Fireworks of Star Formation Light Up Galaxy NGC 4214
Newly released images obtained with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in July 1997 reveal episodes of star formation that are occurring across the face of the nearby galaxy NGC 4214. Located some 13 million light-years from Earth, NGC 4214 is currently forming clusters of new stars from its...
Multiple Galaxy Collisions
Astronomers have interpreted the oddly shaped objects in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope snapshots as strong visual evidence for multiple galaxies crashing into each other. These smashups create a tangled clump of matter and trigxager a burst of new stars. The photo at upper right, for...
M87
A Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio image of the region close to the black hole, where an extragalactic jet is formed into a narrow beam by magnetic fields. The false color corresponds to the intensity of the radio energy being emitted by the jet. The red region is about 1/10 light-year...
A Grazing Encounter Between Two Spiral Galaxies (NGC 2207 and IC2163)
In the direction of the constellation Canis Major, two spiral galaxies pass by each other like majestic ships in the night. The near-collision has been caught in images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The larger and more massive galaxy is cataloged...
Black Hole in Galaxy M87 Emits Jet of High-Speed Electrons
A visible light image of the giant elliptical galaxy M87, taken with NASA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in February 1998, reveals a brilliant jet of high-speed electrons emitted from the nucleus (diagonal line across image). The jet is produced by a 3-billion-solar-mass...
The Trifid Nebula: Stellar Nursery Torn Apart By Radiation From Nearby Star
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Trifid Nebula reveals a stellar nursery being torn apart by radiation from a nearby, massive star. The picture also provides a peek at embryonic stars forming within an ill-fated cloud of dust and gas, which is destined to be eaten away by the...
M87
This radio image of the galaxy M87, taken with the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in February 1989, shows giant bubble-like structures where radio emission is thought to be powered by the jets of subatomic particles coming from the the galaxy's central black hole. The false color...
Hot Blue Stars Resemble a Blizzard of Snowflakes Near Core of Galaxy M32
Hubble Space Telescope's exquisite resolution has allowed astronomers to resolve, for the first time, hot blue stars deep inside an elliptical galaxy. The swarm of nearly 8,000 blue stars resembles a blizzard of snowflakes near the core (lower right) of the neighboring galaxy M32, located...
Rotten Egg Nebula (OH231.8+4.2)
This oddly shaped object is an aging, Sun-like star near the end of its life. The Hubble telescope's infrared camera, called the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, captured a fleeting phase in the death march of this star. In these pictures, a red giant star is transformed into...
NGC 2346
NGC 2346, in contrast to the first two young objects, is a so-called "planetary nebula," which is ejected from Sun-like stars which are near the ends of their lives. NGC 2346 is remarkable because its central star is known to be actually a very close pair of stars, orbiting each other every 16...
NGC 2440
NGC 2440 is another planetary nebula ejected by a dying star, but it has a much more chaotic structure than NGC 2346. The central star of NGC 2440 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature near 200,000 degrees Celsius. The complex structure of the surrounding nebula suggests to...
Rotten Egg Nebula (OH231.8+4.2)
This oddly shaped object is an aging, Sun-like star near the end of its life. The Hubble telescope's infrared camera, called the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, captured a fleeting phase in the death march of this star. In these pictures, a red giant star is transformed into...
Hubble's Variable Nebula (NGC 2261)
Hubble's variable nebula is named (like the Hubble telescope itself) after the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who carried out some of the early studies of this object. It is a fan-shaped cloud of gas and dust which is illuminated by R Monocerotis (R Mon), the bright star at the bottom...
Herbig Haro 32: Jets of Material Ejected From a Young Star
HH 32 is an excellent example of a "Herbig-Haro object," which is formed when young stars eject jets of material back into interstellar space. This object, about 1,000 light-years from Earth, is somewhat older than Hubble's variable nebula, and the wind from the bright central star has already...
Spiral Galaxy NGC 5965
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 5965.
NGC 7537
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 7537.
NGC 5838
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 5838.
NGC 5689
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 5689.
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 1365.
NGC 1365 NICMOS
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 1365.
Star Cluster R136 in Nebula 30 Doradus
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of R136, 30 Doradus.
Star Cluster R136 in Nebula 30 Doradus
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of R136, 30 Doradus.
Star Cluster R136 in Nebula 30 Doradus
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of R136, 30 Doradus.
R136: A Cluster of Massive Stars in Nebula 30 Doradus
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of R136, 30 Doradus.
Star Cluster R136 in Nebula 30 Doradus
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of R136, 30 Doradus.
The Center of the Southern Crab Nebula He2-104
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Southern Crab Nebula, He2-104.
Southern Crab Nebula (He2-104)
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Southern Crab Nebula, He2-104.
Symbiotic Star in the Southern Crab Nebula (He2-104) Blows Bubbles into Space
A tempestuous relationship between an unlikely pair of stars may have created an oddly shaped, gaseous nebula that resembles an hourglass nestled within an hourglass. Images taken with Earth-based telescopes have shown the larger, hourglass-shaped nebula. But this picture, taken with NASA's...
Hickson Compact Group 87: A Minuet of Four Galaxies
This troupe of four galaxies, known as Hickson Compact Group 87 (HCG 87), is performing an intricate dance orchestrated by the mutual gravitational forces acting between them. The dance is a slow, graceful minuet, occurring over a time span of hundreds of millions of years. The Wide Field and...
Quintuplet Cluster
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Quintuplet Cluster.
Arches Cluster
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Arches Cluster.
The Arches and c Near the Milky Way's Galactic Center
Penetrating 25,000 light-years of obscuring dust and myriad stars, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided the clearest view yet of a pair of the largest young clusters of stars inside our Milky Way galaxy, located less than 100 light-years from the very center of the Galaxy. Having the...
Jupiter WFPC2 June 1999
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter.
Jupiter WFPC2 October 1996
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter.
Jupiter WFPC2 October 1995
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter.
Jupiter -- June 1999
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
Galaxy Cluster MS1054-H
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
MS1054-03 component
A 1999 Hubble Space Telescope image of MS1054-03.
A Global Mars Map
The four hemispheric views shown above have been combined into a full-color global map (called a Mollweide projection), showing the regions of Mars imaged by the Hubble telescope during the planet's closest approach to Earth. Latitudes below about 60 degrees south were not viewed by the...
Mars' Syrtis Major Region and Hellas Impact Crater
This image is centered on the dark feature known as Syrtis Major, first seen telescopically by the astronomer Christiaan Huygens in the 17th century. Many small, dark, circular impact craters can be seen in this region, attesting to the Hubble telescope's ability to reveal fine detail on the...
Mars' Volcanic Elysium Region
This image is centered near another volcanic region known as Elysium. This area shows many small, dark markings that have been observed by the Hubble telescope and other spacecraft to change as a result of the movement of sand and dust across the Martian surface. In the upper left of this...
Mars' Tharsis Region, Home of the Solar System's Largest Volcanoes
This image is centered on the region of the planet known as Tharsis, home of the largest volcanoes in the solar system. The bright, ring-like feature just to the left of center is the volcano Olympus Mons, which is more than 340 miles (550 kilometers) across and 17 miles (27 kilometers) high....
Globular Cluster M80: A Swarm of Ancient Stars in the Milky Way
This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Located about 28,000 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters...
Dusty Spiral Galaxy NGC 4414
In 1995, the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the HST Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale. An international team of astronomers, led by Dr. Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, observed...
Mars Image Centered Near Location of Pathfinder Landing Site
This image is centered near the location of the Pathfinder landing site. Dark sand dunes that surround the polar cap merge into a large, dark region called Acidalia. This area, as shown by images from the Hubble telescope and other spacecraft, is composed of dark, sand-sized grains of...
Nebula N159
A "true color" composite image of the LMC HII region N159 as seen by WFPC2, based on images taken with filters Halpha, (red), [OIII], (green), and Hbeta, (blue). The Papillon nebula (N159-5) is the high excitation compact object lying in the center of the smaller PC frame.
Papillon Nebula N159-5
An image of the Papillon nebula (N159-5) as seen in Halpha emission, showing the internal morphology of the butterfly-shaped HII region.
Mars
This is an enhanced orthographic view of the storm centered on 65 deg. N latitude, 85 deg. W longitude. The image has been processed to bring out additional detail in the storm's spiral cloud structures.
Martian Cyclone, Seen From the North Polar Region
This is a color polar view of the north polar region, showing the location of the storm relative to the classical bright and dark features in this area. The color composite data (410, 502, and 673 nm) indicate that the storm is fairly dust-free and therefore likely composed mostly of water ice...
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