#new stars
Spiral galaxy, NGC 3521 is about 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth’s sky, it is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other, more popular, spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It’s hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy has characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. This image also shows the galaxy embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. They are likely tidal debris, which are streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past.
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Image Credit & Copyright: Acquisition - Eric Benson, Processing - Dietmar Hager
In the center of the Tarantula Nebula lies a huge star cluster, called R136. It contains some of the largest, hottest, and most massive stars known. Gas and dust clouds in the nebula, have been sculpted into elongated shapes by powerful winds and ultraviolet radiation from these hot cluster stars. It lies within a neighboring galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud and is located a mere 170,000 light-years away.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia) et al.
What’s happening at the center of the star forming Trifid Nebula? Three prominent dust lanes that give the Trifid its name all come together and dark dust filaments are visible threaded throughout the nebula. The single massive star visible near the center gives the Trifid a lot of its glow. Cataloged as M20, its only about 300,000 years old, making it among the youngest emission nebulas known, and lies about 9,000 light years away toward the constellation of Sagittarius. The region pictured here spans about 10 light years.
Image Credit: Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), Hubble Space Telescope, Martin Pugh; Processing: Robert Gendler
Also known as vdB 142, the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is over 20 light-years long and in the constellation Cepheus. This detailed close-up view was recorded through narrow band filters that transmit the light from ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the region. The resulting composite highlights the bright swept-back ridges that outline pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas. Such embedded, dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within.
Image Credit & Copyright: Chad Leader
Known as N11, this region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The featured image was taken for scientific purposes by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed for artistry. Although the section imaged above is known as NGC 1763, the entire N11 emission nebula is second largest in LMC, only behind the Tarantula Nebula. Dark dust is home to emerging young stars, which are also visible around the image.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA; Processing: Josh Lake
