ISS, Orbit of the Earth
2015
Image Credit: NASA/ESA
October 15, 2016
Jupiter's moon Europa
Europa is the sixth-closest moon of Jupiter, and the smallest of its four Galilean satellites, and the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System. Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after Zeus' (the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Jupiter) lover Europa, mother of King Minos of Crete. In addition to Earth-bound telescope observations, Europa has been examined by a succession of space probe flybys, the first occurring in the early 1970s.
Slightly smaller than the Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and has a water-ice crust and probably an iron–nickel core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is striated by cracks and streaks, whereas craters are relatively rare. It has the smoothest surface of any known solid object in the Solar System. The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably serve as an abode for extraterrestrial life. The predominant model suggests that heat from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives ice movement similar to plate tectonics, absorbing chemicals from the surface into the ocean below. Also, sea salt from a subsurface ocean may be coating some geological features on Europa, suggesting that the ocean is interacting with the seafloor. This may be important in determining if Europa could be habitable.
In addition, the Hubble Space Telescope detected water vapor plumes similar to those observed on Saturn's moon Enceladus, which are thought to be caused by erupting cryogeysers.
The Galileo mission, launched in 1989, provides the bulk of current data on Europa. No spacecraft has yet landed on Europa, but its intriguing characteristics have led to several ambitious exploration proposals. The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) is a mission to Ganymede that is due to launch in 2022, but it will conduct two flybys of Europa. NASA's planned Europa Multiple-Flyby Mission will be launched in the mid-2020s.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/DLR
Explanation from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)
Wide-field view of the Lupus 3 dark cloud and associated hot young stars
This wide-field view shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming along with cluster of brilliant stars that have already burst out of their dusty stellar nursery. This cloud is known as Lupus 3 and it lies about 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). It is likely that the Sun formed in a similar star formation region more than four billion years ago. This view was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Image Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2, Davide De Martin
Explanation from: http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1303c/
October 14, 2016
There are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the Observable Universe - 90 percent of galaxies are too faint and too far away to be seen with present-day telescopes
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| This Hubble Space Telescope view reveals thousands of galaxies stretching back into time across billions of light-years of space. Among other data, scientists used the galaxies visible in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) to recalculate the total number of galaxies in the observable Universe. The image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and covers a portion of the southern field of GOODS. This is a large galaxy census, a deep-sky study by several observatories to trace the formation and evolution of galaxies. |
The universe suddenly looks a lot more crowded, thanks to a deep-sky census assembled from surveys taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories.
Astronomers came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times more galaxies in the observable universe than previously thought.
The results have clear implications for galaxy formation, and also helps shed light on an ancient astronomical paradox — why is the sky dark at night?
In analyzing the data, a team led by Christopher Conselice of the University of Nottingham, U.K., found that 10 times as many galaxies were packed into a given volume of space in the early universe than found today. Most of these galaxies were relatively small and faint, with masses similar to those of the satellite galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. As they merged to form larger galaxies the population density of galaxies in space dwindled. This means that galaxies are not evenly distributed throughout the universe's history.
"These results are powerful evidence that a significant galaxy evolution has taken place throughout the universe's history, which dramatically reduced the number of galaxies through mergers between them — thus reducing their total number. This gives us a verification of the so-called top-down formation of structure in the universe," explained Conselice.
One of the most fundamental questions in astronomy is that of just how many galaxies the universe contains. The landmark Hubble Deep Field, taken in the mid-1990s, gave the first real insight into the universe's galaxy population. Subsequent sensitive observations such as Hubble's Ultra Deep Field revealed a myriad of faint galaxies. This led to an estimate that the observable universe contained about 200 billion galaxies. The new research shows that this estimate is at least 10 times too low.
Conselice and his team reached this conclusion using deep-space images from Hubble and the already published data from other teams. They painstakingly converted the images into 3-D, in order to make accurate measurements of the number of galaxies at different epochs in the universe's history. In addition, they used new mathematical models, which allowed them to infer the existence of galaxies that the current generation of telescopes cannot observe. This led to the surprising conclusion that in order for the numbers of galaxies we now see and their masses to add up, there must be a further 90 percent of galaxies in the observable universe that are too faint and too far away to be seen with present-day telescopes. These myriad small faint galaxies from the early universe merged over time into the larger galaxies we can now observe.
"It boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied. Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we discover these galaxies with future generations of telescopes? In the near future, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study these ultra-faint galaxies," said Conselice.
The decreasing number of galaxies as time progresses also contributes to the solution for Olbers' paradox (first formulated in the early 1800s by German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers): Why is the sky dark at night if the universe contains an infinity of stars? The team came to the conclusion that indeed there actually is such an abundance of galaxies that, in principle, every patch in the sky contains part of a galaxy. However, starlight from the galaxies is invisible to the human eye and most modern telescopes due to the other known factors that reduce visible and ultraviolet light in the universe. Those factors are the reddening of light due to the expansion of space, the universe's dynamic nature, and the absorption of light by intergalactic dust and gas. All combined, this keeps the night sky dark to our vision.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble
Explanation from: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/39/full/
The shadow of Mauna Kea and the Moon
The shadow of Mauna Kea, the highest peak in the state of Hawaii, is projected by the rising Sun over the Hualalai Volcano.
Image Credit & Copyright: Sean Goebel
Explanation by: Royal Observatory Greenwich
Dwarf Galaxies Pisces A • Pisces B
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered two tiny dwarf galaxies that have wandered from a vast cosmic wilderness into a nearby "big city" packed with galaxies. After being quiescent for billions of years, they are ready for partying by starting a firestorm of star birth.
"These Hubble images may be snapshots of what present-day dwarf galaxies may have been like at earlier epochs," said lead researcher Erik Tollerud of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. "Studying these and other similar galaxies can provide further clues to dwarf galaxy formation and evolution."
The Hubble observations suggest that the galaxies, called Pisces A and B, are late bloomers because they have spent most of their existence in the Local Void, a region of the universe sparsely populated with galaxies. The Local Void is roughly 150 million light-years across.
Under the steady pull of gravity from the galactic big city, the loner dwarf galaxies have at last entered a crowded region that is denser in intergalactic gas. In this gas-rich environment, star birth may have been triggered by gas raining down on the galaxies as they plow through the denser region. Another idea is that the duo may have encountered a gaseous filament, which compresses gas in the galaxies and stokes star birth. Based on the galaxies' locations, Tollerud's team determined that the objects are at the edge of a nearby filament of dense gas. Each galaxy contains about 10 million stars.
Dwarf galaxies are the building blocks from which larger galaxies were formed billions of years ago in the early universe. Inhabiting a sparse desert of largely empty space for most of the universe's history, these two galaxies avoided that busy construction period.
"These galaxies may have spent most of their history in the void," Tollerud explained. "If this is true, the void environment would have slowed their evolution. Evidence for the galaxies' void address is that their hydrogen content is somewhat high relative to similar galaxies. In the past, galaxies contained higher concentrations of hydrogen, the fuel needed to make stars. But these galaxies seem to retain that more primitive composition, rather than the enriched composition of contemporary galaxies, due to a less vigorous history of star formation. The galaxies also are quite compact relative to the typical star-forming galaxies in our galactic neighborhood."
The dwarf galaxies are small and faint, so finding them is extremely difficult. Astronomers spotted them by using radio telescopes in a unique survey to measure the hydrogen content in our Milky Way. The observations captured thousands of small blobs of dense hydrogen gas. Most of them are gas clouds within our galaxy, but astronomers identified 30 to 50 of those blobs as possible galaxies. The researchers used the WIYN telescope in Arizona to study 15 of the most promising candidates in visible light. Based on those observations, Tollerud's team selected the two that were the most likely candidates to be nearby galaxies and analyzed them with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Hubble's sharp vision helped the astronomers confirm that both of them, Pisces A and B, are dwarf galaxies.
The Hubble telescope is aptly suited to study nearby, dim dwarf galaxies because its sharp vision can resolve individual stars and help astronomers estimate the galaxies' distances. Distance is important for determining a galaxy's brightness, and, in these Hubble observations, for calculating how far away the galaxies are from nearby voids. Pisces A is about 19 million light-years from Earth and Pisces B roughly 30 million light-years away.
An analysis of the stars' colors allowed the astronomers to trace the star formation history of both galaxies. Each galaxy contains about 20 to 30 bright blue stars, a sign that they are very young, less than 100 million years old. Tollerud's team estimates that less than 100 million years ago, the galaxies doubled their star-formation rate. Eventually, the star formation may slow down again if the galaxies become satellites of a much larger galaxy.
"The galaxies could even probably stop forming stars all together, because they will stop getting new gas to make stars," Tollerud said. "So they will use up their existing gas. But it's hard to tell right now exactly when that would happen, so it's a reasonable guess that the star formation will ramp up at least for a while."
Tollerud's team hopes to observe other similar galaxies with Hubble. He also plans to scour the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) survey for potential dwarf galaxies. Future wide-survey telescopes, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) in Chile and the large radio telescope in China, should be able to find many of these puny galactic neighbors.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Tollerud (STScI)
Explanation from: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/29/full/
Globular Cluster Messier 4
This sparkling picture taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the centre of globular cluster M 4. The power of Hubble has resolved the cluster into a multitude of glowing orbs, each a colossal nuclear furnace.
M 4 is relatively close to us, lying 7200 light-years distant, making it a prime object for study. It contains several tens of thousand stars and is noteworthy in being home to many white dwarfs — the cores of ancient, dying stars whose outer layers have drifted away into space.
In July 2003, Hubble helped make the astounding discovery of a planet called PSR B1620-26 b, 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, which is located in this cluster. Its age is estimated to be around 13 billion years — almost three times as old as the Solar System! It is also unusual in that it orbits a binary system of a white dwarf and a pulsar (a type of neutron star).
Amateur stargazers may like to track M 4 down in the night sky. Use binoculars or a small telescope to scan the skies near the orange-red star Antares in Scorpius. M 4 is bright for a globular cluster, but it won’t look anything like Hubble’s detailed image: it will appear as a fuzzy ball of light in your eyepiece.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Explanation from: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1236a/
Milky Way Galaxy seen over La Silla Observatory
This picture was taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Babak Tafreshi at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The bright lane of the Milky Way can be seen streaking across the skies above the Chilean Atacama Desert, beneath which sits the New Technology Telescope (NTT), one of the ten active telescopes located at the observatory.
La Silla is the oldest observation site used by ESO — it has been an ESO stronghold since the 1960s. The site houses a number of telescopes, two of which are operated solely by ESO: the aforementioned NTT, the star of this image, and the 3.6-metre ESO telescope.
Joining this duo are many other collaborative telescopes, operated by various ESO Member States — the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope, the Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope, the TAROT gamma-ray-burst chaser, the planet-hunting TRAPPIST, the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, the ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope, the ESO 1-metre, and the Danish 1.54-metre telescope.
The NTT saw first light in 1989. It was a key player in ESO’s development of active optics, a technique used by astronomers to control the shape of the main mirror and correct for deformations that may affect image quality. Today, active optics is — or will be — used by all major modern telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the forthcoming European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).
Image Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1637a/
October 13, 2016
Polar Stratospheric Clouds over Scotland
Alloa, Scotland, UK
February 2016
Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Tough
Eta Carinae
Eta Carinae is a stellar system containing at least two stars with a combined luminosity over five million times that of the Sun, located around 7500 light-years (2300 parsecs) distant in the direction of the constellation Carina. First recorded as a 4th-magnitude star, it brightened considerably over the period 1837 to 1856 in an event known as the Great Eruption. Eta Carinae became the second-brightest star in the sky between 11 and 14 March 1843 before fading well below naked eye visibility. It has brightened consistently since about 1940, peaking above magnitude 4.5 in 2014. Eta Carinae is circumpolar south of latitude 30°S, so it is never visible north of latitude 30°N.
The two main stars of the Eta Carinae system have an eccentric orbit with a period of 5.54 years. The primary is a peculiar star similar to a luminous blue variable (LBV) that was initially 150–250 M☉ of which it has lost at least 30 M☉ already, and is expected to explode as a supernova in the astronomically near future. This is the only star known to produce ultraviolet laser emission. The secondary star is hot and also highly luminous, probably of spectral class O, around 30–80 times as massive as the Sun. The system is heavily obscured by the Homunculus Nebula, material ejected from the primary during the Great Eruption. It is a member of the Trumpler 16 open cluster within the much larger Carina Nebula. Although unrelated to the star or Nebula, the weak Eta Carinids meteor shower has a radiant very close to Eta Carinae.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
Explanation from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae
Variable stars close to the Galactic Centre
Ancient stars, of a type known as RR Lyrae, have been discovered in the centre of the Milky Way for the first time, using ESO’s infrared VISTA telescope. RR Lyrae stars typically reside in ancient stellar populations over 10 billion years old. Their discovery suggests that the bulging centre of the Milky Way likely grew through the merging of primordial star clusters. These stars may even be the remains of the most massive and oldest surviving star cluster of the entire Milky Way.
A team led by Dante Minniti (Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile) and Rodrigo Contreras Ramos (Instituto Milenio de AstrofÃsica, Santiago, Chile) used observations from the VISTA infrared survey telescope, as part of the Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) ESO public survey, to carefully search the central part of the Milky Way. By observing infrared light, which is less affected by cosmic dust than visible light, and exploiting the excellent conditions at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, the team was able to get a clearer view of this region than ever before. They found a dozen ancient RR Lyrae stars at the heart of the Milky Way that were previously unknown.
Our Milky Way has a densely populated centre — a feature common to many galaxies, but unique in that it is close enough to study in depth. This discovery of RR Lyrae stars provides compelling evidence that helps astronomers decide between two main competing theories for how nuclear bulges form.
RR Lyrae stars are typically found in dense globular clusters. They are variable stars, and the brightness of each RR Lyrae star fluctuates regularly. By observing the length of each cycle of brightening and dimming in an RR Lyrae, and also measuring the star’s brightness, astronomers can calculate its distance.
Unfortunately, these excellent distance-indicator stars are frequently outshone by younger, brighter stars and in some regions they are hidden by dust. Therefore, locating RR Lyrae stars right in the extremely crowded heart of the Milky Way was not possible until the public VVV survey was carried out using infrared light. Even so, the team described the task of locating the RR Lyrae stars in amongst the crowded throng of brighter stars as “daunting”.
Their hard work was rewarded, however, with the identification of a dozen RR Lyrae stars. Their discovery indicate that remnants of ancient globular clusters are scattered within the centre of the Milky Way’s bulge.
Rodrigo Contreras Ramos elaborates: “This discovery of RR Lyrae Stars in the centre of the Milky Way has important implications for the formation of galactic nuclei. The evidence supports the scenario in which the nuclear bulge was originally made out of a few globular clusters that merged.”
The theory that galactic nuclear bulges form through the merging of globular clusters is contested by the competing hypothesis that these bulges are actually due to the rapid accretion of gas. The unearthing of these RR Lyrae stars — almost always found in globular clusters — is very strong evidence that part of the Milky Way's nuclear bulge did in fact form through merging. By extension, all other similar galactic bulges may have formed the same way.
Not only are these stars powerful evidence for an important theory of galactic evolution, they are also likely to be over 10 billion years old — the dim, but dogged survivors of perhaps the oldest and most massive star cluster within the Milky Way.
Image Credit: ESO/VVV Survey/D. Minniti
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1636/
Comet Lovejoy, Meteor, Pleiades, California Nebula and Milky Way seen over La Silla Observatory
In this ESO image, nightfall raises the curtain on a theatrical display taking place in the cloudless skies over La Silla.
In a scene humming with activity, the major players captured here are Comet Lovejoy, glowing green in the centre of the image; the Pleiades above and to the right; and the California Nebula, providing some contrast in the form of a red arc of gas directly to the right of Lovejoy.
A meteor adds its own streak of light to the scene, seeming to plunge into the hazy pool of green light collecting along the horizon.
The telescopes of La Silla provide an audience for this celestial performance, and a thin shroud of low altitude cloud clings to the plain below the observatory streaked by the Panamericana Highway.
Comet Lovejoy’s long tail is being pushed away from the comet by the solar wind. Carbon compounds that have been excited by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun give it its striking green hue.
This is the first time the comet has passed through the inner Solar System and ignited so spectacularly in over 11 000 years. Its highly elliptical orbit about the Sun — adjusted slightly due to meddling planets — means that it will not grace our skies for another 8000 years once it has rounded the Sun and begun its lonely voyage back into the cold outer regions of the Solar System.
This image was taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek during a visit to La Silla in January 2015. The sky in this image was captured with a series of long exposures, resulting in the wonderful vista of the comet in the sky. However, the bottom half uses only one of these exposures in order to retain the sharpness of the La Silla landscape.
Image Credit: P. Horálek/ESO
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1504a/
October 12, 2016
Lightning Storm and the Milky Way Galaxy
Punta Banco, Costa Rica
Image Credit & Copyright: Ben Cherry
The Crab Nebula
The Crab Nebula, which also goes by the names Messier 1, NGC 1952 and Taurus A, is one of the best studied astronomical objects in the sky. It is the remnant of a supernova explosion which was observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054. The tangled filaments visible in this image are the remains of the exploded star, which are still expanding outwards at about 1500 kilometres per second.
Although not visible to the naked eye due to foreground filaments of helium and hydrogen the heart of the nebula hosts two faint stars. It is one of these that is responsible for the nebula that we see today — a star that is known as the Crab Pulsar, or CM Tau. This is the small, dense, corpse of the original star that caused the supernova. It is now only about 20 kilometres in diameter and rotates around its axis 30 times every second!
The star emits pulses of radiation in all wavelengths, ranging from gamma rays — for which it is one of the brightest sources in the sky — to radio waves. The radiation from the star is so strong that it is creating a wave of material that is deforming the inner parts of the nebula. The appearance of these structures changes so fast that astronomers can actually observe how they reshape. This provides a rare opportunity as cosmic timescales are usually much too long for change to be observed to this extent.
The data from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile used to make this image were selected from the ESO archive by Manu Mejias as part of the Hidden Treasures competition.
Image Credit: ESO/Manu Mejias
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1523a/
Exoplanet CVSO 30c
Astronomers hunt for planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets) using a variety of methods. One successful method is direct imaging; this is particularly effective for planets on wide orbits around young stars, because the light from the planet is not overwhelmed by light from the host star and is thus easier to spot.
This image demonstrates this technique. It shows a T-Tauri star named CVSO 30, located approximately 1200 light-years away from Earth in the 25 Orionis group (slightly northwest of Orion’s famous Belt). In 2012, astronomers found that CVSO 30 hosted one exoplanet (CVSO 30b) using a detection method known as transit photometry, where the light from a star observably dips as a planet travels in front of it. Now, astronomers have gone back to look at the system using a number of telescopes. The study combines observations obtained with the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and the Calar Alto Observatory facilities in Spain.
Using the data astronomers have imaged what is likely to be a second planet! To produce the image, astronomers exploited the astrometry provided by VLT’s NACO and SINFONI instruments.
This new exoplanet, named CVSO 30c, is the small dot to the upper left of the frame (the large blob is the star itself). While the previously-detected planet, CVSO 30b, orbits very close to the star, whirling around CVSO 30 in just under 11 hours at an orbital distance of 0.008 au, CVSO 30c orbits significantly further out, at a distance of 660 au, taking a staggering 27 000 years to complete a single orbit. (For reference, the planet Mercury orbits the Sun at an average distance of 0.39 au, while Neptune sits at just over 30 au.)
If it is confirmed that CVSO 30c orbits CVSO 30, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet detected by the transit method and a far-out exoplanet detected by direct imaging. Astronomers are still exploring how such an exotic system came to form in such a short timeframe, as the star is only 2.5 million years old; it is possible that the two planets interacted at some point in the past, scattering off one another and settling in their current extreme orbits.
Image Credit: ESO/Schmidt et al
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1624a/
Milky Way, VLT & LGS
Taken from inside the dome of the fourth Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), this spectacular shot from ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky captures the VLT’s Laser Guide Star (LGS) in action.
The LGS, located on top of the 1.2-metre secondary mirror of Unit Telescope 4, is part of the VLT’s adaptive optics system. By creating a glowing spot — an artificial star — in the Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 90 kilometres, the light coming back from the laser can be used as a reference to remove the effects of atmospheric distortion. This allows the telescope to produce astronomical images almost as sharp as if the telescope were in space.
The plane of the Milky Way, seemingly pierced by the laser as it soars above the open dome of the telescope, is rippled with dark clouds of interstellar dust that block visible light. However, thanks to the telescope’s infrared instruments and the adaptive optics system, astronomers can study and image our galaxy’s complex and turbulent core in unprecedented detail.
Image Credit: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1639a/
October 11, 2016
Spiral Galaxy ESO 499-G37
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the spiral galaxy ESO 499-G37, seen here against a backdrop of distant galaxies, scattered with nearby stars.
The galaxy is viewed from an angle, allowing Hubble to reveal its spiral nature clearly. The faint, loose spiral arms can be distinguished as bluish features swirling around the galaxy’s nucleus. This blue tinge emanates from the hot, young stars located in the spiral arms. The arms of a spiral galaxy have large amounts of gas and dust, and are often areas where new stars are constantly forming.
The galaxy’s most characteristic feature is a bright elongated nucleus. The bulging central core usually contains the highest density of stars in the galaxy, where typically a large group of comparatively cool old stars are packed in this compact, spheroidal region.
One feature common to many spiral galaxies is the presence of a bar running across the centre of the galaxy. These bars are thought to act as a mechanism that channels gas from the spiral arms to the centre, enhancing the star formation.
Recent studies suggest that ESO 499-G37’s nucleus sits within a small bar up to a few hundreds of light-years along, about a tenth the size of a typical galactic bar. Astronomers think that such small bars could be important in the formation of galactic bulges since they might provide a mechanism for bringing material from the outer regions down to the inner ones. However, the connection between bars and bulge formation is still not clear since bars are not a universal feature in spiral galaxies.
Lying in the constellation of Hydra, ESO 499-G37 is located about 59 million light-years away from the Sun. The galaxy belongs to the NGC 3175 group.
ESO 499-G37 was first observed in the late seventies within the ESO/Uppsala Survey of the ESO (B) atlas. This was a joint project undertaken by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Uppsala Observatory, which used the ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope at La Silla Observatory, Chile, to map a large portion of the southern sky looking for stars, galaxies, clusters, and planetary nebulae.
This picture was created from visible and infrared exposures taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 3.4 arcminutes wide.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Explanation from: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1247a/
The centre of the Lagoon Nebula
A spectacular NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the heart of the Lagoon Nebula. Seen as a massive cloud of glowing dust and gas, bombarded by the energetic radiation of new stars, this placid name hides a dramatic reality.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a dramatic view of gas and dust sculpted by intense radiation from hot young stars deep in the heart of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8). This spectacular object is named after the wide, lagoon-shaped dust lane that crosses the glowing gas of the nebula.
This structure is prominent in wide-field images, but cannot be seen in this close-up. However the strange billowing shapes and sandy texture visible in this image make the Lagoon Nebula’s watery name eerily appropriate from this viewpoint too.
Located four to five thousand light-years away, in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), Messier 8 is a huge region of star birth that stretches across one hundred light-years. Clouds of hydrogen gas are slowly collapsing to form new stars, whose bright ultraviolet rays then light up the surrounding gas in a distinctive shade of red.
The wispy tendrils and beach-like features of the nebula are not caused by the ebb and flow of tides, but rather by ultraviolet radiation’s ability to erode and disperse the gas and dust into the distinctive shapes that we see.
In recent years astronomers probing the secrets of the Lagoon Nebula have found the first unambiguous proof that star formation by accretion of matter from the gas cloud is ongoing in this region.
Young stars that are still surrounded by an accretion disc occasionally shoot out long tendrils of matter from their poles. Several examples of these jets, known as Herbig-Haro objects, have been found in this nebula in the last five years, providing strong support for astronomers’ theories about star formation in such hydrogen-rich regions.
The Lagoon Nebula is faintly visible to the naked eye on dark nights as a small patch of grey in the heart of the Milky Way. Without a telescope, the nebula looks underwhelming because human eyes are unable to distinguish clearly between colours at low light levels.
Charles Messier, the 18th century French astronomer, observed the nebula and included it in his famous astronomical catalogue, from which the nebula’s alternative name comes. But his relatively small refracting telescope would only have hinted at the dramatic structures and colours now visible thanks to Hubble.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA
Explanation from: https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1015/
October 10, 2016
The Milky Way Galaxy seen over Painted Hills
With very little light pollution, the glimmering stars of the Milky Way bathe the colourful layers of the Painted Hills of Oregon, USA in a natural glow.
Image Credit & Copyright: Nicholas Roemmelt
Explanation by: Royal Observatory Greenwich
Dark Nebula Barnard 59
The Pipe Nebula (Barnard 59) is a prime example of a dark nebula. Originally, astronomers believed these were areas in space where there were no stars. But it was later discovered that dark nebulae actually consist of clouds of interstellar dust so thick it can block out the light from the stars beyond. The Pipe Nebula appears silhouetted against the rich star clouds close to the centre of the Milky Way in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer).
Barnard 59 forms the mouthpiece of the Pipe Nebula and is the subject of this image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope. This strange and complex dark nebula lies about 600–700 light-years away from Earth.
The nebula is named after the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard who was the first to systematically record dark nebulae using long-exposure photography and one of those who recognised their dusty nature. Barnard catalogued a total of 370 dark nebulae all over the sky. A self-made man, he bought his first house with the prize money from discovering several comets. Barnard was an extraordinary observer with exceptional eyesight who made contributions in many fields of astronomy in the late 19th and early 20th century.
At first glance, your attention is most likely drawn to the centre of the image where dark twisting clouds look a little like the legs of a vast spider stretched across a web of stars. However, after a few moments you will begin to notice several finer details. Foggy, smoky shapes in the middle of the darkness are lit up by new stars that are forming. Star formation is common within regions that contain dense, molecular clouds, such as in dark nebulae. The dust and gas will clump together under the influence of gravity and more and more material will be attracted until the star is formed. However, compared to similar regions, the Barnard 59 region is undergoing relatively little star formation and still has a great deal of dust.
If you look carefully you may also be able to spot more than a dozen tiny blue, green and red strips scattered across the picture. These are asteroids, chunks of rock and metal a few kilometres across that are orbiting the Sun. The majority lie in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Barnard 59 is about ten million times further away from the Earth than these tiny objects.
And finally, as you take in this richly textured tapestry of celestial objects, consider for a moment that when you look up at this region of sky from Earth you would be able to fit this entire image under your thumb held at arms-length despite it being about six light-years across at the distance of Barnard 59.
Image Credit: ESO
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1233/
Colliding Galaxies NGC 3921
It is known today that merging galaxies play a large role in the evolution of galaxies and the formation of elliptical galaxies in particular. However there are only a few merging systems close enough to be observed in depth. The pair of interacting galaxies picture seen here — known as NGC 3921 — is one of these systems.
NGC 3921 — found in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) — is an interacting pair of disc galaxies in the late stages of its merger. Observations show that both of the galaxies involved were about the same mass and collided about 700 million years ago. You can see clearly in this image the disturbed morphology, tails and loops characteristic of a post-merger.
The clash of galaxies caused a rush of star formation and previous Hubble observations showed over 1000 bright, young star clusters bursting to life at the heart of the galaxy pair.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Judy Schmidt
Explanation from: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1537a/
October 9, 2016
Star-Forming Region Messier 78
In this image of the nebula Messier 78, young stars cast a bluish pall over their surroundings, while red fledgling stars peer out from their cocoons of cosmic dust. To our eyes, most of these stars would be hidden behind the dust, but ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) sees near-infrared light, which passes right through dust. The telescope is like a giant dustbuster that lets astronomers probe deep into the heart of the stellar environment.
Messier 78, or M78, is a well-studied example of a reflection nebula. It is located approximately 1600 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), just to the upper left of the three stars that make up the belt of this familiar landmark in the sky. In this image, Messier 78 is the central, bluish haze in the centre; the other reflection nebula towards the right goes by the name of NGC 2071. The French astronomer Pierre Méchain is credited with discovering Messier 78 in 1780. However, it is today more commonly known as the 78th entry in French astronomer Charles Messier’s catalogue, added to it in December of 1780.
When observed with visible light instruments, like ESO’s Wide Field Imager at the La Silla Observatory, Messier 78 appears as a glowing, azure expanse surrounded by dark ribbons (see eso1105). Cosmic dust reflects and scatters the light streaming from the young, bluish stars in Messier 78’s heart, the reason it is known as a reflection nebula.
The dark ribbons are thick clouds of dust that block the visible light originating behind them. These dense, cold regions are prime locations for the formation of new stars. When Messier 78 and its neighbours are observed in the submillimetre light between radio waves and infrared light, for example with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope, they reveal the glow of dust grains in pockets just barely warmer than their extremely cold surroundings (see eso1219). Eventually new stars will form out of these pockets as gravity causes them to shrink and heat up.
In between visible and submillimetre light lies the near-infrared part of the spectrum, where the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) provides astronomers with crucial information. Beyond dusty reflections and through thinner portions of obscuring material, the luminous stellar sources within Messier 78 are visible to VISTA’s eyes. In the centre of this image, two blue supergiant stars, called HD 38563A and HD 38563B, shine brightly. Towards the right of the image, the supergiant star illuminating NGC 2071, called HD 290861, is also seen.
Besides big, blue, hot stars, VISTA can also see many stars that are just forming within the cosmic dust strewn about this region, their reddish and yellow colours shown clearly in this image. These colourful fledgling stars can be found in the dust bands around NGC 2071 and along the trail of dust running towards the left of the image. Some of these are T Tauri stars. Although relatively bright, they are not yet hot enough for nuclear fusion reactions to have commenced in their cores. In several tens of millions of years, they will attain full “starhood”, and will take their place alongside their stellar brethren lighting up the Messier 78 region.
Image Credit: ESO
Explanation from: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1635/
The centre of spiral galaxy NGC 247
This Hubble image shows the central region of a spiral galaxy known as NGC 247. NGC 247 is a relatively small spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Cetus (The Whale). Lying at a distance of around 11 million light-years from us, it forms part of the Sculptor Group, a loose collection of galaxies that also contains the more famous NGC 253 (otherwise known as the Sculptor Galaxy).
NGC 247’s nucleus is visible here as a bright, whitish patch, surrounded by a mixture of stars, gas and dust. The dust forms dark patches and filaments that are silhouetted against the background of stars, while the gas has formed into bright knots known as H II regions, mostly scattered throughout the galaxy’s arms and outer areas.
This galaxy displays one particularly unusual and mysterious feature — it is not visible in this image, but can be seen clearly in wider views of the galaxy, such as this picture from ESO’s MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope. The northern part of NGC 247’s disc hosts an apparent void, a gap in the usual swarm of stars and H II regions that spans almost a third of the galaxy’s total length.
There are stars within this void, but they are quite different from those around it. They are significantly older, and as a result much fainter and redder. This indicates that the star formation taking place across most of the galaxy’s disc has somehow been arrested in the void region, and has not taken place for around one billion years. Although astronomers are still unsure how the void formed, recent studies suggest it might have been caused by gravitational interactions with part of another galaxy.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Explanation from: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1640a/
