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Bubbles of Brand New Stars in The Large Magellanic Cloud | ESO
This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light.
Distance: around 160,000 light-years
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO), A McLeod et al.
SpaceX Dragon CRS-25 Resupply Ship Undocking | International Space Station
The SpaceX Dragon resupply ship, packed with over 4,000 pounds of return cargo and science experiments for analysis, backs away from the International Space Station moments after undocking from the Harmony module's forward port on August 19, 2022. The station was soaring into an orbital sunrise 260 miles above Hawaii's big island in the Pacific Ocean at the time of this photograph.
SpaceX’s uncrewed Dragon cargo spacecraft splashed down at 2:53 p.m. EDT Saturday, Aug. 20, 2022, north of Cape Canaveral off the Florida coast, marking the return of the company’s 25th contracted cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA. The spacecraft carried more than 4,000 pounds of valuable scientific experiments and other cargo back to Earth.
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
The Seven-member Expedition 67 Crew | International Space Station
The seven-member Expedition 67 crew poses for a portrait inside the International Space Station's Harmony module. Clockwise from bottom are, Roscosmos cosmonauts Commander Oleg Artemyev and Flight Engineer Denis Matveev; NASA Flight Engineers Bob Hines and Kjell Lindgren; Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA); Roscosmos Flight Engineer Sergey Korsakov; and NASA Flight Engineer Jessica Watkins.
Expedition 67 Crew
Commander Oleg Artemyev (Russia)
Roscosmos Flight Engineers: Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov (Russia)
NASA Flight Engineers: Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins (USA)
European Space Agency (ESA) Flight Engineer: Samantha Cristoforetti (Italy)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
Jupiter's Auroras, Moons, Rings & Hazes | James Webb Space Telescope
With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.
These images come from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths appear redder and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images.
These images were created from a composite of several images from Webb. Visible auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter. The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud. The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt
Jupiter's Auroras, Moons, Rings & Hazes: Wide View | James Webb Space Telescope
With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.
In these wide-field views, Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view.
This is a composite image from Webb’s NIRCam instrument (two filters) and was acquired on July 27, 2022.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt
With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.
This image comes from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths appear redder and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images.
This image was created from a composite of several images from Webb. Visible auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter. The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud. The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt
Delivery of NASA's Most Powerful Moon Rocket: Artemis I
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft will soon launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its flight test, Artemis I. However, the rocket did not arrive at the Cape fully assembled. Major parts of the rocket were built in locations across America. More than 1,000 companies in 45 states supplied parts and components for America’s Moon rocket. Custom barges, cargo planes, and trains then delivered the large parts of the Moon rocket to Kennedy. Watch to learn more about how NASA delivered the individual pieces of SLS to assemble them at KSC and form the SLS rocket that will send Orion to the Moon on the historic Artemis I mission.
Although it looks more like an entity seen through a microscope than a telescope, this rounded object, named NGC 2022, is certainly no alga or tiny, blobby jellyfish. Instead, it is a vast orb of gas in space, cast off by an ageing star. The star is visible in the orb's center, shining through the gases it formerly held onto for most of its stellar life.
When stars like the Sun grow advanced in age, they expand and glow red. These so-called red giants then begin to lose their outer layers of material into space. More than half of such a star's mass can be shed in this manner, forming a shell of surrounding gas. At the same time, the star's core shrinks and grows hotter, emitting ultraviolet light that causes the expelled gases to glow.
This type of object is called, somewhat confusingly, a planetary nebula, though it has nothing to do with planets. The name derives from the rounded, planet-like appearance of these objects in early telescopes.
NGC 2022 is located in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). It was first observed by William Herschel on December 28, 1785, who described it as: considerably bright, nearly round, like a star with a large diameter, like an ill-defined planetary nebula.
Credit: European Space Agency/Hubble & NASA, R. Wade
Wide-field View of Star-forming Region Around Newborn Star in Vela | ESO
This wide-field view shows a rich region of dust clouds and star formation in the southern constellation of Vela. Close to the center of the picture the jets of the Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 can be seen emerging from a dark cloud in which infant stars are being born.
Distance:1,400 light years
This view was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2
This zoom sequence starts with a wide view of the southern Milky Way and then closes in on a rich region of dark clouds and young stars in the constellation of Vela (The Sails). One of these dark star-forming clouds features the Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 where jets from a young star are colliding with the surrounding material. This object was the target of a study using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) during the Early Science phase.
Distance:1,400 light years
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Nick Risinger
A Newborn Star: Radio and Visible Light Observations | ESO
This unprecedented image of Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 combines radio observations acquired with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). The ALMA observations (orange and green, lower right) of the newborn star reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us, which in the visible is hidden by dust and gas. To the left (in pink and purple) the visible part of the jet is seen, streaming partly towards us.
Distance:1,400 light years
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce.
A Marvel of Galactic Morphology: NGC 1156 | Hubble
This galaxy has a shape unlike many of the galaxies familiar to Hubble. Its thousands of bright stars evoke a spiral galaxy, but it lacks the characteristic ‘winding’ structure. The shining red blossoms stand out as well, twisted by clouds of dust—these are the locations of intense star formation. Yet it also radiates a diffuse glow, much like an elliptical galaxy and its core of older, redder stars. This galactic marvel is known to astronomers as NGC 1156.
NGC 1156 is located around 25 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries. It has a variety of different features that are of interest to astronomers. A dwarf irregular galaxy, it is also classified as isolated, meaning no other galaxies are nearby enough to influence its odd shape and continuing star formation. The extreme energy of freshly formed young stars gives color to the galaxy, against the red glow of ionized hydrogen gas, while its center is densely-packed with older generations of stars.
Hubble has captured NGC 1156 before—this new image features data from a galactic gap-filling program simply titled “Every Known Nearby Galaxy”. Astronomers noticed that only three quarters of the galaxies within just over 30 million light-years of Earth had been observed by Hubble in sufficient detail to study the makeup of the stars within them. They proposed that in between larger projects, Hubble could take snapshots of the remaining quarter—including NGC 1156. Gap-filling programs like this one ensure that the best use is made of Hubble’s valuable observing time.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, R. B. Tully, R. Jansen, R. Windhorst
The Hubble Space Telescope has caught the eerie, wispy tendrils of a dark interstellar cloud being destroyed by the passage of one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Like a flashlight beam shining off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light off the surface of pitch black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. These are called reflection nebulae.
This image shows a dark interstellar cloud ravaged by the passage of Merope, one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Just as a torch beam bounces off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light from the surface of pitch-black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. As the nebula approaches Merope, the strong starlight shining on the dust decelerates the dust particles. The nebula is drifting through the cluster at a relative speed of roughly 11 kilometers per second.
Distance:450 light years
Credit: NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), George Herbig and Theodore Simon (University of Hawaii).
Artist’s Impression of a Herbig-Haro Object | European Space Agency
This artist's concept of a Herbig-Haro object shows a jet coming from a young star. Images taken over two decades with the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope have captured the motion of these jets, showing the matter moving over time. This artist's impression shows how the stellar outflows might look over a period of many centuries.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble (M. Kornmesser)
Herbig-Haro objects are some of the rarer sights in the night sky, taking the form of thin spindly jets of matter floating amongst the surrounding gas and stars. The two Herbig-Haro objects cataloged as HH46 and HH47, seen in this image taken with the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, were spotted in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), at a distance of over 1,400 light-years from Earth. Prior to its discovery in 1977 by the American astronomer R. D. Schwartz, the exact mechanism by which these multi-colored objects formed was unknown.
Before 1997 it was theorized by Schwartz and others that the objects could be a type of reflection nebula, or a type of shock wave formed from the gas emitted from a star interacting with the surrounding matter. The mystery was finally solved when a protostar, unseen in this image, was discovered at the center of the long jets of matter. The outflows of matter, some 10 light-years across, were ejected from the newly born star and violently propelled outwards at speeds of over 150 kilometers per second. Upon reaching the surrounding gas, the collision created the bright shock waves seen here.
Distance:1,400 light years
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini
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