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| NGC 4911: Spiral Diving into a Dense Cluster |
NGC 4911: Spiral Diving into a Dense Cluster
Why are there faint rings around this spiral galaxy?
Possibly because the galaxy,
NGC 4911, is being pulled at by its neighbors as it falls into the enormous
Coma Cluster of Galaxies.
If NGC 4911 ends up like most of the galaxies in the
central Coma cluster, it will become a yellowish
elliptical galaxy,
losing not only its outer layers, but dust, gas, and its cadre of surrounding
satellite galaxies as well.
Currently, however,
this process is just beginning.
Visible in the above deep image from the
Hubble Space Telescope are NGC 4911's bright nucleus, distorted spiral arms laced with dark dust, clusters of recently formed stars, unusual faint outer rings, dwarf companion galaxies, and even faint
globular clusters of stars.
Far in the distance many unassociated galaxies
from the early universe are visible, some even through
NGC 4911 itself.
The Coma Cluster contains over 1,000 galaxies making it among the most massive objects known.
NGC 4911 can be found to the lower left of the great cluster's center.
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| Space Shuttle Tribute Poster: Endeavour |
Space Shuttle Tribute Poster: Endeavour
They are some of the
most complex machines ever built.
From a standing start they can launch a
school-
bus
sized object up so high and moving so fast that it
won't fall back down.
They have launched numerous revolutionary
satellites
that enable humans to
communicate across the globe,
to better
understand Earth's atmosphere, and to
peer into the distance universe.
They are
NASA's Space Shuttles, and NASA has recently released
large digital posters to honor them.
While the inaugural flight
was in 1981, the shuttle fleet is aging and is now
nearing retirement.
Pictured above, the space shuttle
Endeavour is shown rising
to orbit, with
patches
for each of its missions shown in a spiral.
Endeavour was named for the
HMS Endeavour,
a British research ship that explored the south Pacific Ocean in the 1700s, depicted on the lower right.
On the upper right are
panoramic windows delivered by Endeavour to the
International Space Station earlier this year.
In the background near the top is the
NGC 602 nebula as imaged by the
Hubble Space Telescope, which was serviced by Endeavour in 1993.
Posters
for
all
of
the
shuttles,
including
Atlantis,
Challenger,
Columbia,
Discovery,
Endeavour are available.
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| Young Suns of NGC 7129 |
Young Suns of NGC 7129
Young suns still lie
within dusty NGC 7129, some
3,000 light-years away toward the royal
constellation
Cepheus.
While these stars
are at a relatively tender age, only a few million years old, it is likely
that our own Sun formed in a similar stellar nursery some
five billion years ago.
Most noticeable in the
sharp, (zoomable) image are the
lovely bluish dust clouds
that reflect the youthful starlight,
but the smaller, deep
red crescent shapes are also markers of energetic,
young stellar objects.
Known as
Herbig-Haro
objects, their shape and color is
characteristic of glowing hydrogen gas
shocked by
jets streaming away from newborn stars.
Ultimately the natal gas and dust in the region
will be dispersed, the
stars
drifting apart as the loose
cluster orbits the center of the Galaxy.
At the estimated distance of
NGC 7129, this telescopic view spans
about 40 light-years.
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| The Small Cloud of Magellan |
The Small Cloud of Magellan
Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty
of time to study the southern sky during the
first circumnavigation of planet Earth.
As a result, two celestial wonders
easily visible for southern hemisphere skygazers
are known as the Clouds of Magellan.
These cosmic clouds are now understood to be dwarf
irregular galaxies,
satellites
of our larger spiral Milky Way Galaxy.
The Small
Magellanic Cloud
actually spans 15,000 light-years or so
and contains several hundred million stars.
About 210,000 light-years away in the constellation
Tucana,
it is more distant than other known Milky Way
satellite galaxies, including the
Canis Major
and
Sagittarius
Dwarf galaxies and the
Large
Magellanic Cloud.
This
sharp image also includes two foreground globular
star clusters NGC 362 (bottom right) and 47 Tucanae.
Spectacular 47 Tucanae
is a mere 13,000 light-years away and seen here to the left of the
Small Magellanic Cloud.
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| The Bubble Nebula |
The Bubble Nebula
Blown by the wind from a massive star, this interstellar
apparition has a surprisingly
familiar shape.
Cataloged as NGC 7635, it is also known simply
as The
Bubble Nebula.
Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter
bubble offers evidence of
violent processes at work.
Above and right of the Bubble's center is a hot,
O-type star, several hundred thousand
times more luminous and approximately 45 times more massive
than the Sun.
A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that
star has blasted out the
structure of glowing gas
against denser material
in a surrounding
molecular
cloud.
The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere
11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation
Cassiopeia.
A false-color
Hubble palette was used to create
this sharp image and
shows emission from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms in red,
green, and blue hues.
The image data
was recorded using a small telescope under
clear, steady skies, from Mount Wilson Observatory.
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