Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al & ESA/XMM-Newton; Optical: AURA/NOAO/CTIO/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al

A glowing bauble highlights a star-forming flower in this image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Explore the faint bubble and veils of gas and dust in the Small Magellanic Cloud near a pulsar known as SXP 1062. What shapes or stories can you see? Leave a note below.

Pulsars are spinning, super-dense stars. They are all that remains of a star that exploded as a supernova. They also glow brightly as an X-ray source. The pulsar in this image is the bright blue star in on the right. Usually pulsars spin very fast, up to several times a minute. This pulsar rotates slowly, once every 18 minutes. The faint bubble surrounding the pulsar is the expanding shell of material blasted into space by the supernova explosion. The explosion occurred between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago. Other optical imagery was added to the image showing us the incredible veils and formations of gas and dust in the nearby star-making region.

This image of SXP 1062 spans about 744 light-years. Light traveling at 6 trillion miles per year has taken about 180,000 years to reach our eyes on Earth from the Small Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of Tucana, the Toucan. Tucana is a new constellation. Petrus Plancius first visualized the constellation in 1589. The celestial cartographer noted many of the strange creatures encountered on early voyages of discovery in the 16th century.

Credit: NASA/ESA and Hubble

Dark dust twists and turns in this image of the Carina Nebula from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the glowing gas and dark blobs. What stories can you tell? Leave a note below.

This image is just a tiny part of the vast Carina Nebula. The nebula is a star-making factory about 7,500 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Carina, the Keel of Jason’s ship the Argo from Greek mythology. The abundance of gas and dust makes it a perfect place for stars to form. Gravity pulls globs of dust closer together. As more material piles up, it starts to warm up and eventually gets hot enough for hydrogen atoms to begin to fuse. The inky dark blobs in the upper right of the image may be cocoons for new stars. Astronomers call them Bok Globules, after American astronomer Bart Bok who first described them in the 1940s.

Some big stars have already been born from the nebula. These stars blaze so brightly and give off so much radiation that it carves the nebula into incredible shapes. The stars radiation also excites atoms in the cloud causing them to glow like a neon sign.

A thin veil of dust lies between Earth and the glowing background. Just like clouds on Earth, the dust clouds in the nebula flow, swirl and twist with unseen currents.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Allen (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) and the IRAC GTO Team

A starry garden full of dusty petals and waves of gas fill this image of the Coronet Cluster from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Explore the star-forming clouds of the Coronet Cluster. What patterns or stories do you see? Leave a note below.

The Coronet Cluster lies at the heart of this nebula in the Corona Australis region. Like the well-known Orion Nebula, this region of space is full of gas and dust creating a perfect place for stars to form. As gas and dust gather in the nebula, gravity pulls it together. When enough material clumps together, the cloud can begin to collapse. A star is born when it shines on its own and starts to convert hydrogen gas into energy in a process called fusion.

The infrared eyes of the Spitzer Space Telescope peer through the thick dust of this nebula showing faint structures not seen with our regular eyes. New stars in the central cluster of stars warm and excite the hydrogen gas in the cloud causing it to glow. If you look closely in the center of the image, you can see a sheet of green gas. This cold dust reflects the light from the new stars rather than glowing.

The nebula surrounding the Coronet Cluster is one of the nearest and most active regions of star formation. The cluster is found about 424 light-years from Earth toward the faint constellation Corona Australis, or the Southern Crown. The ancient Greeks saw the constellation as a laurel wreath, not as a crown.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SINGS Team

Glowing dust lanes of this spiral galaxy resemble a sunflower in an image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Follow the arching red spiral arms toward the dense ring of stars near the center of Messier 63. What shapes or stories do you see? Leave a note below. To astronomers looking through telescopes, Messier 63 resembled a sunflower. Messier 63 is also known as the Sunflower Galaxy.

By looking at galaxies in infrared light, astronomers can more easily pick out the dust lanes within spiral galaxies. In a normal image, such as from the Hubble Space Telescope, dust is dark and covers starlight. But the infrared eyes of Spitzer pick out the heat in the dust lanes. The dusty spiral compress and bring gas and dust together providing everything for new stars to form.

In visible light, the bright spiral galaxy has a glowing yellow core with sweeping blue spiral arms. The blue light comes from new blue stars. The spiral arms are streaked with dark dust and patches of pink nebulae. The galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across; the same size as our Milky Way Galaxy.

Look for a diagonal line just below and to the right of the Sunflower Galaxy. This short line is actually a distant galaxy with its edge facing toward us. M63 is found about 37 million light-years from Earth toward the small constellation Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. The galaxy is not far from the more famous Whirlpool Galaxy.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Povich (Penn State Univ.)

We are used to seeing a rainbow of colors when we gaze out into the universe. But light beyond the range of our eyes is no less beautiful as we see in this image of Eta Carinae from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Explore the subtle reds and blues in this image surrounding one of the most massive stars in the Milky Way. What shapes and pictures do you see in this star cloud? Leave a note below.

The region surrounding Eta Carinae is a giant star-making factory. Sometimes pockets of hydrogen gas and dust form pockets. Gravity pulls this star-stuff together. If enough material comes together, a star may be born. In these vast clouds, giant stars can be born. Eta Carinae is one of them. It is 100 times heavier and a million times brighter than our own Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star in the upper center of this image. Surrounding the star is a bubble of gas and dust that is being pushed away by strong winds and blistering radiation.

Blue areas in the image are regions of transparent gas and dust. We see these regions in normal, visible light. Red, orange and green areas are usually hidden from view by dark clouds of dust.

Eta Carinae is found about 10,000 light-years from Earth toward the constellation of Carina, the Keel of the mythological ship Argo Navis.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE-MIPSGAL Teams

A bubble of hot gas and glowing dust sculpted by a massive star shapes a green ring or flower in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Explore the green and red bubble known as RCW 120. What shapes or patterns do you see in the image? Leave a note below.

This bubble of glowing gas is found near the plane of the Milky Way in the dense star clouds of Scorpius, the Scorpion. Giant stars, known as “O-type” stars send out a torrent of light and stellar winds. These winds shape bubbles in the gas clouds from which the stars are born. With Spitzer’s infrared light detectors, astronomers can see colors of light we cannot see with our eyes. We feel infrared light as heat. We can see young, hot stars nestled deep within their dusty cocoons. The intense winds are not all that is unleashed from these stars. Scorching ultraviolet radiation causes molecules of hydrogen and other elements to glow. The ring is created when intense winds slam into the calm gas and dust cloud. The reddish area inside the bubble show slightly larger and hotter grains of dust.

This formation inside dust clouds is common. If you explore a Spitzer image of the entire galaxy, you’ll find hundreds of similar bubbles. Even within this image, many other smaller bubbles can be found.

RCW 120 lies slightly above the plane of our galaxy about 4,300 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Scorpius.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

A stunning swirl of stars resembles the spiral petals of a rose in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

What other stories or shapes do you see as you explore this pair of interacting galaxies known as Arp 273? Leave a note below.

From the tightly wound core of UGC 1810, the larger spiral galaxy in this image, travel outward along its distorted spiral arms. As these two galaxies interact, gravity pushes and pulls the spiral arms, distorting them. Spiral arms are offset as the nearly edge-on smaller galaxy, known as UGC 1813, brushes past. The outer spiral arm almost forms a complete ring around the galaxy. This type of ring forms when one galaxy passes through another. Nearer the center, faint and warped spiral arms seem to be out of sync with the rest of the galaxy. This interaction also results in an explosion of new star formation. Look for huge blue clusters of hot, young stars scattered throughout the older yellow stars and dust lanes of the galaxy.

The smaller galaxy is not unscathed in this encounter. Intense star formation appears to be going on in its nucleus. Astronomers call this a starburst and the interaction with the larger galaxy might be the cause. The spiral arm nearest the larger galaxy appears to be squished. This arm is separated from the nearest spiral arm of the larger galaxy by just tens of thousands of light years. A close brush. Stars on the far side of the galaxy trail off in a long tail of star stuff.

We have American astronomer Halton “Chip” Arp to thank for creating a catalog of peculiar galaxies in the 1960s. These galaxies did not fall into the normal categories of shapes. Many appeared as two or more close objects with bridges of material between them. Scientists now believe that many of these galaxies are interacting and merging.

As you travel across this image, notice the many faraway galaxies. Some of these galaxies are just smudges of light in the image. Their combined starlight is so dim that Hubble couldn’t collect enough of it during this 6 hour exposure from Hubble.

Arp 273 lies about 340 million light years from Earth toward the constellation Andromeda. From side to side, it would take our starship traveling at the speed of light more than 260,000 years to cross the image.

Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2

Wads of nebula abound in the area surrounding the star-forming region known as Gum 19 in this image from the European Southern Observatory.

Explore the nebula, bubbles and sheets of dust. What stories or pictures do you see in this image? We are actually close enough to this nebula that it makes it hard to see. Astronomers believe this expanding nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion more than one million years ago. The faint emission nebula is hard to see because of the busy backdrop of the Milky Way. Emission nebula glow as ultraviolet light from huge, nearby stars excite hydrogen gas atoms within the cloud. Other examples of emission nebula include the Orion Nebula, the Eagle Nebula, the Flame Nebula and the Carina Nebula.

The area includes the Vela Supernova Remnant. The area is also home to the super­mas­sive, blue-giant star, V391 Velo­rum. Someday, this huge star will prob­a­bly explode in a super­nova explo­sion. These mas­sive stars are five to ten times larger and heav­ier than our Sun. They don’t shine for long. V31 Velo­rum burns at a sear­ing 30,000 degrees Cel­sius. After only about ten mil­lion years, they blow up as super­novae. These explo­sions release so much energy in light and heat that they can eas­ily blaze brighter than a galaxy for a short period of time. Their explo­sive ends spread more mate­r­ial to be used in future star and planet formation.

Gum 19 is named for Aus­tralian astro­physi­cist Colin S. Gum. Earth is only about 450 light-years from the leading edge of this nebula and 1,500 light-years from the back edge. The nebula is found toward the southern con­stel­la­tion of Vela, the Sail.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

These hills of Mars resemble sea fans from Earth’s oceans.

Explore these scalloped-edged depressions in this image from NASA’s HiRISE camera. Many smaller scalloped-edged depressions seem to have merged into larger depressions throughout this image in an area south of the Hellas region in the southern hemisphere of Mars. Scientists theorize that subsurface material, maybe ice, is going directly to gas in a process called sublimation. When the frozen material disappears, the surface collapses.

Look for criss-crossing dark streaks across the flat areas in this image. Formed by dust devils, these streaks form when warm air close to the surface breaks through colder layers of air above. Swirling, columnar vortices of wind move across the land removing bright dust from the darker surface beneath. Dust devils are common in dry, desert landscapes of Earth as well.

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.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Vine-like patterns swirl through the landscape of the Russell Crater dune field on Mars.

Explore the dunes of Mars in this image from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. What other shapes or patterns do you see in the image? Leave a message below.

The dark, meandering tracks across the dunes show the paths of dust devils. Dust devils occur on Earth too. These strong, well-formed whirlwinds are like mini-tornadoes. They are vertically rotating columns of air formed when warm air at the surface punches through cooler air above. The column of air may begin to rotate. When it does, more warm air is sucked in from the surrounding area giving it more power. The surrounding cooler air contains the spinning column of warm. On Mars, spinning dust devils pick up the fine dust leaving darker sand behind showing the swirling paths.

We typically think of Mars as a windy place. We see a lot of evidence for that on the surface with sand dunes, dusty rovers and images of planet-wide dust storms. However, dust devils need calm conditions and cool air temperatures to form.

Explore the image more and you might spot just a few patches of seasonal frost that forms on these dunes high in Mars’ south polar region. Near the bottom of this image (this image has been rotated to aid in viewing, so the bottom is north.) the face of the largest dune is lined with gullies. Scientists are unsure how the gullies formed. They think they might be caused by erosion by the seasonal frozen carbon dioxide ice. During the summer months, the dry ice turns directly from ice into a gas in a process called sublimation.