Spitzer in Space: Final Voyage (Portrait)
This artist's concept depicts NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space much as it would appear to an observer at the end of its mission on January 30, 2020.
Spitzer in Space: Final Voyage
This artist's concept depicts NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space much as it would appear to an observer at the end of its mission on January 30, 2020.
Kelt-9b: The Hottest Hot Jupiter (Tall)
This artist's concept shows planet KELT-9b orbiting its host star, KELT-9. It is the hottest gas giant planet discovered so far.
Kelt-9b: The Hottest Hot Jupiter (Wide)
This artist's concept shows planet KELT-9b orbiting its host star, KELT-9. It is the hottest gas giant planet discovered so far.
Tarantula Nebula Spitzer 3-Color Image (Annotated)
This image shows the location of Supernova 1987A and the starburst region R136 where massive stars form at a significantly higher rate than anywhere else in the galaxy.
Tarantula Nebula Spitzer 3-Color Image
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Tarantula Nebula in three wavelengths of infrared light, each represented by a different color.
This diagram illustrates two similar star systems, HD 95086 and HR 8799. Evidence from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has pointed to the presence of two dust belts in each system.
Over their individual histories, the vast majority of galaxies are thought to produce stars at relatively slow rates. This slow-and-steady pace has continually added to the overall population of stars in galaxies and, by extension, the broader universe, as illustrated along the horizontal/x-axis...
Astronomers can use light echoes to measure the distance from a star to its surrounding protoplanetary disk. This diagram illustrates how the time delay of the light echo is proportional to the distance between the star and the inner edge of the disk.
This diagram illustrates how hypothetical helium atmospheres might form. These would be on planets about the mass of Neptune, or smaller, which orbit tightly to their stars, whipping around in just days.
An Active Centre
This swirling mass of celestial gas, dust, and stars is a moderately luminous spiral galaxy named ESO 021-G004, located just under 130 million light-years away. This galaxy has something known as an active galactic nucleus. While this phrase sounds complex, this simply means that astronomers...
Perseus Molecular Cloud
A collection of gas and dust over 500 light-years across, the Perseus Molecular Cloud hosts an abundance of young stars. Located on the edge of the Perseus Constellation, it was imaged by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Wide field image of PGC 6240 (ground-based image)
This image from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) shows elliptical galaxy PGC 6240 and its surroundings.
A Close Relationship
Some galaxies are closer friends than others. While many live their own separate, solitary lives, others stray a little too close to a near neighbour and take their relationship to the next level. The galaxy in this Picture of the Week, named NGC 6286, has done just that! Just out of frame lies...
A Dramatic Demise
Some of the most dramatic events in the Universe occur when certain stars die and explode catastrophically in the process. Such explosions, known as supernovae, mainly occur in a couple of ways: either a massive star depletes its fuel at the end of its life, become dynamically unstable and...
Discs and Bulges
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows IC 2051, a galaxy in the southern constellation of Mensa (The Table Mountain), lying about 85 million light-years away. It is a spiral galaxy, as evidenced by its characteristic whirling, pinwheeling arms, and it has a bar of stars...
A Galactic Portal
The galaxy NGC 4380 looks like a special effect straight out of a science fiction or fantasy film in this Hubble Picture of the Week, swirling like a gaping portal to another dimension. In the grand scheme of things, though, the galaxy is actually quite ordinary. Spiral galaxies like NGC 4380...
This cloud of gas and dust in space is full of bubbles inflated by wind and radiation from massive young stars. Each bubble is about 10 to 30 light-years across and filled with hundreds to thousands of stars. The region lies in the Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Aquila (aka the Eagle).
This cloud of gas and dust is full of bubbles, which are inflated by wind and radiation from massive young stars. Yellow circles and ovals show the locations of more than 30 bubbles. Squares indicate bow shocks, red arcs of warm dust formed as winds from fast-moving stars push aside dust grains.
Transit Illustration of TRAPPIST-1
This illustration shows the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets as they might look as viewed from Earth using a fictional, incredibly powerful telescope. The sizes and relative positions are correctly to scale: This is such a tiny planetary system that its sun, TRAPPIST-1, is not much bigger than our planet...
Anatomy of a Busted Comet
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured the picture on the left of comet Holmes in March 2008, five months after the comet suddenly erupted and brightened a millionfold overnight. The contrast of the picture has been enhanced on the right to show the anatomy of the comet.
What Feeds the Beast in a Galaxy Cluster? (annotated)
A massive cluster of galaxies, called SpARCS1049+56, can be seen in this multi-wavelength view from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. At the middle of the picture is the largest, central member of the family of galaxies (upper right red dot of central pair). Unlike other central...
Dusty Space Cloud
Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light, this nearby dwarf galaxy looks like a fiery, circular explosion. Rather than fire, however, those ribbons are actually giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years.
Protostellar Envelope and Jet: HH270 VLA1
A young protostar and its signature outflow peeks out through a shroud of dust in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
An Extended Stellar Family
This swirling landscape of stars is known as the North America nebula. In visible light, the region resembles North America, but in this new infrared view from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the continent disappears.
An Infrared Slice of the Milky Way
In visible light, the bulk of our Milky Way galaxy's stars are eclipsed behind thick clouds of galactic dust and gas. But to the infrared eyes of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, distant stars and dust clouds shine with unparalleled clarity and color.
Dusty, Little Galaxy
The infrared portrait of the Small Magellanic Cloud reveals the stars and dust in this galaxy as never seen before.
Comet Stepping Stones
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows three of the many fragments making up Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3. The infrared picture also provides the best look yet at the crumbling comet's trail of debris, seen here as a bridge connecting the larger fragments.
Orion's Rainbow of Infrared Light
This new view of the Orion nebula highlights fledging stars hidden in the gas and clouds. It shows infrared observations taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel mission, in which NASA plays an important role.
This artist's concept shows OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, a planet discovered through a technique called microlensing. The planet was reported in a 2017 study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Stellar Rubble May Be Planetary Building Blocks
This artist's concept depicts a type of dead star called a pulsar and the surrounding disk of rubble discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Crystal Storm in Distant Galaxy
This graph of infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells astronomers that a distant galaxy called IRAS 08752+3915 is experiencing a storm of tiny crystals made up of silicates. The crystals are similar to the glass-like grains of sand found on Earth's many beaches.
Comparing TRAPPIST-1 to the Solar System
This graph presents known properties of the seven TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets (labeled b thorugh h), showing how they stack up to the inner rocky worlds in our own solar system.
The Spider Nebula
The spider part of "The Spider and the Fly" nebulae, IC 417 abounds in star formation, as seen in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).
Spitzer and Hubble View of the Helix Nebula
In this false-color image, NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes have teamed up to capture the complex structure of the Helix nebula, in unprecedented detail. The composite picture is made up of visible data from Hubble and infrared data from Spitzer.
Take a Splash Into the Cosmos
Millions of galaxies populate the patch of sky known as the COSMOS field, short for Cosmic Evolution Survey, a portion of which is shown here. Even the smallest dots in this image are galaxies, some up to 12 billion light-years away.
The Sword of Orion in the Infrared
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Orion nebula, our closest massive star-making factory, 1,450 light-years from Earth. The nebula is close enough to appear to the naked eye as a fuzzy star in the sword of the popular hunter constellation.
Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: Atmosphere of Planet HD209458b
This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope called a spectrum tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 209458b, might be smothered with high clouds. It is one of the first spectra of an alien world.
TRAPPIST-1 Comparison to Solar System and Jovian Moons
All seven planets discovered in orbit around the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 could easily fit inside the orbit of Mercury, the innermost planet of our solar system. In fact, they would have room to spare. TRAPPIST-1 also is only a fraction of the size of our sun; it isnt much larger than Jupiter....
Stars Brewing in Cygnus X
A bubbling cauldron of star birth is highlighted in this new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Infrared images from instruments at Kitt Peak National Observatory (left) and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope document the outburst of HOPS 383, a young protostar in the Orion star-formation complex. The background is a wide view of the region taken from a Spitzer four-color infrared mosaic.
This illustration shows a star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. Material from the thick disk flows along the stars magnetic field lines and is deposited onto the stars surface. When material hits the star, it lights up brightly.
This artist's rendering shows a large exoplanet causing small bodies to collide in a disk of dust.
Andromeda
This infrared composite image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Andromeda galaxy, a neighbor to our Milky Way galaxy. The image highlights the contrast between the galaxy's choppy waves of dust (red) and smooth sea of older stars (blue). The Spitzer view also shows Andromeda's...
Cassiopeia A Infrared Light Echo
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope imaged the region around the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A and surrounding clouds of dust. This picture, along with an image taken one year earlier, illustrate that a blast of light from Cassiopeia A is waltzing outward through through the dusty skies. This...
This artist's illustration shows what one of the very first galaxies in the universe might have looked like. High levels of violent star formation and star death would have illuminated the gas filling the space between stars, making the galaxy largely opaque and without a clear structure.
Spitzer Points Its High-Gain Antenna Towards the Earth
The Spitzer Space Telescope points its high-gain antenna towards the Earth for downlinking recent observations and uplinking new observing instructions.
The basic chemistry for life has been detected in a second hot gas planet, HD 209458b, depicted in this artist's concept. Two of NASA's Great Observatories - the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, yielded spectral observations that revealed molecules of carbon dioxide, methane...
8-micron image of the Spiral Galaxy Messier 81
The magnificent spiral arms of the nearby galaxy Messier 81 are highlighted in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Located in the northern constellation of Ursa Major (which also includes the Big Dipper), this galaxy is easily visible through binoculars or a small telescope.
Anatomy of a Busted Comet
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured the picture on the left of comet Holmes in March 2008, five months after the comet suddenly erupted and brightened a millionfold overnight. The contrast of the picture has been enhanced on the right to show the anatomy of the comet.
Cosmic Epic Unfolds in Infrared: The Eagle Nebula
This majestic view taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells an untold story of life and death in the Eagle nebula, an industrious star-making factory located 7,000 light-years away in the Serpens constellation.
Sunflower Galaxy Glows with Infrared Light
The various spiral arm segments of the Sunflower galaxy, also known as Messier 63, show up vividly in this image taken in infrared light by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Strobe-like Flashes Discovered in a Suspected Binary Protostar
Flashes of light pulsing through the nebula surrounding the protostellar object LRLL 54361 are captured in this time-coded prismatic image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. These surprisingly regular pulsations, recurring every 25.34 days, were discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope...
First Structures in the Distant Universe
Astronomers have uncovered the patterns of light that appear to be from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe, hidden within a strip of sky observed by NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope.
This artist's conception portrays a free-floating brown dwarf, or failed star.
Kepler-10 Stellar Family Portrait
This artist's conception depicts the Kepler-10 star system, located about 560 light-years away near the Cygnus and Lyra constellations.
Infrared Ring Around Saturn
This diagram highlights a slice of Saturn's largest ring. The ring (red band in inset photo) was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which detected infrared light, or heat, from the dusty ring material. Spitzer viewed the ring edge-on from its Earth-trailing orbit around the sun.
Dissecting Dust from Detonation of Dead Star
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows N103B -- all that remains from a supernova that exploded a millennium ago in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy 160,000 light-years away from our own Milky Way.
This artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. A soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals can be seen pooling around the base of the jagged rocks.
The Milky Way Galaxy (Annotated)
Like early explorers mapping the continents of our globe, astronomers are busy charting the spiral structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Using infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two...
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