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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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| Earth and Moon from MESSENGER |
Earth and Moon from MESSENGER
What does Earth look like from the planet Mercury?
The robotic spacecraft
MESSENGER
found out as it looked toward the
Earth during its closest approach to the
Sun about three months ago.
The Earth and Moon
are visible as the double spot on the lower left of the
above image.
Now MESSENGER was not at Mercury when it took the above image, but at a
location
from which the view would be similar.
From Mercury, both the
Earth and its
comparatively large moon will always appear as small circles of reflected sunlight and will never show a
crescent phase.
MESSENGER has zipped right by
Mercury three
times since being
launched in 2004, and is scheduled to enter orbit around the innermost planet in March of 2011.
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| The Annotated Galactic Center |
The Annotated Galactic Center
The sky toward the
center of our Galaxy is filled with a wide variety of
celestial wonders,
many of which are visible from a dark location with common
binoculars.
Constellations near the
Galactic Center include
Sagittarius,
Libra,
Scorpius,
Scutum, and
Ophiuchus.
Nebulas include
Messier objects
M8,
M16,
M20, as well as the
Pipe and
Cat's Paw nebulas.
Visible
open star clusters include
M6,
M7,
M21,
M23,
M24, and
M25, while
globular star cluster
M22 is also visible.
A hole in the dust toward the
Galactic Center reveals a bright region filled with distant stars known as
Baade's Window, which is visible between
M7 and
M8.
Moving your cursor over the
above image the will bring up an un-annotated version.
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| Comanche Outcrop on Mars Indicates Hospitable Past |
Comanche Outcrop on Mars Indicates Hospitable Past
Could life once have survived on Mars?
Today, neither
animal nor
plant life from
Earth could survive for very long on
Mars because at least one key ingredient -- liquid
water -- is essentially absent on the red planet's rusty surface.
Although evidence from the
martian rovers indicates that long ago
Mars might once have had
liquid water on its surface, that water might also have been
too acidic for familiar life forms to thrive.
Recently, however, a newly detailed analysis of an unusual outcropping of rock and soil chanced upon in 2005 by the robotic
Spirit rover has uncovered a clue indicating that not all of Mars was always so acidic.
The mound in question, dubbed
Comanche Outcrop and visible near the top of the
above image, appears to contain unusually
high concentrations of elements such as magnesium iron
carbonate.
The above image is shown in colors exaggerated to highlight the differences in composition.
Since these
carbonates
dissolve in acid, the persistence of these mounds indicates that water perhaps less
acidic and more
favorable for life might have once flowed across Mars.
More detailed analyses and searches for other signs will surely continue.
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