Credit: ESA/NASA & R. Sahai

Sometimes we view NASA Hubble Space Telescope images and see things we just don’t believe. This striking spiral is thought to be created by material spinning out of LL Pegasi.

LL Pegasi, like most stars in the galaxy, is a binary star; two stars orbiting each other. One of the stars is losing material, while another star orbits it. From our lucky vantage point on Earth, we are looking at the star from above. So we see the expanding pinwheel spiral pattern looking like a spinning water sprinkler. The regular spacing between layers in the spiral

Astronomers believe that LL Pegasi is in the first stages of forming a planetary nebula. Planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. Planet hunters of the 17th and 18th centuries saw many objects in their telescopes that resembled the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. We now know that these objects are far outside the solar system. Planetary nebulae form during the final stages of life for stars like our Sun. Once they run out of hydrogen fuel, they start to burn heavier elements, such as helium. They swell, engulfing their inner planets, and the outer layers are puffed off into space. Huge expanding bubbles and rings of material form the planetary nebulae we see. Radiation from the hot and dead core of the star causes atoms within the cloud to glow like a neon sign.

The material making up the spiral is moving away from the star at about 50,000 kilometers per hour, or 30,000 miles per hour. While we can see the material being spewed from the central star, a thick cocoon of dust blocks it from our view. Knowing the speed the material is being ejected, astronomers can measure the regular spacing between the spirals. They find that the orbital period of the companion star and the distance between the spirals is about 800 years.

LL Pegasi, or AFGL 3068, is found more than 3,000 light-years away from Earth toward the constellation of Pegasus, the Winged Horse.

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ J. Hora (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

Comet collisions may be kicking up dust in the Helix Nebula in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Resembling a giant, shimmering eye, the Helix Nebula was a star much like our Sun. When a star like our Sun burn all of the hydrogen that fuels nuclear fusion in their cores, the star begins to shed its outer layers, puffing them out into space as giant bubbles. Astronomers call these cosmic beauties planetary nebula. Radiation from the dead star’s white hot core, called a white dwarf, heats the expanding shell of material causing it to glow. The glow is short-lived, however, lasting for only about 10,000 years.

Planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. Early planet seekers noticed many objects in the sky that resembled the glowing orbs of known gas planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. It wasn’t until much later that scientists discovered the dead stars’ true origin.

Images in visible light of the Helix Nebula show a spectacularly colorful bubble around the central star but no real detail. With Spitzer’s infrared telescope, however, dust not previously seen was found circling the star at a distance of 35 to 150 astronomical units. An astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the Sun; about 93 million miles. The glow of the dust encircling the dead star surprised astronomers. They believe the dust is most likely churned up by comets smashing into each other at the fringes of this doomed solar system.

The Helix Nebula is found only about 700 light-years from Earth toward the zodiacal constellation Aquarius, the Water Bearer.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) and G. Ostlin (Stockholm University)

Interacting galaxies form a Pac-Man shape moving in to devour a distant galaxy in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the pair known as NGC 6090. Zoom in close and you can see that their centers overlap. The cores of these warped spiral galaxies are about 10,000 light-years apart. Astronomers believe that the two galaxies are in an intermediate stage of joining together. Millions of years from now, the two galaxies will likely finish merging, forming a larger elliptical galaxy. The upper galaxy, almost face-on from Earth, still has a clear spiral structure. The lower galaxy, seen edge-on, is a disc with stubby spiral arms.

From the center, follow the long curving tails of stars. We’ve seen a similar galaxy, the Antennae galaxies, with two sweeping tails of faint stars. These two, long tidal tails are created as gravity interplay between the galaxies strips material from the outer spiral arms and swings it far into space. Hubble’s vision is sharp enough to reveal bright knots of bluish newborn stars near where the galaxies overlap. As dust and gas is stretched by the interactions between the galaxies, some material clumps together enough to form new stars. Many faint and distant background galaxies dot the image.

NGC 6090 lies about 400 million light-years away toward the constellation Draco, the Dragon. What stories do you see in this image? Leave us a comment below.

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Credit: NASA, ESA and Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris, France)

Cold doesn’t actually have a color; well, maybe blue lips in the wintertime. To help us see new stars being born deep within the thick dust of nebulae, astronomers use special telescopes to see the star’s glow.

Explore the greenish mist surrounding GL 490 in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Besides the greenish streaks, what else do you see in the green cloud? Tell us in the comment area below.

Zoom into GL 490, glowing in the middle right of the image. The fog surrounding the bright stars in this image are made up of hydrogen and carbon compounds called PAHs, short for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. You can go out today and see PAHs for yourself in the form of sooty car exhaust and the sticky soot on a charcoal grill. While PAHs aren’t green in space, astronomers give them that color so they can see and study them. In space, PAHs make up the dark clouds of star–forming nebulae. The nebulae are very cold, but the stars cause PAHs to warm up slightly and glow in infrared light; a part of the light spectrum that we cannot see. We can feel it however, in the form of heat.

Explore the area around the upper bright star. Streaks around the star at the top left are probably dust grains lined up with the star’s magnetic field, similar to how iron dust forms lines on paper when a magnet is held underneath. This dust lies between Earth and the star. Instead of glowing, this dust is probably reflecting the light of the background star. The yellowish color isn’t real either. Scientists use colors to help them track temperature in the cloud. Yellow is just a bit warmer than the surrounding colder green dust. Also find several blobby bubbles. These globs of stretched out gas indicate the making of young, massive stars. This material, blown out from both ends of the star, may one day fall back toward the star to form planets.

GL490 is about 3,000 light-years from Earth which makes it relatively close for astronomers to study. This image is part of the new GLIMPSE360 sky survey and is a combination of data taken from Spitzer and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)

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Credit: Howard Bond (Space Telescope Science Institute), Robin Ciardullo (Pennsylvania State University) and NASA

IC 3568 glows like a lemony plasma globe in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the image of the tiny planetary nebula, also called the Lemon Slice Nebula. IC 3568 is also one of the simplest planetary nebulae astronomers have observed. Faint structure, like the inside of a lemon, can be seen in the bright central bubble surrounding the central star. A faint halo extends beyond the bright center in this classic “round” planetary nebula.

IC 3568 is a young planetary nebula having has a diameter of only about 0.4 light-years or about 800 times the size of our solar system. This means it would take a beam of light less than a six months to cross the nebula.

Plan­e­tary neb­ula have noth­ing to do with plan­ets except that to early astronomers these round, bub­bles of gas looked like the plan­ets Uranus and Nep­tune. Plan­e­tary neb­ula are the last stage of life for stars like our Sun. After bil­lions of years, stars reach a point where there is lit­tle hydro­gen gas to burn. To help con­vert their stel­lar fur­naces to burn other ele­ments such as helium, the star bal­loons in size to become a red giant. Even­tu­ally, how­ever, the star col­lapses back on itself. This increases the tem­per­a­ture at its core and most of the star’s mate­r­ial is cat­a­pulted into space, form­ing a bub­ble around the star. This doesn’t hap­pen all at once but in stages.

IC 3568 lies about 9,000 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Camelopardalis, the Giraffe. Camelopardalis is the Latin word for giraffe; a camel-like animal, with a long neck and spots of a leopard. When first seen, camels amazed crowds throughout the Roman world. Camelopardalis is a faint constellation probably created by Petrus Plancius for his star atlas. The Greeks saw no constellations in the part of the sky near the North Star and considered it to be empty.

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Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

In 1987, astronomers witnessed a brilliant explosion. A massive star exploded, shining with more light than an entire galaxy. In a span of months it was gone. With the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers “re-found” SN 1987A hidden in a backdrop of glittering stars and shimmering wisps of gas.

What scientists observed was the self-destruction of a massive star, many times heavier than our Sun. Supernova is the final stage in the life of a super-massive star. These stars burn through their hydrogen fuel reserves so quickly that they live only a few million years. When the fuel reserves run out, the star collapses on itself. The force of gravity pulls the outer layers toward the center of the star but then rebounds in a colossal explosion. Heavier atoms, such as oxygen, silicon, gold, and uranium are created in the super-hot explosion.

Explore the image of SN 1987A. The nebula shaped like the number 8 is all that remains of the star. Twin rings of material are moving through the nebula. The fast-moving material slams into the calm surrounding nebula, heating the gas and dust and causing it to glow. Many bright blue near the supernova are massive stars themselves. In the coming years, astronomers will be watching the rings of material sweep through the nebula, creating new patterns and shapes. What do you see in this shimmering cloud surrounding a supernova? Share your comments below.

SN 1987A is a supernova remnant about 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud toward the southern constellation Dorado, the Dolphin.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

Clusters of hot, blue stars swirl along the star lanes of barred spiral NGC 1672.

Explore this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Clouds of hydrogen gas glow red along the outer arms of the galaxy. Curtains of dust, giving a red tint to far-off background galaxies, give detail to the spiral arms. NGC 1672 is a bit different than normal spiral galaxies. The spiral arms do not twist into the center but instead are attached at both ends by a bar of stars. We view NGC 1672 nearly face-on, looking down as if from above, from our vantage point on Earth. Bright blue, young and hot stars are concentrated at the ends of the bars. Astronomers believe that gas and dust has a unique way of funneling from the outer spiral arms toward the center nucleus, creating an intense star–making region within the bars.

NGC 1672, about 60 million light-years from Earth toward the southern constellation of Dorado the Dolphin, also is a very active galaxy. Astronomers call galaxies like this one a Seyfert galaxy. The energy put out by the nucleus of NGC 1672 is very high. Astronomers believe that a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core is responsible for this huge output of light and energy.

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Credit: NASA and ESA

A dramatic, piercing eye gazes back at us from the sky in this image of NGC 3918 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the colorful layers of gas and dust of this planetary nebula. These bubbles surround a pinpoint of light at the center; the dying remnants of a star that once was much like our Sun. For most of its life, the star converted hydrogen into helium in its core in a process called fusion. Once that hydrogen runs out after billions of years, the star puffs up to become a red giant, engulfing it inner planets. A red giant is nearly the last phase of life for a star like our Sun. The core can start to fuse helium into carbon but this process doesn’t last very long. When that process ends, huge clouds of gas, the outer layers of the star, are puffed out into space as the star convulses. Eventually, all that remains is the white-hot, dead core of the star. Astronomers call this a white dwarf. They are small; about the size of the Earth, and they weigh about as much as half a Sun. In about four billion years, our Sun will enter this stage in its life. The white dwarf is a dead star that will eventually fade into a piece of warm, black ash.

Intense radiation from the tiny remnant causes the nebula to glow. The glow lights up the layers of the nebula showing us strange and irregular shapes. In the case of NGC 3918, it looks like the shells of gas were thrown off in two huge waves. But astronomers studying the nebula believe the bubbles were formed at the same time. The material was thrown away from the star at different speeds. Jets shoot out from the ends of the nebula.

NGC 3918 is found only about 4,900 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Centaurus. The light from this planetary nebula has traveled nearly 5,000 years ago to fall on our eyes here on Earth. Leave a comment below and tell us what you see in this image.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

On a planet filled with craters of every shape and size, an unusual impact crater came to the attention of scientists studying Mars using NASA’s HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Explore the bull’s-eye crater. On Earth, features such as this can be caused when an impact punches through layers of hard and soft material, such as ice and rock. Terraced craters, such as this one, can be found on Earth, Moon and other moons. Explore the flows a the edge of the crater.

The central pit is the biggest mystery for scientists. The outer terraces seem to be softer and more weathered, while the central pit has steep sides. No material can be seen streaking away from the central crater. It could have occurred in the initial impact. Or the pit could have been gouged out by a later impact, striking just off center.

Launched with MRO in 2005, HiRISE is one of six instru­ments aboard the space­craft orbit­ing Mars. HiRISE’s cam­era can see objects on the sur­face as small as a beach ball. The instru­ment also offers sci­en­tists stereo views of the sur­face. When com­bined with dig­i­tal ter­rain mod­els, sci­en­tists can “drape” the imagery to pro­duce real­is­tic land­scapes to study and explore.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, R. O’Connell (University of Virginia), F. Paresce (National Institute for Astrophysics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Universities Space Research Association/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Ghostly fingers of gas and dust reach up to grab a glittering, young stars of NGC 3603 in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the image. NGC 3603 is one of the most active star–making factories that astronomers know of. Most of the stars were born about the same time. A variety of stars with different masses, temperatures and colors can be found throughout the cluster. NGC 3603 also contains some of the most massive stars known. These monster stars live fast, burning through their hydrogen fuel quickly. They die young in huge supernova explosions after living less than a million years.

Also explore the wispy clouds of gas surrounding the cluster. This nebula gave birth to the cluster. The new suns send out a powerful stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation creating a huge cavity in the gas and dust cloud.

NGC 3603 is located right in the backyard; only 20,000 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Carina, the Keel of the mythical ship Argo Navis. Because the star cluster is so close to Earth, astronomers can get a good idea of how stars form and die.

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