Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe held together by gravity. They contain enormous amounts of superheated gas, with temperatures of tens of millions of degrees, which glows brightly in X-rays, and can be observed across millions of light years between the galaxies. This image of the Abell 2744 galaxy cluster combines X-rays from Chandra (diffuse blue emission) with optical light data from Hubble (red, green, and blue). Image credit: NASA/CXC; Optical: NASA/STScI #NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #chandraxrayobservatory #ChandraXRay #cxo #chandra #astronomy #space #astrophysics #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #solarsystemandbeyond #galaxy #galaxycluster #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #GSFC #Hubble #HST #HubbleSpaceTelescope Read more More about the Chandra X-ray Observatory NASA Media Usage Guidelines

Abell 2744 - From NASA Marshall Space Flight Center - https://flic.kr/p/2jEgvxh

The yellowish tone of old stars in the center of the Andromeda galaxy contrasts with the blue from groups of hot young stars, dark dust lanes and a few small magenta blobs from ionized hydrogen clouds. The image was exposed for around 2 hours with a 6 inch Celestron Origin telescope.

In the midst of a featureless star cloud in the Andromeda galaxy, a single star is highlghted. This variable "Cepheid" star was discovered in 1923 by Edwin Hubble on photographic plates with the 2.5m Hooker telescope on Mt. Wilson. Today, a 6 inch Celestron Origin Intelligent Home observatory can image that star quite easily.

"The star that changed the size of the universe" was discovered in 1923 by Hubble on a plate taken with the 2.5m Hooker telescope. This variable Cepheid star proved that Andromeda is a far away galaxy like our own. Today, #astrophotography with my little #CelestronOrigin can show this star clearly.

This sprinkle of cosmic glitter is a blue compact dwarf galaxy known as Markarian 209. Galaxies of this type are blue-hued, compact in size, gas-rich, and low in heavy elements. They are often used by astronomers to study star formation, as their conditions are similar to those thought to exist in the early Universe. Markarian 209 in particular has been studied extensively. It is filled with diffuse gas and peppered with star-forming regions towards its core. This image captures it undergoing a particularly dramatic burst of star formation, visible as the lighter blue cloudy region towards the top right of the galaxy. This clump is filled with very young and hot newborn stars. This galaxy was initially thought to be a young galaxy undergoing its very first episode of star formation, but later research showed that Markarian 209 is actually very old, with an almost continuous history of forming new stars. It is thought to have never had a dormant period — a period during which no stars were formed — lasting longer than 100 million years. The dominant population of stars in Markarian 209 is still quite young, in stellar terms, with ages of under 3 million years. For comparison, the sun is some 4.6 billion years old, and is roughly halfway through its expected lifespan. The observations used to make this image were taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, and span the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared parts of the spectrum. A scattering ...

Hubble Sweeps a Messy Star Factory - From Goddard Space Flight Center - https://flic.kr/p/pvXaxU

A pair of interacting galaxies. The galaxies have been distorted into a question mark shape. The stars and star clusters from the top galaxy that form the top curve of the question mark are white and yellow. The core of the top galaxy, inside the curve of the question mark, has a horizontal bar surrounded by a yellow haze of stars. The bottom galaxy, which forms the dot of the question mark, is irregular and blotchy, filled with white star clusters.

This Hubble image shows interacting galaxies AM 1054-325. The clusters of stars born from the galaxy merger appear like a string of pearls. Formations like these were common in the early universe.

Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Jayanne English (University of Manitoba). 🔭 🧪

The universe is wild, y'all! "NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object" In several billion years, when our Sun collapses into a white dwarf, it might munch on actual Pluto, too! More here: science.nasa.gov/missions/hub...

Composite image of galaxy cluster MACS J0416 showing individual galaxies and a reservoir of superheated gas, captured by Chandra, Hubble, and Webb. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/G. Ogrean et al.; Optical/Infrared: (Hubble) NASA/ESA/STScI; IR: (JWST) NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Jose M. Diego (IFCA), Jordan C. J. D'Silva (UWA), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Jake Summers (ASU), Rogier Windhorst (ASU), Haojing Yan (University of Missouri)

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope on Flickr (Jul 11, 2024)

Explore galaxy cluster MACS J0416, a composite image from Chandra, Hubble, and Webb, showcasing the vastness of the universe. #NASA #JamesWebb

flic.kr/p/2q3srej

Why is there a line segment on the sky? In one of the more precise alignments known in the universe, what is pictured above is actually a disk galaxy being seen almost perfectly edge on. The image from the Hubble Space Telescope is a spectacular visual reminder of just how thin disk galaxies can be. NGC 4452, a galaxy in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, is so thin that it is actually difficult to determine what type of disk galaxy it is. Its lack of a visible dust lane indicates that it is a low-dust lenticular galaxy, although it is still possible that a view from on top would reveal spiral structure. The unusual stellar line segment spans about 35,000 light years from end to end. Near NGC 4452's center is a slight bulge of stars, while hundreds of background galaxies are visible far in the distance. Galaxies that appear this thin are rare mostly because our Earth must reside (nearly) in the extrapolated planes of their thin galactic disks. Galaxies that actually are this thin are relatively common -- for example our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to be about this thin.

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2010-11-09: NGC 4452: An Extremely Thin Galaxy
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Why did astronomers nickname this enormous galaxy cluster “El Gordo” (“the Fat One” in Spanish)? In 2014, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope found that this enormous galaxy cluster contains the mass of a staggering three million billion suns — so it’s little wonder that it has earned the nickname of “El Gordo” (“the Fat One” in Spanish)! Known officially as ACT-CLJ0102-4915, it is the largest, hottest, and brightest X-ray galaxy cluster ever discovered in the distant Universe. Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the Universe that are bound together by gravity. They form over billions of years as smaller groups of galaxies slowly come together. In 2012, observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope showed that El Gordo is actually composed of two galaxy clusters colliding at millions of kilometers per hour. The formation of galaxy clusters depends heavily on dark matter and dark energy; studying such clusters can therefore help shed light on these elusive phenomena. In 2014, Hubble found that most of El Gordo’s mass is concealed in the form of dark matter. Evidence suggests that El Gordo’s “normal” matter — largely composed of hot gas that is bright in the X-ray wavelength domain — is being torn from the dark matter in the collision. The hot gas is slowing down, while the dark matter is not. This image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 a...

Hubble Weighs in on Mass of Three Million Billion Suns - From Goddard Space Flight Center - https://flic.kr/p/23tPaqu

Astro-color alchemists Astronomers have a method for colorizing grayscale images from various space- and groundbased observatories.

Space images from Hubble, Webb, Rubin, and Chandra don’t show “true” colors; they translate invisible wavelengths into visible ones. Colorization reveals hidden details and helps us understand the universe. 🔭 🛰️

Read more in the Sept/Oct issue of #PhotonicsFocus!

What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured above, the gravity of a luminous red galaxy (LRG) has gravitationally distorted the light from a much more distant blue galaxy. More typically, such light bending results in two discernible images of the distant galaxy, but here the lens alignment is so precise that the background galaxy is distorted into a horseshoe -- a nearly complete ring. Since such a lensing effect was generally predicted in some detail by Albert Einstein over 70 years ago, rings like this are now known as Einstein Rings. Although LRG 3-757 was discovered in 2007 in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the image shown above is a follow-up observation taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3. Strong gravitational lenses like LRG 3-757 are more than oddities -- their multiple properties allow astronomers to determine the mass and dark matter content of the foreground galaxy lenses.

This isn't actually a blue ring around a distant star but instead the light from a blue galaxy directly behind a nearer red galaxy (centre) getting bent by the latter's massive gravity to form what *looks* like a ring but isn't & the universe is SO WEIRD anyway google "gravity lens" bc I need a nap.

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