VERITAS ODIT MORAS

The
spectacular structure of Planetary nebula NGC 2818 contains the outer
layers of a star that were expelled into interstellar space. The
glowing gaseous shrouds in the nebula were shed by the central star
after it ran out of fuel to sustain the nuclear reactions in its core.
This Hubble image was taken in November 2008 with the Wide Field
Planetary Camera 2. The colors in the image represent a range of
emissions coming from the clouds of the nebula: red represents
nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen. (NASA,
ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky)

This composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way
galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in
complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central
300 light-years. This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble
Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer
(NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope
survey to make the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic
core. The core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds,
but infrared light penetrates the dust. At this distance – 26,000
light-years away – Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20
times the size of our own solar system. (NASA, ESA, Q.D. Wang (UMass,
Amherst), JPL, and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)) More (see this on Google Sky) #

On February 24, 2009, the Hubble Space Telescope took a photo of four
moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. In this view,
the giant orange moon Titan casts a large shadow onto Saturn’s north
polar hood. Below Titan, near the ring plane and to the left is the
moon Mimas, casting a much smaller shadow onto Saturn’s equatorial
cloud tops. Farther to the left, and off Saturn’s disk, are the bright
moon Dione and the fainter moon Enceladus. These pictures were taken
with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 when Saturn was at a
distance of roughly 1.25 billion km (775 million mi) from Earth. (NASA,
ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More #

UGC 8335 is a strongly interacting pair of spiral galaxies. The
interaction has united the galaxies via a bridge of material and has
yanked two strongly curved tails of gas and stars from the outer parts
of their bodies . Both galaxies show dust lanes in their centers. UGC
8335 is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear,
about 400 million light-years from Earth. It is the 238th galaxy in
Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. (NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage,
STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) More (see this on Google Sky) #

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope caught scattered light from the
Boomerang Nebula in images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys
in early 2005. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly
symmetric lobes of matter that are being ejected from a central star.
Each lobe of the nebula is nearly one light-year in length, making the
total length of the nebula half as long as the distance from our Sun to
our nearest neighbors – the alpha Centauri stellar system, located
roughly 4 light-years away. The Boomerang Nebula resides 5,000
light-years from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is able to resolve patterns
and ripples in the nebula very close to the central star that are not
visible from the ground. (NASA, ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team
STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) #

Stars burst to life in the chaotic Carina Nebula in this image of a
huge pillar taken in visible and in infrared light by NASA’s Hubble
Space Telescope. Composed of gas and dust, the nebula resides 7,500
light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. This image,
taken in visible light, shows the tip of the 3-light-year-long pillar,
bathed in the glow of light from hot, massive stars off the top of the
image. Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged
particles) from these stars are sculpting the pillar and causing new
stars to form within it. Streamers of gas and dust can be seen flowing
off the top of the structure. Nestled inside this dense structure are
fledgling stars. They cannot be seen in this image because they are
hidden by a wall of gas and dust. Although the stars themselves are
invisible, one of them is providing evidence of its existence. Thin
puffs of material can be seen traveling to the left and to the right of
a dark notch in the center of the pillar. The matter is part of a jet
produced by a young star. Farther away, on the left, the jet is visible
as a grouping of small, wispy clouds. A few small clouds are visible at
a similar distance on the right side of the jet. Astronomers estimate
that the jet is moving at speeds of up to 850,000 miles an hour. The
jet’s total length is about 10 light-years. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble
SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) #

VV 705, or Markarian 848, consists of two galaxies that seem to be
embracing each other. Two long, highly curved arms of gas and stars
emerge from a central region with two cores. One arm, curving
clockwise, stretches to the top of the image where it makes a U-turn
and interlocks with the other arm that curves up counter-clockwise from
below. The two cores are 16,000 light-years apart. The pair is thought
to be midway through a merger. Markarian 848 is located in the
constellation of Bootes, the Bear Watcher, and is approximately 550
million light-years away from Earth. (NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage
STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) More (see this on Google Sky) #

The core of the spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri glitters
with the combined light of 2 million stars. The entire cluster contains
10 million stars, and is among the biggest and most massive of some 200
globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy. Omega Centauri lies
17,000 light-years from Earth. Image acquired in June of 2002. (NASA,
ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) #

Messier 104 (M104), the Sombrero galaxy. has a brilliant white, bulbous
core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure
of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on.
We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. At a
relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of
naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes. The
Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of
galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group,
equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across
and is located 28 million light-years from Earth. X-ray emission
suggests that there is material falling into the compact core, where a
1-billion-solar-mass black hole resides. In the 19th century, some
astronomers speculated that M104 was simply an edge-on disk of luminous
gas surrounding a young star, which is prototypical of the genesis of
our solar system. But in 1912, astronomer V. M. Slipher discovered that
the hat-like object appeared to be rushing away from us at 700 miles
per second. This enormous velocity offered some of the earliest clues
that the Sombrero was really another galaxy, and that the universe was
expanding in all directions. (NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team,
STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) #

The Hubble Space Telescope caught the eerie, wispy tendrils of a dark
interstellar cloud being destroyed by the passage of one of the
brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Like a flashlight beam
shining off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light off the
surface of pitch black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. These are
called reflection nebulae. (NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team,
STScI/AURA, George Herbig and Theodore Simon, University of Hawaii) More (see this on Google Sky) #

What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of
gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing
across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour – fast enough to travel
from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes! A dying star that was once about
five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has
ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of
ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. The
Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009,
snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302,
which lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away
in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer
layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. NGC 6302 was imaged on July
27, 2009, with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible
light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen,
nitrogen, and sulfur from the planetary nebula were used to create this
composite image. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) #

An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space
Telescope has discovered a ghostly ring of dark matter that was formed
long ago during a titanic collision between two massive galaxy
clusters. It is the first time that a dark matter distribution has been
found that differs substantially from the distribution of ordinary
matter. This image shows the galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17 (ZwCl 0024+1652)
as seen by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The image displays
faint faraway background galaxies that had their light bent by the
cluster’s strong gravitational field. By mapping the distorted light
and using it to deduce how dark matter is distributed in the cluster,
astronomers spotted the ring of dark matter. One of the background
galaxies is located about two times further away than the yellow
cluster galaxies in the foreground, and has been multiple-imaged into
five separate arc-shaped components, seen in blue. (NASA, ESA, M.J. Jee
and H. Ford, Johns Hopkins University) More #

The planetary nebula, IC 4593, lies in the northern constellation
Hercules, about 7,000 light-years away from Earth. Its colorful,
intricate shape reveals how the glowing gas ejected by a dying Sun-like
star evolved dramatically over time. Over thousands of years, the
clouds of gas expand away and the nebula becomes larger. Energetic
ultraviolet light from the star penetrates more deeply into the gas,
causing the hydrogen and oxygen to glow more prominently. This snapshot
was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in February 2007.
(NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) #

A peculiar system of interacting galaxies known as Arp 194 contains
several galaxies, along with a "cosmic fountain" of stars, gas, and
dust that stretches over 100,000 light-years. The northern (left)
component of Arp 194 appears as a haphazard collection of dusty spiral
arms, bright blue star-forming regions, and at least two galaxy nuclei
that appear to be connected and in the early stages of merging. A
third, relatively normal, spiral galaxy appears off to the right. The
southern (lower) component of the galaxy group contains a single large
spiral galaxy with its own blue star-forming regions. However, the most
striking feature of this galaxy troupe is the impressive blue stream of
material extending from the northern component. This "fountain"
contains complexes of super star clusters, each one of which may
contain dozens of individual young star clusters. The blue color is
produced by the hot, massive stars which dominate the light in each
cluster. Overall, the "fountain" contains many millions of stars. These
young star clusters probably formed as a result of the interactions
between the galaxies in the northern component of Arp 194. The
compression of gas involved in galaxy interactions can enhance the
star-formation rate and give rise to brilliant bursts of star formation
in merging systems. Arp 194, located in the constellation Cepheus,
resides approximately 600 million light-years away from Earth. (NASA,
ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) #

This image shows the edge of a giant gaseous cavity within the
star-forming region called NGC 3324. The glowing nebula has been carved
out by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from several
hot, young stars. A cluster of extremely massive stars, located well
outside this image in the center of the nebula, is responsible for the
ionization of the nebula and excavation of the cavity. The image also
reveals dramatic dark towers of cool gas and dust that rise above the
glowing wall of gas. The dense gas at the top resists the blistering
ultraviolet radiation from the central stars, and creates a tower that
points in the direction of the energy flow. The high-energy radiation
blazing out from the hot, young stars in NGC 3324 is sculpting the wall
of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Located in the Southern
Hemisphere, NGC 3324 is at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula
(NGC 3372), home of the Keyhole Nebula and the active, outbursting star
Eta Carinae. The entire Carina Nebula complex is located at a distance
of roughly 7,200 light-years, and lies in the constellation Carina.
(NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) #

This portrait of Stephan’s Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group
92, was taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard NASA’s
Hubble Space Telescope. Stephan’s Quintet, as the name implies, is a
group of five galaxies. The name, however, is a bit of a misnomer.
Studies have shown that group member NGC 7320, at lower right, is
actually a foreground galaxy about seven times closer to Earth than the
rest of the group. NGC 7320 is 40 million light-years from Earth. The
other members of the quintet reside 290 million light-years away in the
constellation Pegasus. WFC3 observed the quintet in July and August
2009. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) #

This very deep image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 along with a spectacular backdrop of
more distant galaxies. It was created from a total of 80 separate
pictures through yellow and near-infrared filters. (NASA, ESA and K.
Cook, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA) More (see this on Google Sky) #

Huge waves are sculpted in NGC 6537, the Red Spider Nebula, a two-lobed
nebula some 3000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius.
This warm planetary nebula harbours one of the hottest stars known and
its powerful stellar winds generate waves 100 billion kilometres high.
The waves are caused by supersonic shocks, formed when the local gas is
compressed and heated in front of the rapidly expanding lobes. The
atoms caught in the shock emit the spectacular radiation seen in this
image. (ESA & Garrelt Mellema, Leiden University, the Netherlands) More (see this on Google Sky) #

A small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri which
boasts nearly 10 million stars. The stars in Omega Centauri are about
about 16,000 light-years from Earth, and are between 10 billion and 12
billion years old. The majority of the stars in the image are
yellow-white, like our Sun. These are adult stars that are shining by
hydrogen fusion. Toward the end of their normal lives, the stars become
cooler and larger. These late-life stars are the orange dots in the
image. Even later in their life cycles, the stars continue to cool down
and expand in size, becoming red giants. These bright red stars swell
to many times larger than our Sun’s size and begin to shed their
gaseous envelopes. After ejecting most of their mass and exhausting
much of their hydrogen fuel, the stars appear brilliant blue. Only a
thin layer of material covers their super-hot cores. These stars are
desperately trying to extend their lives by fusing helium in their
cores. At this stage, they emit much of their light at ultraviolet
wavelengths. When the helium runs out, the stars reach the end of their
lives. Only their burned-out cores remain, and they are called white
dwarfs (the faint blue dots in the image). White dwarfs are no longer
generating energy through nuclear fusion and have gravitationally
contracted to the size of Earth. They will continue to cool and grow
dimmer for many billions of years until they become dark cinders. All
of the stars in the image are cozy neighbors. The average distance
between any two stars in the cluster’s crowded core is only about a
third of a light-year, roughly 13 times closer than our Sun’s nearest
stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Although the stars are close
together, WFC3’s sharpness can resolve each of them as individual
stars. If anyone lived in this globular cluster, they would behold a
star-saturated sky that is roughly 100 times brighter than Earth’s sky.
Hubble observed Omega Centauri on July 15, 2009, in ultraviolet and
visible light. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) #

This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows the diverse
collection of galaxies in the cluster Abell S0740 that is over 450
million light-years away in the direction of the constellation
Centaurus. The giant elliptical ESO 325-G004 looms large at the
cluster’s center. The galaxy is as massive as 100 billion of our suns.
Hubble resolves thousands of globular star clusters orbiting ESO
325-G004. At the galaxy’s distance they appear as pinpoints of light
contained within the diffuse halo. Other fuzzy elliptical galaxies dot
the image. Some have evidence of a disk or ring structure that gives
them a bow-tie shape. Several spiral galaxies are also present. The
starlight in these galaxies is mainly contained in a disk and follows
along spiral arms. This image was created by combining Hubble science
observations taken in January 2005 with Hubble Heritage observations
taken a year later to form a 3-color composite. The filters that
isolate blue, red and infrared light were used with the Advanced Camera
for Surveys aboard Hubble. (NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team,
STScI/AURA) More #

This portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery
in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar
grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in
the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large
Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way located some
170,000 light-years away. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are
among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times
more massive than our Sun. The image, taken by Hubble on October 20-27,
2009, spans about 100 light-years across. (NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce,
R. O’Connell, and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee) More #

Hubble’s Advance Camera for Surveys (ACS) recently took this image of
galaxy NGC 4522 in the Virgo Cluster. Backdropped by many other more
distant galaxies, the impression given by NGC 4522 is that it is flying
apart. A phenomenon called ram pressure stripping is mangling the
galaxy as it hurtles through a region of hot x-ray emitting gas at 10
million kilometers per hour- stripping away its own gas content. NGC
4522 is some 60 million light years away. More #

The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission
nebula NGC 6357 that extends one degree on the sky in the direction of
the Scorpius constellation. Part of the nebula is ionised by the
youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet
radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster
and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The presence of these surrounding gas
clouds makes probing into the region even harder. One of the top
candidates for the title of "Milky Way stellar heavyweight champion"
was, until now, Pismis 24-1, a bright young star that lies in the core
of the small open star cluster Pismis 24 (the bright stars in the
Hubble image) about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Pismis 24-1 was
thought to have an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses.
New NASA/ESA Hubble measurements of the star, have, however, resolved
Pismis 24-1 into two separate stars, and, in doing so, have "halved"
its mass to around 100 solar masses. (NASA, ESA and Jesoes Maz
Apellyniz, Instituto de astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain, Davide De
Martin, ESA/Hubble) More (see this on Google Sky) #

The photographer itself – a crew member aboard the Space Shuttle
Atlantis captured this still image of the Hubble Space Telescope above
the Earth, as the two spacecraft continued their relative separation on
May 19, 2009 after having been linked together for the better part of a
week during the STS-125 mission. During the week five spacewalks were
performed to complete the final servicing mission for the orbital
observatory. More #

In 2004, Hubble created the deepest visible-light image of the Universe
and now, with its brand-new camera, it is seeing even farther in the
same region. This image, taken by the HUDF09 team with the new
WFC3/infrared camera on Hubble in late August 2009, during a total of
four days of pointing for 173,000 seconds of total exposure time, is
the deepest image of the universe ever taken in near-infrared light.
Nearly every smudge and bit of light in this image is a separate galaxy
made up of billions of stars. The faintest and reddest objects in the
image are galaxies that formed 600 million years after the Big Bang. No
galaxies have been seen before at such early times. The image was taken
in the same region as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2004), and is
roughly 2.4 arcminutes wide. Again, I invite you to step outside some
dark night in the future and gaze up at the sky, knowing that every bit
of apparent darkness above is really filled with the faint light of
these billions of faraway galaxies. Best wishes to all, and a Happy New
Year – Alan. (NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, UCO/Lick Observatory and the
University of California, Santa Cruz, R. Bouwens, UCO/Lick Observatory
and Leiden University and the HUDF09 Team) More #

More links and information

Hubble Advent Calendar 2008 – The Big Picture

Hubblesite – official site

ESA Spacetelescope – ESA home for NASA/ESA Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope – Wikipedia entry