Page 3
|
|
 |
HCG 87 (Hickson Compact Group 87): This troupe of four galaxies is performing an intricate dance orchestrated by the mutual gravitational forces acting between them. The dance is a slow, graceful minuet, occurring over a time span of hundreds of millions of years. The galaxies are so close to each other that gravitational forces alter their evolution. — More....
|
|
 |
HD 44179, "Red Rectangle": Astronomers may not have observed the fabled "Stairway to Heaven," but they have found something almost as intriguing: ladder-like structures surrounding a dying star. The star in the center began life as a star similar to our Sun, is now dying, and is in the process of ejecting its outer layers to produce the visible nebula. — More....
|
|
 |
He 2-90: This looks like a young, dust-enshrouded star with narrow jets of material streaming from each side. But it's not. The object is classified as a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a dying, lightweight star. But the Hubble observations suggest that it may not fit that classification, either. Is it a binary star? A white dwarf? — More....
|
|
 |
Helix Nebula is a popular target of amateur astronomers and can be seen with binoculars as a ghostly, greenish cloud in the constellation Aquarius. This portrait offers a dizzying look down what is actually a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases. The fluorescing tube is pointed nearly directly at Earth, so it looks more like a bubble than a cylinder. — More....
|
|
 |
Henize 1357, Stingray nebula: Henize 1357 is the youngest known planetary nebula and is as large as 130 solar systems. The bright central star is in the middle of the green ring of gas with a companion star diagonally above it at 10 o'clock. A spur of gas (green) is forming a faint bridge to the companion star due to gravitational attraction. — More....
|
|
 |
Herschel 36, Lagoon Nebula: This HST image reveals a pair of one-half
light-year long interstellar "twisters" in the heart of the nebula which lies 5,000 light-years away toward the constellation Sagittarius. The central hot O type star, Herschel 36 (upper left in photo), is the primary source of the radiation for the brightest region in the nebula, called the Hourglass. — More....
|
|
 |
Hoag's Object: A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as Hoag's Object. This image from NASA's HST captures a face-on view of the galaxy's ring of stars, revealing more detail than any existing photo of this object. The image may help astronomers unravel clues on how such strange objects form. — More....
|
|
 |
Hodge 301, Tarantula nebula: In the most active starburst region in the local universe lies a cluster of brilliant, massive stars, known to astronomers as Hodge 301, seen in the lower right hand corner of this image. Also present near the center of the image are small, dense gas globules and dust columns where new stars are being formed today, as part of the overall ongoing star formation throughout the Tarantula region.
|
|
 |
Hodge 301, closer view: The cluster lives inside the Tarantula Nebula in our galactic neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Note for your calendar; Hodge 301 contains three red supergiants -- stars that are close to the end of their evolution and are about to go supernova, exploding and sending more shocks into the Tarantula.
|
|
 |
Hodge 301, within Tarantula is not the brightest, or youngest, or most populous star cluster in the nebula — that honor goes to the spectacular R136 (center right of this image). In fact, Hodge 301 is almost 10 times older than the young cluster R136. But age has its advantages; many of the stars in Hodge 301 are so old that they have exploded as supernovae. These exploded stars are blasting material out into the surrounding region at speeds of almost 200 miles per second. This high speed ejecta are plowing into the surrounding Tarantula Nebula, shocking and compressing the gas into a multitude of sheets and filaments, seen in the upper left portion of the first Tarantula Nebula picture.
|
|
 |
Horsehead Nebula, Barnard 33: Rising from a sea of dust and gas like a giant seahorse, the Horsehead nebula is one of the most photographed objects in the sky. Also known as Barnard 33, the image is silhouetted against the bright nebula, IC 434. The bright area at the top left edge is a young star still embedded in its nursery of gas and dust. — More....
|
|
 |
Hourglass, Planetary Nebula, MyCn18: This is a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away. This Hubble image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. The composition sheds light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter which accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. — More…
|
|
 |
Hubble Ultra Deep Field: Detailed analyses of mankind's deepest optical view of the universe by several expert teams have at last identified what may turn out to be some of the earliest star-forming galaxies. The HUDF shows that close to a billion years after the big bang the early universe was filled with dwarf galaxies, but no fully formed galaxies like our Milky Way.
— More…
|
|
 |
IC 349 or Barnard's Merope Nebula: HST has caught the eerie, wispy tendrils of a dark interstellar cloud being destroyed by the passage of one of the stars in the Pleiades star cluster. The famous cluster is easily visible in the evening sky during the winter months as a small grouping of bright blue stars, named after the "Seven Sisters" of Greek mythology. — More…
|
|
 |
IC 418: Glowing like a multi-faceted jewel, this planetary nebula lies about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lepus and is in the final stage of evolution toward becoming a star similar to our Sun. The star at the center of IC 418 was a red giant a few thousand years ago, but then ejected its outer layers into space to form the nebula. — More…
|
|
 |
IC 4406, Retina Nebula: A dying star is revealed in this HST image. Like many other planetary nebulae, it exhibits a high degree of symmetry; the left and right halves of the image are nearly mirror images of the other. If we could fly around it in a starship, we would see that the gas and dust form a vast donut of material streaming outward from the dying star. — More....
|
Page 3
|
