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NGC 3603, giant galactic nebula: In this stunning picture, the crisp resolution of HST captures various stages of the life cycle of stars in one single view which nicely illustrates the entire stellar life cycle of stars. It starts with globules and giant gaseous pillars, followed by circumstellar disks, and progresses to massive stars in a young starburst cluster. — More....
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NGC 3603 (cont.): The color difference between the supergiant's bipolar outflow and the diffuse interstellar medium in the giant nebula dramatically visualizes the enrichment in heavy elements due to synthesis of heavier elements within stars. These true-color pictures were taken on March 5, 1999 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. — More....
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NGC 3603 (cont.): This is a close-up of the blue supergiant called Sher 25. The star has a unique circumstellar ring of glowing gas that is a galactic twin to the famous ring around the supernova 1987A. The grayish-bluish color of the ring and the bipolar outflows (blobs to the upper right and lower left of the star) indicates the presence of processed (chemically enriched) material. — More…
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NGC 3949, Milky Way cousin: Our Sun and solar system are embedded in a broad pancake of stars deep within the disk of the Milky Way galaxy. Even from a distance, it is impossible to see our galaxy's large-scale features other than the disk. The next best thing is to look farther out into the universe at galaxies that are similar in shape and structure to our home galaxy. — More…
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NGC 4013: HST's penetrating vision sliced through the edge-on dusty disk of a galaxy like our Milky Way to peer all the way into the core. Astronomers were surprised to see what appears to be an edge-on ring of stars, 720 light-years across, encircling the nucleus. The galaxy is some 55 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. — More....
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NGC 4038/4039, when galaxies collide: A look at a brilliant fireworks show at the center of a collision between two galaxies. HST uncovered over 1,000 bright, young star clusters bursting to life as a result of the head-on wreck. The respective cores of the twin Antennae galaxies are the orange blobs crisscrossed by filaments of dark dust. — More....
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NGC 4151 Seyfert galaxy: The STIS simultaneously records the velocities of hundreds of gas knots streaming at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour from the nucleus of NGC 4151, thought to house a supermassive black hole. This is the first time the velocity structure in the heart of this object, or similar objects, has been mapped so vividly this close to its central black hole. — More....
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NGC 4214: Located some 13 million light-years from Earth, it is currently forming clusters of new stars from interstellar gas and dust. The image shows a sequence of steps in the formation and evolution of stars and star clusters. The bright object near the center is a cluster of hundreds of blue stars, each of them more than 10,000 times brighter than our own Sun. — More....
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NGC 4314: This HST image reveals clusters of infant stars that formed in a ring around the core of a barred-spiral galaxy. This stellar nursery, whose inhabitants were created within the past 5 million years, is the only place in this entire galaxy where new stars are being born. Details in the image make the center resemble a miniature version of a spiral galaxy. — More....
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NGC 4319 / quasar Markarian 205: An odd celestial duo, the spiral galaxy NGC 4319 [center] and quasar Markarian 205 [upper right], appear to be neighbors. In reality, the two objects don't even live in the same city. They are separated by nearly one billion light-years. The apparent close alignment of Mrk 205 and NGC 4319 is simply a matter of chance. — More....
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NGC 4414: A stunning look at a dusty spiral galaxy. The HST picture shows that the central regions of this galaxy, as is typical of most spirals, contain primarily older, yellow and red stars. The outer spiral arms are considerably bluer due to ongoing formation of young, blue stars, the brightest of which can be seen individually at the high resolution provided by the Hubble camera. — More....
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NGC 4438, Feasting Black Hole Blows Bubbles: A monstrous black hole's table manners include blowing bubbles of hot gas into space. At least, that's the gustatory practice followed by the supermassive black hole residing in nearby galaxy NGC 4438. Known as a peculiar galaxy because of its unusual shape, NGC 4438 is in the Virgo Cluster, 50 million light-years from Earth. — More....
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NGC 4603: Clusters of young bright blue stars highlight the galaxy's spiral arms. In contrast, red giant stars in the process of dying are also found. Only the very brightest stars in can be seen individually, even with the unmatched ability of the HST to obtain detailed images. Much of the diffuse glow comes from fainter stars that cannot be individually distinguished by Hubble. — More....
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NGC 4622, "Backwards," Spiral Galaxy: To the surprise of astronomers, this galaxy appears to be rotating backwards. A Hubble photo of the oddball galaxy shows its outer pair of winding arms full of new stars [blue]. Astronomers are puzzled by the clockwise rotation because of the direction the outer spiral arms are pointing. — More....
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NGC 4650A, polar-ring galaxy: Located about 130 million light-years away, NGC 4650A is one of only 100 known polar-ring galaxies. Their unusual disk-ring structure is not yet understood fully. One possibility is that polar rings are the remnants of colossal collisions between two galaxies sometime in the distant past, probably at least 1 billion years ago. — More....
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NGC 4676, The Mice: "The Mice" presages what may happen to our own Milky Way several billion years from now when it collides with the neighboring galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. The Mice is located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma
Berenices. The pair will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy. — More....
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NGC 604 lies in a spiral arm of the nearby galaxy M33, located about 2.7 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Triangulum. M33, a member of the Local Group of galaxies that also includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, can be seen easily with binoculars. NGC 604 itself can be seen with a small telescope. — More....
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NGC 6210, turtle swallowing a seashell: The larger image shows the entire nebula; the inset picture (next) captures the complicated structure surrounding the dying star. The remarkable features are the numerous holes in the inner shells with jets of material streaming from them. These jets produce column-shaped features that are mirrored in the opposite direction. — More....
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NGC 6210, inset from previous photo: The multiple shells of material ejected by the dying star give this planetary nebula its odd form. In the "full nebula" image (above), the brighter central region looks like a "nautilus shell"; the fainter outer structure (colored red) a "tortoise." The dying star is the white dot in the center. Both pictures are composite images. — More....
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NGC 6369, Little Ghost Nebula: This object is known to amateur astronomers as the "Little Ghost Nebula," because it appears as a small, ghostly cloud surrounding the faint, dying central star. NGC 6369 lies in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, at a distance estimated to be between about 2,000 and 5,000 light-years from Earth. — More....
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NGC 6397 globular star clusters: This HST view of the core of one of the nearest globular star clusters resembles a treasure chest of glittering jewels. The cluster is located 8,200 light-years away in the constellation Ara. Here, the stars are jam-packed together. The stellar density is about a million times greater than in our Sun's stellar neighborhood. — More....
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NGC 6543, Cat's Eye: HST shows one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen. Hubble reveals surprisingly intricate structures including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas, and unusual shock-induced knots of gas. Estimated to be 1,000 years old, the nebula is a visual "fossil record" of the dynamics and late evolution of a dying star. — More....
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NGC 6543, Cat's Eye (update): As if the Cat's Eye itself isn't spectacular enough, this new Hubble image reveals the full beauty of a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat's Eye. Each 'ring' is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky — that's why it appears bright along its outer edge. — More....
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NGC 6745: When galaxies collide, stars that normally comprise the major portion of the mass of each one will almost never collide with each other, but will pass rather freely between each other with little damage. This is because the physical size of individual stars is tiny compared to their typical separations, making the chance of physical encounter relatively small. — More....
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NGC 6751 planetary nebula: Glowing in the constellation Aquila like a giant eye, this planetary nebula is a cloud of gas ejected several thousand years ago from the hot star visible in its center. These nebulae are named after their round shapes as seen visually in small telescopes from Earth, and have nothing else to do with planets. — More....
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NGC 6782, Spiral galaxy, but different: This galaxy, when seen in visible light, exhibits tightly wound spiral arms that give it a pinwheel shape similar to that of many other spirals. However, when it is viewed in ultraviolet light, its shape is startlingly different. At ultraviolet wavelengths, which are rendered as blue, it shows a circular ring surrounding its nucleus. — More....
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NGC 6822, Hubble V: Resembling curling flames from a campfire, this nebula in a neighboring galaxy (NGC 6822) is giving astronomers new insight into the fierce birth of stars as it may have more commonly happened in the early universe. The glowing gas cloud has a diameter of about 200 light-years. The host galaxy is one of the Milky Way's closest neighbors. — More....
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NGC 6822, Hubble V, another view: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's resolution and ultraviolet sensitivity reveals a dense knot of dozens of ultra-hot stars nestled in the nebula, each glowing 100,000 times brighter than our Sun. These youthful 4-million-year-old stars are too distant and crowded together to be resolved from ground-based telescopes. — More....
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NGC 7027: Hubble's NICMOS has captured a glimpse of a brief stage in the burnout of NGC 7027, a medium-mass star like our sun. The infrared image (on the left) shows a young nebula in a state of rapid transition. It is going through spectacular death throes as it evolves into what astronomers call a "planetary nebula." The next image below was made 3 years earlier. — More....
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NGC 7027 (cont.): This image of NGC 7027 was made 3 years before the above two images: When a star like the Sun nears the end of its life, it expands to more than 50 times its original diameter, becoming a red giant star. Then its outer layers are ejected into space, exposing the small, extremely hot core of the star, which cools off to become a white dwarf. — More....
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NGC 7635, Bubble Nebula: A star 40 times more massive than the Sun is blowing a giant bubble of material into space. In this colorful picture, HST has captured a glimpse of the expanding bubble. The beefy star [lower center] is embedded in the bright blue bubble. The stellar powerhouse is so hot that it is quickly shedding material into space. — More....
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