Credit: NASA, ESA, F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee
Check out this fantastic image from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows a massive young stellar group called R136, which is only a few million years old and can be found in the 30 Doradus Nebula.
Check out the Hubble site for more images and videos.
Credits: NASA/CXC/Southampton/W. Ho et al.
This fantastic image from Chandra shows the central region of Cassiopeia A (also called Cas A) which is a supernova remnant that is thought to have exploded in our galaxy approximately 300 years ago. Evidence of a neutron star with a thin carbon atmosphere has been found at the centre of Cassiopeia A. Inset is an artists impression of how the neutron star would look complete with its carbon atmosphere.
In Chandra’s ‘First Light’ image from 1999, the point like x-ray source at the centre was presumed to be a neutron star. This is considered to be a typical remnant of an exploded star but it did not show evidence of x-ray or radio emissions. A model of a neutron star was applied to the object at the centre of Cassiopeia A and it was found that the region which emits x-rays would cover a typical neutron star. Due to this x-ray pulsations would not be seen as the neutron star would not show any changes in the intensity of its rotation. This result also provided evidence that the neutron star does not contain strange quark matter.
Because of the surface gravity being 100 billion times that of the Earth, only a very thin atmosphere has been able to form around Cassiopeia A. Despite this the carbon atmosphere has some remarkable properties, it’s only four inches thick, but has a density similar to carbon.
Image Credits X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/K. Getman et al.; IRL NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J. Wang et al.
This fantastic image of Cepheus B is a composite of data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope. It shows a molecular cloud within our galaxy which is about 2,400 light years from Earth. Within this region there is cool interstellar gas and dust which was left over from the formation of the galaxy and mostly contains molecular hydrogen.
The data from Chandra has enabled astronomers to find young stars near and within Cepheus B as they were able to identified them by their strong x-ray emissions. The data gleaned from Spitzer further enabled the astronomers to ascertain if any of the young stars had proto-planetary disks around them. Such disks only exist in very young systems where planets are still forming, therefore there presence can be used as an indication of the age of a star system.
The current thinking is that star formation in Cepheus B is triggered by radiation for one bright massive star (HD217086), which is outside the molecular cloud. For further information visit Chandra
Asteroid Juno forms a triangle with the stars 27 and 29 Piscium and Neptune can be found close by.
Finders Chart for Juno and Uranus
Finders chart for Jupiter and Neptune
Credits: Magnetar Illustration: NASA
Magnetars are the most intensely magnetised objects in the Universe and are thought to be a type of neutron star. Their magnetic fields are some 10 000 million times stronger than Earth’s. If a magnetar were to magically appear at half the Moon’s distance from Earth, its magnetic field would wipe the details off every credit card on Earth.
So far only 15 magnetars in total are known in our Galaxy.
An article can be found at ESA’s website on this.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The illustration on the left is an artist’s idea of how silicate crystals could be created by a growing star. Crystals like this are often found in comets. The image shows a young sun-like star encircled by its planet-forming disk of dust and gas. The silicate that makes up most of the dust would have begun as non-crystallised particles with no structure.
As material transfers from the disk onto the star, its mass increases, t brightens and heats up dramatically. The resulting outburst causes temperatures to rise in the star’s surrounding area.
When the material in the disk warms from the star’s outburst, the particles of silicate melt. As they cool off, they transform into forsterite (see inset), a type of silicate crystal often found in comets in our solar system.
In April 2008, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope detected evidence of this process taking place on the disk of a young sun-like star called EX Lupi.
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
One of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years was discovered 20 years ago by astronomers. Supernova 1987a as it’s been called has fascinated astronomers since its discover. Even the Hubble Space Telescope has been monitoring the aftermath of the explosion.
This image on the right shows the entire region around the supernova. The most prominent feature in the image is a ring with dozens of bright spots. A shock wave of material unleashed by the stellar blast is slamming into regions along the ring’s inner regions, heating them up, and causing them to glow. The ring which is approximately a light-year across, was probably shed by the star about 20,000 years before it exploded.
The first bright spot was observed by astronomers in 1997, but since then dozens of spots have appears around the ring. Only by using the Hubble Space telescope can the individual spots been seen. Astronomers expect the ring to be ablaze in the next few years as it absorbs the full force of the crash. It is hoped that the ring will become so bright that it will illuminate the area surrounding the star and provide astronomers with new information on how the star shed the material before it exploded.
The pink object in the center of the ring is debris from the supernova blast. The glowing debris is being heated by radioactive elements, principally titanium 44, created in the explosion. The debris will continue to glow for many decades.
The origin of a pair of faint outer red rings, located above and below the doomed star, is a mystery. The two bright objects that look like car headlights are a pair of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The supernova is located 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The image was taken in December 2006 with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Credit: NASA, N. Benitez (JHU), T. Broadhurst (The Hebrew University), H. Ford (JHU), M. Clampin(STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory), the ACS Science Team and ESA
This fantastic image was produced using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. A natural ‘zoom lens’ in space has been used to boost its view of the distant universe. As well as giving an amazing and dramatic view, it’s hoped that the results will help us to understand more about galaxy evolution and dark matter.
The cluster Abel 1689 is 2.2 billion light years away and for this image the Hubble Space telescope had to gaze at it for over 13 hours. The natural lens that was used by Hubble was created by the gravity of the trillion stars as well as any dark matter within the cluster. This is known as a ‘gravitational lens’ and this bends and magnifies the light of any galaxies found behind it, it also distorts their shape and creates multiple images of the individual galaxies.
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
The image to the right was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows the planet Fomalhaut b orbiting its parent star Fomalhaut.
The small white box in the lower right shows a composite image of the planet’s location. Fomalhaut b has carved a path along the inner edge of a vast, dusty debris ring encircling Fomalhaut that is 21.5 billion miles across. Fomalhaut b lies 1.8 billion miles inside the ring’s inner edge and orbits 10.7 billion miles from its star.
It’s been calculated that Fomalhaut b has an orbit of 872 years. That means it takes 872 years to go round the star Fomalhaut just once.
The white dot in the centre of the image has been used to show the star’s location. The star’s glare has been blocked out hence the dark region around the star. This was done to enable astronomers to see the planet, as in comparison to the star Fomalbaut b is very dim. It’s been estimated that Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than its star.
The Fomalhaut system is 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis.