Astronomy pictures

Cosmic colors at sunrise; never get tired of seeing what the new day brings

Clearest image ever taken of Pluto

Stunning: NGC 2264 and the Christmas Tree cluster

(Credit: ESO)

This colorful image, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, celebrates the Earth-orbiting observatory’s 28th anniversary of viewing the heavens, giving us a window seat to the universe’s extraordinary tapestry of stellar birth and destruction. At the center of the photo, a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust. This mayhem is all happening at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 4,000 light-years away and visible in binoculars simply as a smudge of light with a bright core. The giant star, called Herschel 36, is bursting out of its natal cocoon of material, unleashing blistering radiation and torrential stellar winds (streams of subatomic particles) that push dust away in curtain-like sheets. This action resembles the Sun bursting through the clouds at the end of an afternoon thunderstorm that showers sheets of rainfall. Herschel 36’s violent activity has blasted holes in the bubble-shaped cloud, allowing astronomers to study this action-packed stellar breeding ground. The hefty star is 32 times more massive and eight times hotter than our Sun. It is nearly nine times our Sun’s diameter. Herschel 36 is still very active because it is young by a star’s standards, only 1 million years old. Based on its mass, it will live for another 5 million years. In comparison, our smaller Sun is 5 billion years old and will live another 5 billion years. This region epitomizes a typical, raucous stellar nursery full of birth and destruction. The clouds may look majestic and peaceful, but they are in a constant state of flux from the star’s torrent of searing radiation and high-speed particles from stellar winds. As the monster star throws off its natal cocoon of material with its powerful energy, it is suppressing star formation around it. However, at the dark edges of this …

Lagoon Nebula (Visible-light View)

Located around 5000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), Abell 78 is an unusual type of planetary nebula. After exhausting the nuclear fuel in their cores, stars with a mass of around 0.8 to 8 times the mass of our Sun collapse to form dense and hot white dwarf stars. As this process occurs, the dying star will throw off its outer layers of material, forming an elaborate cloud of gas and dust known as a planetary nebula. This phenomenon is not uncommon, and planetary nebulae are a popular focus for astrophotographers because of their often beautiful and complex shapes. However, a few like Abell 78 are the result of a so-called “born again” star. Although the core of the star has stopped burning hydrogen and helium, a thermonuclear runaway at its surface ejects material at high speeds. This ejecta shocks and sweeps up the material of the old nebula, producing the filaments and irregular shell around the central star seen in this Picture of the Week, which features data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and PANSTARSS. Credit:ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Guerrero Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

A Flash of Life

Credit:ESA/Hubble & NASA

One of the most reproduced images in history - The Blue Marble

CREDIT:NASA 1972

A Whirlpool Galaxy |NASA|

A breathtaking view of the Vela Supernova Remnant, a vibrant nebula of gas filaments from a star explosion about 11,000 years ago!

(Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA / T.A. Rector, M. Zamani & D. de Martin)

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a spiral galaxy located 31 million light-years away. Also known as M51, it highlights the attributes of a typical spiral galaxy, including graceful, curving arms, pink star-forming regions, and brilliant blue strands of star clusters. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

spiral galaxy by nasa

An incredible image of Mars has been released that captures the relentless activity of dust devils, swirling across the planet’s surface. These Martian whirlwinds form, move across the surface and dissipate before others take their place. The image was taken by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in September 2022 and shows part of the Haldane Crater, where dust devils have left their mark on the landscape. Scientists study the image tracks and the rate at which dust accumulates on Mars, helping them better understand the planet’s atmospheric processes.

Crisscrossing Dust Devil Tracks Across the Surface of Mars

Dust Devils on Mars - NASA/JPL-Caltech/

Shoot for the stars ✨

While aboard the @Space_Station earlier this year, @Astro_Jeanette captured the perfect shot: a long-exposure photo showcasing streaks of city lights across Western Australia, with swirls of stars glittering above Earth’s golden-red atmosphere

📷 Lacey young

Auroras are one of the most beautiful and dramatic spectacles we can see on Earth—and you may have the chance to spot them after the recent solar flares.

Astronomers using Hubble have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet blasting from a supermassive black hole at the core of galaxy M87 (left) seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory (right)

When the James Webb Space Telescope observed the Horsehead Nebula in infrared light earlier this year, it took this sharp image of the top of the horse’s “mane,” a distinctive dust and gas structure.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA.

These stars have a lot of energy to let loose!
The two stars at the center of this James Webb Space Telescope image appear as an orange-white splotch. They are ingesting and ejecting gas and dust … over and over. Millions of years from now, they’ll clear the scene.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA.

Two features of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A show the power of the James Webb Space Telescope’s resolving power. The colorful inner shell shows tiny knots of gas and the smoky outer layer is where ejected matter rammed into the surrounding material.

Its glowing hydrogen gas and dark molecular clouds are sculpted by intense stellar winds from newly formed massive stars. This nebula is home to over 2,200 young stars, many hidden within its dense dust clouds. It provides crucial insights into the birth and early evolution of stars.

RCW 49, located in the Milky Way, is a bustling star-forming region 13,700 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus.

Stunning view from the Red Planet|NASA|

Hubble's sharpest view of the Orion Nebula

The new year is even more important than we thought:

Do you think you're sitting still right now?

- You're on a planet that orbitis a star at 30km/s

- That star is orbiting the center of a galaxy at 230km/s

- That galaxy is moving trough the universe at 600km/s.

Since you started reading this, you have traveled about 3000km.

The Universe doesn't care

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have helped settle a mystery that has puzzled scientists concerning the exact distance to the famous nearby star cluster known as the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters. The Pleiades cluster, named by the ancient Greeks, is easily seen as a small grouping of stars lying near the shoulder of Taurus, the Bull, in the winter sky. Although it might be expected that the distance to this well-studied cluster would be well established, there has been an ongoing controversy among astronomers about its distance for the past seven years.

Hubble Refines Distance to the Pleiades Star Cluster

The bright light at the end of this country road is a close conjunction of two Venus and Jupiter from August 27, 2016. This vertical panorama shows the central Milky Way near zenith, posed on top of a pillar of zodiacal light along the ecliptic plane. Credit: Copyright Josh Calcino

Milky Way near zenith, posed on top of a pillar of zodiacal light along the ecliptic plane.

Credit: Copyright Josh Calcino

What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). Considered as a star forming region and cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. The featured image spans an angle larger than a full moon, covering over 50 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies just to the left of the image center, bright variable star S Mon visible just to the right of the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula near the image top. With the Cone Nebula at the peak, the shape of the general glow of the region give it the nickname of the Christmas Tree Cluster, where stars are tree ornaments. Image Credit & Copyright: Tim White

The complex jumble of cosmic gas .
Image Credit & Copyright: Tim White

Welcome to universe

Stunning Martian landscape from Gale Crater by Curiosity rover.|NASA|

📷 yin hao

Meteor Shower and Orion in Mongolia 🇲🇳

Image Description: This image showcases the spiral galaxy M74 (The Phantom Galaxy) with its stunning, well-defined structure. The central core glows a bright blue, surrounded by sprawling, delicate spiral arms. These arms are filled with intricate webs of gas and dust, which are highlighted in shades of dark brown and gray. Numerous bright pink and red regions are scattered throughout the spiral arms, indicating areas of active star formation. The overall appearance of the galaxy looks detailed and ethereal, as it appears against the deep, dark backdrop of space. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The Phantom Galaxy with its stunning, well-defined structure. The central core glows a bright blue, surrounded by sprawling, delicate spiral arms.