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Ever wondered what it would be like to be an ant, but be able to see kilometers into the distance? I imagine the Hubble telescope has provided us with a similar perspective of the universe around us. The good people at NASA and space astronomers all around the world have brought us glimpses of cosmic art like never seen before.
Pleiades Star Cluster. The Pleiades cluster, named by the ancient Greeks, is easily seen as a small grouping of stars lying near the shoulder of Taurus, the Bull, in the winter sky. Although it might be expected that the distance to this well-studied cluster would be well established, there has been an ongoing controversy among astronomers about its distance for the past seven years.
Orion Nebula. In one of the most detailed astronomical images ever produced, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured an unprecedented look at the Orion Nebula. This turbulent star formation region is one of astronomy’s most dramatic and photogenic celestial objects. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image.
Helix Nebula. At 650 light-years away, the Helix is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth. The Helix appears to be round because we are looking at one end of the nebula. It is actually a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases.
Dark Matter. Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a ghostly ring of dark matter that formed long ago during a titanic collision between two massive galaxy clusters. The ring’s discovery is among the strongest evidence yet that dark matter exists. Although astronomers don’t know what dark matter is made of, they hypothesize that it is a type of elementary particle that pervades the universe.
Crab Nebula. The Crab Nebula is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.
Cat’s Eye Nebula. The Cat’s Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings.” The nebula, formally cataloged NGC 6543, is every bit as inscrutable as the J.R.R. Tolkien phantom character. Though the Cat’s Eye Nebula was one of the first planetary nebulae to be discovered, it is one of the most complex such nebulae seen in space.
Swan Nebula. The photograph, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.
Boomerang Nebula. The Boomerang Nebula is located about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of Centaurus. Submillimeter radio measurements show the deep interior of the nebula to have a temperature of only one degree Kelvin above absolute zero. This makes the inner regions of the Boomerang Nebula one of the coldest known places in the universe.
Pinwheel Galaxy. The M101 (also nicknamed the Pinwheel Galaxy) lies in the northern circumpolar constellation, Ursa Major (The Great Bear), at a distance of 25 million light-years from Earth. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. Approximately 100 billion of these stars could be like our Sun in terms of temperature and lifetime.
Supernova Remnant. The supernova remnant (SNR), known as “E0102″ for short, is the greenish-blue shell of debris just below the center of the Hubble image. A massive star has exploded as a supernova, and begun to dissipate its interior into a spectacular display of colorful filaments. Determined to be only about 2,000 years old, E0102 is relatively young on astronomical scales and is just beginning its interactions with the nearby interstellar medium.
Small Magellanic Cloud. The Small Magellanic Cloud, in the constellation Tucana, is roughly 200,000 light-years from the Earth. Its proximity to us makes it an exceptional laboratory to perform in-depth studies of star formation processes and their evolution in an environment slightly different from our own Milky Way.
Milkyway Dust Clouds. The yearly ritual of spring cleaning clears a house of dust as well as dust “bunnies,” those pesky dust balls that frolic under beds and behind furniture. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has photographed similar dense knots of dust and gas in our Milky Way Galaxy. This cosmic dust, however, is not a nuisance. It is a concentration of elements that are responsible for the formation of stars in our galaxy and throughout the universe.
Small Magellanic Cloud. One of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space, located 210,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. At the center of the region is a brilliant star cluster called NGC 346. Energetic outflows and radiation from hot young stars are eroding the dense outer portions of the star-forming region exposing new stellar nurseries.
Images and text credited to NASA and STSc.