts bring different mixtures of these substances up from below, leading to clouds at different heights. The brown and orange colors may be due to trace chemicals dredged up from deeper levels of the atmosphere, or they may be byproducts of chemical reactions driven by ultraviolet light from the Sun. Bluish areas, such as the small features just north and south of the equator, are areas of reduced cloud cover, where one can see deeper.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute