Наша Pодина - планета Земля
Спутник Земли - Луна
Фотография планеты Сатурн
Астероид Epimetheus
Meteor Showers - Метеоритный дождь
NGC 356
Image shows a star-forming cloud called NGC 356, as seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared), the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (visible light), and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space telescope (X-ray).
NGC 356 represents the brightest star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud that sits 210,000 light-years away. Infrared observations reveal cold dust in red, visible data highlights glowing gas in green, and X-rays show warm gas in blue. Young stars appear as red spots with white centers, while regular stars appear as blue spots with white centers.
The overall image suggests two different sources of star formation from wind and radiation. Radiation-based star formation occurs in the center as shock waves from massive stars compress gas and dust into new stars. Wind-based star formation takes place higher in the cloud, such as the location of the pinkish blob of stars at upper left. A massive star to the left of that exploded 50,000 years ago (white spot with blue halo), but its winds helped create the blob of stars beforehand.
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A massive swarm of galaxies
located 2.3 billion light years away shows signs of merging, as seen by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.
The large galaxy cluster, known as Abell 1689, has a smooth appearance in the X-ray spectrum that stands in contrast to other merging systems such as the Bullet Cluster. Chandra sees the X-rays emitted by the hundred-million-degree background gas as purple, while Hubble's optical view shows galaxies colored yellow.
Long arcs in Hubble's optical view represent gravitational lensing, where light from distant sources bend around a massive object. Astronomers still need to figure out the difference in mass estimates from the X-ray data and gravitational lensing. |
The largest galaxy in the Virgo
cluster acts as a stellar metropolis in this combined image from the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and Very Large Array radio observatory.
The optical, radio and X-ray data from the M87 elliptical galaxy comes from 60 million light years away. A massive central black hole creates bright jets visible in all wavelengths, and a hot, X-ray emitting cloud also extends over much of the Virgo cluster.
The X-ray views within this image may provide evidence of recent outbursts from the central black hole. Loops and bubbles in the X-ray emitting gas might arise from smaller outbursts.
Purple-Exed
A super-massive black hole appears strangely dormant in this composite image by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.
The NGC 4649 galaxy contains one of the biggest black holes in the local universe, but shows no obvious signs of rapidly sucking in material or generating large amounts of light. The smoothness of the image indicates that the hot gas producing the X-rays has not been disturbed by the growing black hole.
Astronomers have to study the black hole more indirectly by measuring the temperature of heated gas near the center of the galaxy. The gas gets compressed as it settles near the black hole, eventually resulting in a temperature peak that is proportional to the size of the black hole. As a result, scientists found that the black hole's mass is 3.4 billion times that of the sun.
Bright Clumpy Moonlets and Cold Saturn Mittens
While the Cassini spacecraft was orbiting Saturn, it spotted a star blinking out behind the planet's F ring. The star occultation indicated that a solid moonlet might be present, which was nicknamed "Mittens" by researchers. This artist's conception shows how "Mittens" (the object to the right of the star) may appear to Cassini.
Observing the flickering of starlight passing through Saturn's rings, researchers discovered 13 objects in the F ring ranging in size from 30 yards to six miles (27 meters to 10 kilometers) in length. Since most of the objects were translucent, with some starlight passing through them, the researchers concluded they probably are temporary clumps of icy boulders that are continually shattering and reforming.
Cat names like "Mittens" and "Fluffy" were chosen for these moonlets, because they appear to unexpectedly appear and disappear, and have multiple lives.
Cassini became the first spacecraft to explore the Saturn system of rings and moons from orbit, when it entered planetary orbit on Jun. 30, 2004. It immediately began sending back intriguing images and data. The European Space Agency's Huygens Probe plunged down into the dense atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan, in January 2005. Instruments on both spacecraft are providing vital data and the best views ever of this region of our solar system.
This image shows a Cosmic Eye
created by two distant galaxies, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Also known as LBG J2135-0102, the Cosmic Eye bears a strong resemblance to the Egyptian Eye of Horus. The illusion arises from a galaxy sitting 2.2 billion light-years from Earth, which appears in the center of an arc created by an even more distant galaxy 11 billion light-years away.
Researchers have taken advantage of a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing to study the more distant galaxy. The gravitational field of the foreground galaxy has magnified the distant galaxy by eight times, and now a team has used the Keck telescope in Hawaii to further focus on the galaxy as it appeared two billion years following the Big Bang.
The odd galactic arms of NGC 4258
stand out in vibrant hues in this view assembled from multiple observatories.
Astronomers combined images of the spiral galaxy taken by the infrared scanning Spitzer Space Telescope as well as the X-ray XMM-Newton and Chandra observatories to reveal a pair of hidden galactic appendages. While the existence of the arms comes as no surprise - astronomers have known about them for decades - their origin remained a mystery.
NGC 4258's extra arms appear as purple (from radio emissions) and blue (from X-rays) in this composite view. The gold color stems from visible light observations while Spitzer's infrared eye reveals red hues.
Altogether, observations from the three space telescopes have confirmed astronomers that the galaxy's ghost-like extra arms stretch out in regions of gas that are subjected to violent heating from shockwaves.
Hold Your Breath and Clasp at Cassiopeia
Light echoes from the youngest supernova remnant in the Milky Way, as seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Cassiopeia A first appeared to astronomer Tycho Brahe as he glanced idly at the sky on November 11, 1572. He was surprised to see the new star - what we now know as actually an exploding star - appear in the constellation Cassiopeia. The light grew brighter than Venus even in daylight for about two weeks, before slowly vanishing 16 months after its discovery.
Now astronomers have spotted the light echoes from that supernova again, thanks to light from the exploded star that reflected off the cosmic dust. They first used telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory to scan the sky for regions with the most dust, allowing Chandra to focus on and take the image
Astronomer Armin Rest (CTIO/Harvard) compared it to 'finding a color photo of Napoleon,' in that we can now see what Brahe originally glimpsed over four centuries ago. |