Posts Tagged ‘new stars’
The Eagle
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)
This eagle is a nursery for new stars. In this dramatic image from the Hubble Space Telescope taken in 1995, the baby stars are being born from eggs, small pockets of gas and dust. These columns of dust, like stalagmites in a cave are light years long. The Eagle Nebula, or M-16, is about 7,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, the Serpent.
Cat’s Paw
Credit: ESO
Resembling a cat’s paw from Earth, this glowing cloud of hydrogen gas spans 50 light-years. The Cat’s Paw Nebula, or NGC 6334, is a vast, active stellar nursery. It is also home to some of the most massive stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. These stars are only a few million years old; just younglings in the universe. Our Sun, by comparison, is 4.5 billion years old and is considered middle-aged. Massive stars form in this cloud because of the abundance of gas and dust; both ingredients for making baby stars. The massive stars will only live a short time however. In just tens of millions of years, these stars will explode in supernovae. These blasts will spread gas far and wide. The shockwaves will squeeze gas and dust together creating areas for new stars to form.
Black Widow
Credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/E. Churchwell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and the GLIMPSE Team
A cosmic spider-shaped nebula hides in a dark corner of space. Astronomers looking toward the constellation Circinus with earth-based telescopes saw only a fuzzy, hourglass-shaped patch of light. But when they turned the dust-piercing, infrared light gathering NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope at this spot in the sky, they discovered a nebula blooming with clusters of massive young stars. Astronomers called it the “Black Widow Nebula.”
Galaxy Mice
Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA
Galaxies dance. At least these two are circling each other in a mouse and mouse game. Astronomers nicknamed these colliding galaxies The Mice because of their long streaming tails of stars, dust and gas. 300 million light years away toward the constellation Coma Berenices, these galaxies are called NGC 4676. They collided 160 million years ago.
The Eagle
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)
This eagle is a nursery for new stars. In this dramatic image from the Hubble Space Telescope taken in 1995, the baby stars are being born from eggs, small pockets of gas and dust. These columns of dust, like stalagmites in a cave are light years long. The Eagle Nebula, or M-16, is about 7,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, the Serpent.
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By The Riviera Times
By CritterKeeper
By Sarah Q. Brett