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A galaxy in perspective

A galaxy in perspective

Published by Christian Ready on 3 December, 2012 | Leave a response

One of the things that’s very difficult to appreciate is the relative sizes and distances of celestial objects. After all, their sizes and distances aren’t remotely small enough for us to appreciate. As a result, everything we see looks in some way compressed – one object in an image may just as easily be twice [...]

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Nearby spiral galaxy NGC 3344. Tightly wound spiral arms surround a subtle bar of older stars at the center. In this regard, NG 3344 is a smaller analogue to our Milky Way. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

NGC3344 – a mini-me Galaxy in a spin

Published by Christian Ready on 16 October, 2012 | Leave a response

I can’t say I ever tire of looking at galaxies – the great islands of the universe home to billions of Suns. but the Hubble Space Telescope’s image of NGC 3344 shows a galaxy that in some ways is a lot like our own. Behold: The bright stars with the diffraction spikes are nearby stars [...]

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NGC 1672 is a barred spiral galaxy with populations of stars forming in the arms and in the nucleus. Click for the 1280x919 or get the 5302x3805 version

NGC 1672, a galaxy a-bursting with stars

Published by Christian Ready on 2 October, 2012 | Leave a response

Galaxies are the great islands in the universe where stars live out their lives. But over the course of a galaxy’s evolution, there are times when it is active with more star formation than others, like this gorgeous example of NGC 1672 courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope: You really want to click that image [...]

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The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field

The deepest view of the universe: the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field

Published by Christian Ready on 26 September, 2012 | 2 Responses

How deep into the universe have we looked? As of today, this deep: This is the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, (XDF), and it’s a masterwork ten years in the making*. What you’re seeing is what you get when you take a very long exposure with two of Hubble’s best cameras of a region of the [...]

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An award-winning Whirlpool

An award-winning Whirlpool

Published by Christian Ready on 21 September, 2012 | 1 Response

M51, aka the Whirlpool Galaxy, is a favorite target for professional and amateur  astronomers alike. It’s a relatively nearby pair of galaxies that are interacting with one another. M51 is the large spiral, seen nearly face-on to us, and its arms are bursting with new star formation. This of course is due to the tidal interaction [...]

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NGC 4634 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope

A slightly warped edge-on spiral galaxy

Published by Christian Ready on 20 September, 2012 | 1 Response

Hot on the heels of another beautiful Hubble image of an edge-on spiral galaxy is a Hubble image of NGC 4634. What makes this image so interesting is the slight warp in the disk. If you look closely, you’ll see that the  disk is tilted upright on the right hand side of the image and [...]

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This image portrays a beautiful view of the galaxy NGC 7090, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is viewed edge-on from the Earth, meaning we cannot easily see the spiral arms, which are full of young, hot stars. However, our side-on view shows the galaxy’s disc and the bulging central core, where typically a large group of cool old stars are packed in a compact, spheroidal region. In addition, there are two interesting features present in the image that are worth mentioning. First, we are able to distinguish an intricate pattern of pinkish red regions over the whole galaxy. This indicates the presence of clouds of hydrogen gas. These structures trace the location of ongoing star formation, visual confirmation of recent studies that classify NGC 7090 as an actively star-forming galaxy. Second, we observe dust lanes, depicted as dark regions inside the disc of the galaxy. In NGC 7090, these regions are mostly located in lower half of the galaxy, showing an intricate filamentary structure. Looking from the outside in through the whole disc, the light emitted from the bright centre of the galaxy is absorbed by the dust, silhouetting the dusty regions against the bright light in the background. Dust in our galaxy, the Milky Way, has been one of the worst enemies of observational astronomers for decades. But this does not mean that these regions are quite blind spots in the sky. At near-infrared wavelengths — slightly longer wavelengths than visible light — this dust is largely transparent and astronomers are able to study what is really behind it. At still longer wavelengths, the realm of radio astronomy, the dust itself can actually be observed, letting astronomers study the structure and properties of dust clouds and their relationship with star formation. Lying in the southern constellation of Indus (The Indian), NGC 7090 is located about thirty million light-years from the Sun. Astronomer John Herschel first observed this galaxy on 4 October, 1834. The image was taken using the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the Hubble Space Telescope and combines orange light (coloured blue here), infrared (coloured red) and emissions from glowing hydrogen gas (also in red).

Hubble’s view of an edge-on starburst galaxy

Published by Christian Ready on 17 September, 2012 | 1 Response

Holy Wow, what a beauty! This is NGC 7090, a spiral galaxy seen nearly edge-on, which means we cannot directly see the arrangement of its spiral arms. When we look at spiral galaxies, we typically see these hot blue stars in the spiral arms. But NGC 7090 is really actively hatching new stars, and we [...]

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