Quasar & Deep Galaxy Field
Obtained during the commissioning and system verification phase of GMOS, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph, this Gemini Deep Field image is centered on the z=4 quasar QSO PMN2314+0201. The final image is the result of a combination of several frames taken with g', r' and i' filters. The...
Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instruments Lenses See First Light
On April 1, the Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak emerged from hibernationits dome reopened to the night sky, and starlight poured through the six large lenses of its powerful new research tool: the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Early next year, DESI will begin the greatest cosmic...
Massive Old Star Reveals Secrets On Deathbed
Blow-up of region around SN2003gd progenitor star, with star enhanced for visibility. From Gemini North GMOS image.
Massive Old Star Reveals Secrets On Deathbed
Image from the Isaac Newton Telescope with the Wide Field Camera taken on 25th August 2003 by Jonathan Irwin (IoA). It shows the position of the fading supernova which by then was some six months old.
M51, the Whirlpool Nebula, NGC 5194/5195.
This image of M51 (NGC5194/5195), was made by combining three CCD frames, taken at the Kitt Peak 0.9m telescope in 1991. By using different filters in front of the monochrome detector, corresponding approximately to the primary colors red, green and blue, it is possible to recreate a true color...
NGC 1097 at J
A Seyfert galaxy revealing its bright and active nucleus. This false-color image was made from several J-band (1.25 micron) observations and has a final FWHM of 0.5 arc seconds. This image was obtained with the Abu thermal infrared camera built by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, on...
Interacting Galaxies NGC 520
Gemini North image of interacting galaxies NGC 520. NGC 520 has a unique shape that is the result of two galaxies colliding with each other. One galaxys dust lane can be seen easily in the foreground and a distinct tail is visible at bottom center. These features are a result of the...
Trifid, M20, NGC 6514
The Trifid Nebula, M20 or NGC6514, is a familiar sight and an excellent example of an emission and reflection nebula. The red emission nebula contains a bright blue star cluster near its center: it glows red because the ultraviolet light of the stars ionizes the hydrogen gas, which then...
M20 (NGC, Trifid) and M21 (NGC 6531)
TheTrifid Nebula, M20 (upper left, NE) and the open star cluster M21 (lower right, SW), are close enough together on the sky that they both appear in this wide-field, 51 arc minute square picture taken with the Burrell Schmidt telescope of Case Western Reserve University's Warner and Swasey...
Trifid, M20, NGC 6514
The Trifid Nebula, Messier object 20 (M20) in the constellation of Sagittarius. North is to the right. We also have a color image from the KPNO 0.9-m telescope.
A Giants Funeral Pyre
This image shows the planetary nebula Sh2-42 in the constellation Sagittarius, and was captured by using the SMARTS 0.9-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSFs NOIRLab. Despite the name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets they are...
Spiral galaxy NGC 891
NGC891, a large, nearby, edge-on spiral galaxy. Copyright WIYN Consortium, Inc.
Eta Carinae Homunculus Nebula
Eta Carinae as imaged by the Gemini South telescope in Chile with the Near Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI) using adaptive optics to reduce blurring by turbulence in the Earths atmosphere. In this image the bipolar lobes of the Homunculus Nebula are visible with the never-before imaged...
Trapezium (M42)
Gemini South image showing a section of the "Trapezium" region of the Orion Nebula as seen at infrared wavelengths using the Flamingos-I near infrared imager. Technical Details: This image is a combination of 3 separate "B&W" images centered on the J, H and K bands to produce this color image.
M1, NGC 1952, Crab Nebula
This is a color composite formed from two images of the well-known Crab Nebula, taken on the night of October 27th 1995 with the NOAO/STIS/Tektronix 2048x2048 CCD detector on the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope. At the focal plane of the WIYN, this detector has a sampling scale of 0.2 arc seconds per...
M1, NGC 1952, Crab Nebula
This is an enhanced color composite formed from two images of the well-known Crab Nebula, taken on the night of October 27th 1995 with the NOAO/STIS/Tektronix 2048x2048 CCD detector on the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope. At the focal plane of the WIYN, this detector has a sampling scale of 0.2 arc...
Large Magellanic Cloud
The Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of our own Galaxy, is visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere. Because of its proximity, it can be studied in detail, and provides valuable insight into all galactic processes, especially by comparison to our own Galaxy. The most prominent...
NGC 3190
NGC3190, a spiral galaxy of type SA(s)a in the constellation Leo, was imaged during engineering work at the KPNO Mayall 4-meter telescope in January of 2001. The large size of the telescope and the smaller format imager used for test work combine to make the field of view only just the size of...
Heavyweight Champion of the Distant Universe
Weighing in at 500 trillion times the mass of the Sun, the young galaxy cluster IDCS 1426, located 10 billion light years from Earth, is the most massive distant cluster known. Recently weighed using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope, it was first identified...
McNeil's Nebula
A timely discovery by American amateur astronomer Jay McNeil, followed immediately by observations at the Gemini Observatory, has provided a rare glimpse into the slow, yet violent birth of a star about 1,500 light-years away. The resulting findings reveal some of the strongest stellar winds...
M17, Omega
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. M17, also informally known as the omega nebula, the lobster nebula and the swan nebula (among other names), is one of the largest and brightest star-forming...
The Omega Nebula, M17 (NGC 6618)
The Simultaneous Quad Infrared Imaging detector (SQIID) has returned to Kitt Peak with enhanced capabilities. This composite SQIlD multi-wavelength IR image of M17 (NGC6618), a region of massive star formation known variously as the Omega Nebula, the Swan Nebula, and the Horseshoe Nebula, was...
The Omega Nebula, M17
The Omega Nebula, Messier object 17 (M17), NGC 6618, in the constellation Sagittarius, as seen by the Kitt Peak 4-meter Mayall telescope in 1973. This bright nebula, criss-crossed by clouds and lanes of opaque dust and gas, is also known as the Swan Nebula and the Horseshoe Nebula. M17 is...
The Omega Nebula, M17 (NGC 6618)
The Omega Nebula, M17 (NGC6618), as seen by the KPNO 0.9-meter telescope in 1993 (true color CCD image). M17 is a bright nebula with lanes of opaque dust; it is also referred to as the Swan Nebula and the Horseshoe Nebula. M17 is about 5700 light-years away in the direction of Sagittarius, and...
The Lagoon Nebula, M8 (NGC 6523)
The Lagoon Nebula, Messier object 8 (M8) or NGC 6523, in the constellation of Sagittarius, as seen by the Kitt Peak 4-meter Mayall telescope in 1973. North is at the top. The lagoon nebula glows with the red light of hydrogen (H alpha) excited by the radiation of very hot stars buried within...
NGC 7424
The Galaxy NGC 7424 as imaged with the Gemini South Mulit-object Spectrograph.
The Lagoon Nebula, M8 (NGC 6523)
The Lagoon Nebula, Messier object 8 (M8) or NGC6523, in the constellation of Sagittarius. This full color image was created from eight images taken in the BVR pass-bands at the Burrell Schmidt telescope of Case Western Reserve University's Warner and Swasey Observatory. The Burrell Schmidt is...
The Lagoon Nebula, M8 (NGC 6523)
The Lagoon Nebula, Messier object 8 (M8) or NGC 6523, in the constellation of Sagittarius, as seen by the Kitt Peak 4-meter Mayall telescope in 1973. North is at the top. The lagoon nebula glows with the red light of hydrogen (H alpha) excited by the radiation of very hot stars buried within...
Stephan's Quintet (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, NGC 7319, NGC 7320)
Stephan's Quintet, as its name implies, is a group of five galaxies (NGC7317, 7318A, 7318B, 7319 and 7320) in the constellation Pegasus. This unusual system has often been used as proof that the redshift is not truly a distance indicator, which would completely overturn current cosmology,...
Galaxy Group VV 166
"This compelling image from the Gemini North telescope peers into the heart of VV 166, a galaxy group 300 million light years distant. It presents, at a glance, a sampling of the wide diversity of systems that populate the deep reaches of the nearby Universe. One of its most fascinating...
Stephan's Quintet (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, NGC 7319, NGC 7320)
Stephan's Quintet, as its name implies, is a group of five galaxies (NGC7317, 7318A, 7318B, 7319 and 7320) in the constellation Pegasus. This unusual system has often been used as proof that the redshift is not truly a distance indicator, which would completely overturn current cosmology,...
Sharpless 2-106
Sharpless 2-106 as imaged by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. This color composite image shows the nursery of a massive star (hidden within the cloud) obtained with four narrow-band optical filters available for Gemini users at both...
Lagoon Nebula, M8, NGC 6523
The Lagoon Nebula, M8 or NGC 6523. As one of the showpiece objects of the summer sky in the northern hemisphere, the Lagoon never rises very high from most locations north of the equator. This image of the Lagoon was imaged from Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Twenty hours of...
NGC 2264, Cone Nebula, Fox Fur Nebula
This wide-field image of the Christmas Tree Cluster was taken at the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera. Also known as NGC2264, it is an open cluster of stars embedded in a diffuse nebula. It is located in the constellation of...
DECam image of the bulge of the Milky Way
This color-composite shows a main part of the new Blanco DECam Bulge Survey of 250 million stars in our galaxys bulge. The 4 x 2 degrees excerpt can be explored in all its whopping 50,000 x 25,000 pixels in this zoomable version. In the image interstellar dust and gas seemingly acts like a red...
North America Nebula, NGC 7000 South
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. NGC 7000, also known as the North America Nebula, is a giant emission nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. This image shows only the southern tip of the...
Nebula Sh2-284
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9m-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Sh2-284 is a giant HII region. Inside of it is an open star cluster, whose light is energizing the hydrogen gas in the nebula. Stellar winds from the star...
M2-9 with Adaptive Optics
Color composite adaptive optics image of the planetary nebula M2-9 using the ALTAIR adaptive optics system on Gemini North. This image reveals remarkable details in the dynamic gas outflows from a dying star. It is thought that our Sun might meet a similar fate in 4-5 billion years once its...
Panorama of Spiral Galaxy, M33
This image was created with data from the Local Group Survey, completed with the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. M31, M33 and our Milky Way are the three largest members of the Local Group of galaxies. M33 is a spiral galaxy that is about ten...
Excitation in the middle of M33
This image of the central region of the Triangulum Galaxy, M33, was taken in October 2000 with the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, using the Mosaic imager. It shows data from three of the eight color filters being used by the Local Group Galaxies Survey Team to study...
Dusty Nebula, LBN 438
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. LBN 438 is a dusty nebula within our galaxy. Despite being part of the Lynds Bright Nebula catalog it is very faint. This is the largest fragment of the...
M33, NGC 598
The Nearby Spiral Galaxy M33 This true color picture was taken using Ektachrome film at the prime focus of the Kitt Peak 4m telescope on October 3rd 1973. This is unusual: normally color images are made by combining black and white images taken through different colored filters. Due to...
M33, NGC 598
The Triangulum Galaxy, M33, a type Sc spiral, was imaged by the KPNO 4-meter Mayall telescope in 1975. A member of our Local Group of galaxies, it is just visible with the naked eye.
AO Image NGC 7009
This Gemini North image shows the well-known planetary nebula NGC 7009 (the Saturn Nebula) in the near infrared with adaptive optics. The image has a full-width-half-maximum of 0.1 arcsecond (K band) and was produced by combining ALTAIR/NIRI images in K, Br-gamma, and H (1-0) bands. The data...
Globular cluster M15 (NGC 7078)
This is a thirty-second exposure taken on the night of September 1st 1994 (UT of observation 02/09/94:05:47) with the 1k detector on the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope. This photograph shows a region 200 arc seconds square which has been compressed in brightness (approximately a double logarithm) to...
Emission Nebula Sh2-114
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Sh2-114 is a complex and unusual HII emission nebula. Its complex, wispy structure is likely the result of winds from hot, massive stars interacting with the...
Cluster of galaxies in Virgo
The Virgo cluster of galaxies contains over 2000 galaxies and dominates the Local Supercluster: this picture shows the western central region of the cluster. To the lower left is the giant elliptical galaxy M87, believed to be the dominant member and close to the dynamical center of the...
M9, NGC 6333
M9, or NGC6333, a globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus. This globular appears quite small on the sky, as it is one of the ones nearer to the galactic center, but it shows a strong central concentration. About 26000 light-years from us, and about 70 light-years across, M9 looks quite...
Cluster of galaxies in Virgo
The Virgo cluster of galaxies includes M84 and M86. Thousands of galaxies form a rich, loose, irregular cluster which is not strongly concentrated towards the center. KPNO 4-meter Mayall telescope, 1974. See also this Schmidt image.
Nearby Galaxies Illustrate the Power of the Gemini Deep Deep Survey
This Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope image shows a small section of the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies on the left side of the image. The Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS) studied much more distant galaxies than those shown in this image. However, the...
M50, NGC 2323
M50 is an open cluster in the constellation Monoceros. A modest-sized cluster of perhaps a couple of hundred stars, M50 is about 3000 light-years away and around 20 light-years across. More imaginative eyes have referred to it as 'heart-shaped'. This approximately true-color picture was created...
NGC 6992 (Cygnus Loop)
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona. NGC 6992 is part of a large supernova remnant called the Cygnus Loop. It is located about 1,500 light-years from Earth. The Cynus Loop is the remains of a star that...
Star forming region, NGC 206
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9m-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. NGC 206 is a massive star-forming region (also known as an OB association) embedded in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). It is clearly visible in the center to...
M33, NGC 598
This image of the Triangulum Galaxy was taken at the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera. Also known as M33, the Triangulum Galaxy is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and our galaxy, the...
AE Aurigae
This spectacular image of the star AE Aurigae and its surrounding nebulosity was taken at the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera. Located in the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer, AE Aurigae is the bright blue star at the center...
NGC 6820/3, Emission Nebula/Open Cluster
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the KPNO 0.9m-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. NGC 6820 is a diffuse emission nebula that surrounds the open cluster of stars NGC 6823 (at the center of the image). The intense light from the hot, massive...
M51, the Whirlpool Nebula, NGC 5194/5195
This image of M51 was taken with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera on the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope located at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ. Located in the constellation of Canes Venatici, the "hunting dogs", M51 consists of the large spiral galaxy NGC5194 and...
North America Nebula, NGC 7000 East
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the KPNO 0.9m-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. NGC 7000, also known as the North America Nebula, is a giant emission nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. This image shows the eastern part of the nebula,...
Galaxies M81 & M82
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the KPNO 0.9m-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. M81 (the spiral galaxy on the left) and M82 (the galaxy on the right) are two relatively nearby galaxies that are gravitationally interacting with each...
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