- Planetary Nebula NGC 5189 - Aligned Galaxies NGC 3314 - Tarantula Nebula 30 Doradus - Spiral Galaxy M81 - Interacting Galaxies Arp 273 - Active Galaxy M82
For the entire extensive collection of free wallpapers, images, and other goodies, check out http://hubblesite.org! Planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and more are just a click away.
Bubble Nebula by Hubble Heritage Via Flickr: For the 26th birthday of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are highlighting a Hubble image of an enormous bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star. The Hubble image of the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635, was chosen to mark the 26th anniversary of the launch of Hubble into Earth orbit by the STS-31 space shuttle crew on April 24, 1990. The Bubble Nebula is 7 light-years across — about one-and-a-half times the distance from our sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. The Bubble Nebula was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel, a prominent British astronomer. It is being formed by a prototypical Wolf-Rayet star, an extremely bright, massive, and short-lived star that has lost most of its outer hydrogen and is now fusing helium into heavier elements. The star is about 4 million years old, and in 10 million to 20 million years, it will likely detonate as a supernova.
Stormy seas in Sagittarius by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Via Flickr: Some of the most breathtaking views in the Universe are created by nebulae — hot, glowing clouds of gas. This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the centre of the Lagoon Nebula, an object with a deceptively tranquil name. The region is filled with intense winds from hot stars, churning funnels of gas, and energetic star formation, all embedded within an intricate haze of gas and pitch-dark dust.
LOL yep that’s the day job! I started last year after graduating, working on the NASA side of things with the mission doing social media/outreach, so I’m going to do my obligatory HUBBY LINK DROP: insta,twitter,fb
The center of the Lagoon Nebula is a whirlwind of spectacular star formation. Visible near the image center, at least two long funnel-shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have been formed by extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight. A tremendously bright nearby star, Hershel 36, lights the area. Vast walls of dust hide and redden other hot young stars. As energy from these stars pours into the cool dust and gas, large temperature differences in adjoining regions can be created generating shearing winds which may cause the funnels. This picture, spanning about 15 light years, features two colors detected by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The Lagoon Nebula, also known as >M8, lies about 5000 light years distant toward the constellation of the Archer Sagittarius.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & Copyright: Diego Gravinese
Newly discovered Comet SWAN has already developed an impressive tail. The comet came in from the outer Solar System and has just passed inside the orbit of the Earth. Officially designated C/2020 F8 (SWAN), this outgassing interplanetary iceberg will pass its closest to the Earth on May 13, and closest to the Sun on May 27. The comet was first noticed in late March by an astronomy enthusiast looking through images taken by NASA’s Sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft, and is named for this spacecraft's Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) camera. The featured image, taken from the dark skies in Namibia in mid-April, captured Comet SWAN's green-glowing coma and unexpectedly long, detailed, and blue ion-tail. Although the brightness of comets are notoriously hard to predict, some models have Comet SWAN becoming bright enough to see with the unaided eye during June.
Human eyes can see only a small portion of the range of radiation given off by the objects around us. We call this wide array of radiation the electromagnetic spectrum, and the part we can see visible light.
In this Hubble Space Telescope image, researchers revisited one of Hubble's most iconic and popular images: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation.
Here, the pillars are seen in infrared light, which pierces through obscuring dust and gas and unveil a more unfamiliar - but just as amazing - view of the pillars. The better-known image is of the pillars in visible light.
In this ethereal view the entire frame is peppered with bright stars and baby stars are revealed being formed within the pillars themselves. The ghostly outlines of the pillars seem much more delicate, and are silhouetted against an eerie blue haze.
Explore how light affects the images we see. Find more online activities on Hubble Inspires.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team
What’s happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster (Cetus). At that estimated distance, this gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across. Also known as NGC 1068, its compact and very bright core is well studied by astronomers exploring the mysteries of supermassive black holes in active Seyfert galaxies. M77 and its active core glows bright at x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and radio wavelengths. The featured sharp image of M77 was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and is dominated by the (visible) red light emitted by hydrogen. The image shows details of the spiral's winding spiral arms as traced by obscuring dust clouds, and red-tinted star forming regions close in to the galaxy’s luminous core.
Why does this galaxy spin so fast? To start, even identifying which type of galaxy UGC 12591 is difficult – featured on the lower left, it has dark dust lanes like a spiral galaxy but a large diffuse bulge of stars like a lenticular. Surprisingly observations show that UGC 12591 spins at about 480 km/sec, almost twice as fast as our Milky Way, and the fastest rotation rate yet measured. The mass needed to hold together a galaxy spinning this fast is several times the mass of our Milky Way Galaxy. Progenitor scenarios for UGC 12591 include slow growth by accreting ambient matter, or rapid growth through a recent galaxy collision or collisions – future observations may tell. The light we see today from UGC 12591 left about 400 million years ago, when trees were first developing on Earth.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & Copyright: Leo Shatz
What’s all of the commotion in the Tadpole Nebula? Star formation. Dusty emission in the Tadpole Nebula, IC 410, lies about 12,000 light-years away in the northern constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The cloud of glowing gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893. Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, bright newly formed cluster stars are seen all around the star-forming nebula. Notable near the image center are two relatively dense streamers of material trailing away from the nebula’s central regions. Potentially sites of ongoing star formation in IC 410, these cosmic tadpole shapes are about 10 light-years long. The featured image was taken in infrared light by NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite.
Image Credit: WISE, IRSA, NASA; Processing & Copyright: Francesco Antonucci
Once upon a time, scientists decided, “what would happen if we point Hubble at this dark piece of the sky and leave the exposure open for an absurd amount of time?” Said scientists then experienced sudden bowel incontinence from the results. Vast specks of light, like the first image and when zoomed in, each individual speck of light is it’s own galaxy with it’s own solar systems.
Seeing the sheer vastness of the universe and that it’s so large, it’s incomprehensible to our feeble minds, is it possible that we’re alone? Where are all the aliens?
The Fermi Paradox tries to describe why we seem to be alone in a vast sea of endless possibilities for intelligent life to form. Life seems to form easily, surely it’s the same elsewhere.
Here’s some main bullet point arguments as to why we’re seemingly alone.
• We’re too far apart, separated by vast space and time • We’re rare or we’re the first • The aliens don’t have advanced technology (we don’t either). Think of it this way, an octopus or a crow is intelligent life. They’ve never even visited the moon. • Mass extinctions happen more often than not, they might be dead or intelligent life never exists long enough to make contact with each other before it’s wiped out • We haven’t existed long enough to be discovered or to figure out how to find others • They’re too advanced for us • It’s simple nature of intelligent life to eventually wipe itself out • Intelligent life has discovered that it’s too dangers to be in contact • We’re not listening properly for their messages. It’s like trying to listen to a CD on a record player - it won’t work. • We’re not contacted because we’re in a simulation or an alien zoo • Maybe they’re already here, observing • Maybe they’re here (e.g. UFOs?) we just don’t know how to talk to them or acknoweldge them. We laugh at most UFO reports.
TheVeil Nebula is a cloud of heated ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus, and makes up the visible portion of the Cygnus Loop, a large but faint supernova remnant, which exploded 5,000-8,000 years ago.
“Located in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), this giant cloud of glowing interstellar gas is a stellar nursery that is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. Although the name definitely suits the beauty of this object, “lagoon” does suggest tranquillity and there is nothing placid about the high-energy radiation causing these intricate clouds to glow. The massive stars hiding within the heart of the nebula give off enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation, ionising the gas and causing it to shine colourfully, as well as sculpting the surrounding nebula into strange shapes. The result is an object around four to five thousand light-years away which, on a clear night, is faintly visible to the naked eye.”
TheEagle Nebula is a region of star formation, ranging at about 90 trillion kilometers long. To put to scale, that’s the equivalent of approximately 2,250,000,000 Earth’s. One of the large regions inside of the nebula is a star forming region referred to as “The Pillars of Creation” (seen above), which evidence suggests may have already been destroyed by a supernova that exploded some eight to nine thousand years ago. However, the light from this massive event will not reach Earth for another millennium.
The Carina Nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in the sky, and contains several open star clusters within it’s boundaries. Measuring at nearly four times the size of the Orion Nebula, it is located in the Southern region of the Sky. Inside lies Eta Carinae, a luminous hypergiant star with a mass ranging from 100 to 150 times that of out Sun, and four million times as bright.
TheTarantula Nebula, also known as NGC 2070, was thought to be a star until in 1751 when Nicolas Louis de Lacaille recognized its nebular nature. As an extremely luminous non-stellar object, it is so bright that if it were as close as the Orion Nebula, it would cast shadows on Earth.
TheCrab Nebula is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula found in the constellation of Taurus. At it’s center lies a neutron star 28-30km across, that emits radiation from gamma rays to radio waves. It is not visible to the naked eye, but can be seen using a telescope or binoculars.
TheHelix Nebula is a large planetary nebula located in the constellation of Aquarius. Sometimes referred to as the “Eye of God”, it is one of the closest planetary nebula to Earth.
TheOrion Nebula, seen in the photos above, is one of the most photographed and scrutinized objects in the night sky. Visible to the naked eye, it’s located just south of Orion’s Belt in the Constellation of Orion.
