Credit & Copyright: Antonio Fernandez

The prominent ridge of emission featured in this dramatic skyscape is cataloged as IC 5067. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive shape, popularly called The Pelican Nebula, the ridge spans about 10 light-years following the curve of the cosmic pelican's head and neck. This false color view also translates the pervasive glow of narrow emission lines from atoms in the nebula to a color palate made popular in Hubble Space Telescope images of star forming regions. Fantastic, dark shapes inhabiting the 1/2 degree wide field are clouds of cool gas and dust sculpted by the winds and radiation from hot, massive stars. Close-ups of some of the sculpted clouds show clear signs of newly forming stars. The Pelican Nebula, itself cataloged as IC 5070, is about 2,000 light-years away. To find it, look northeast of bright star Deneb in the high flying constellation Cygnus.

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The image of this spiral galaxy � 60 million light-years away but similar to our Milky Way galaxy � was taken by Janez Potocnik, European Commissioner for Science and Research, during his official visit to the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Paranal Mountain in Chile. While many galaxies appear as a flat disc, NGC 134 is a warped disc that resembles a bent vinyl record album left out too long in the sun.

Credit: ESO, Janez Potocnik

More than half of spiral galaxies have some type of warping, including the Milky Way and its own small warp. Astronomers still have not cracked the mystery behind the warping effect, but suspect that it might result from interactions or collisions between galaxies. Such galactic encounters can also produce streams of material being pulled out from the galaxy, and this image shows NGC 134 appears to have gas bleeding from the top edge of the disc.

The red features decorating NGC 134's spiral arms represent glowing clouds of hot, gaseous star nurseries known as HII regions. The galaxy also has dark lanes of dust across its disc, which partially obscures its starlight.

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Credit & Copyright: Dietmar Hager

This wide, sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars near the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Prominent at the upper right is NGC 7331. A mere 50 million light-years away, the large spiral is one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. The disturbed looking group of galaxies at the lower left is well-known as Stephan's Quintet. About 300 million light-years distant, the quintet dramatically illustrates a multiple galaxy collision, its powerful, ongoing interactions posed for a brief cosmic snapshot. On the sky, the quintet and NGC 7331 are separated by about half a degree.

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Credit: Adam Block and Jay GaBany

A near-perfect spiral galaxy lies 90 million light years away, its bluish arms containing rings of star formation.

Stars within NGC 488 complete circular orbits at a speed of 205 miles per second (330 km/s), edging out the stars traveling at 137 miles per second (220 km/s) within our own Milky Way. Despite the high speeds, the concentric rings of star formation remain stable � not unlike a pack of racecars maintaining relative position as they round a bend on a galactic racetrack.

The bluish arms are formed by waves of star formation � similar to a stadium crowd doing the "wave" � rather than the motion of the stars.

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Credit & Copyright: T. Rector (U. Alaska Anchorage), Gemini Obs., AURA, NSF

This dramatic image of an interacting pair of galaxies was made using 8-meter Gemini South telescope at Cerro Pachon, Chile. NGC 1531 is the background galaxy with a bright core just above center and NGC 1532 is the foreground spiral galaxy laced with dust lanes. The pair is about 55 million light-years away in the southern constellation Eridanus. These galaxies lie close enough together so that each feels the influence of the other's gravity. The gravitational tug-of-war has triggered star formation in the foreground spiral as evidenced by the young, bright blue star clusters along the upper edge of the front spiral arm. Though the spiral galaxy in this pair is viewed nearly edge-on, astronomers believe the system is similar to the face-on spiral and companion known as M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy.

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sorry a bit late...

Credit:Adam Block

Just in time for Christmas, this striking image of NGC 7662, known as the "Blue Snowball," arrives.

NGC 7662 is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Andromeda. (The term "planetary nebula" is misleading. These objects were originally named such as the result of their resemblance to planets such as Uranus, but they have nothing to do with planets.) These nebulae represent the final stage of a smaller star's life, at which time the core of the star contracts and rises in temperature. The outer layers of the star are ultimately blown outward into a gigantic cloud and ionized, producing the characteristic glow of a planetary nebula.

Astrophotographer Adam Block, who took this photograph, writes, "Like the Eskimo Nebula, NGC 7662 is a challenging target with extremely small details." The equipment used to take this image included a 20in RCOS telescope and an SBIG STL11000 CCD camera. RGB = 30:30:30.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day: Jan 02, 2008



Explanation: This gorgeous galaxy and comet portrait was recorded on December 30th, in the skies over Hoogeveen, The Netherlands. The combined series of 60 x 60 second exposures finds the lovely green coma of Comet 8P/Tuttle near its predicted conjunction with the Triangulum Galaxy. Aligning each exposure with the stars shows the comet as a streak, slowly moving against the background stars and galaxy. An alternative composition with exposures centered on the comet, shows the background stars and galaxy as streaks. The alluring celestial scene would also have been a rewarding one for the influential 18th century comet hunter Charles Messier. While Messier scanned French skies for comets, he carefully cataloged positions of things which were fuzzy and comet-like in appearance but did not move against the background stars and so were definitely not comets. The Triangulum Galaxy, also known as M33, is the 33rd object in his famous not-a-comet catalog. The modern understanding holds that the Triangulum Galaxy is a large spiral galaxy some 3 million light-years distant. Comet 8P/Tuttle, just bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye in dark, northern skies, is about 40 million kilometers (2 light-minutes) away.

Solved using Astrometry.net

thank you Alberto for great overlay! welcome to work!
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Credit & Copyright: Gemini Observatory, GMOS-South, NSF

Are these two supernova shells related? To help find out, the 8-meter Gemini Telescope located high atop a mountain in Chile was pointed at the unusual, huge, double-lobed cloud dubbed DEM L316. The resulting image, shown above, yields tremendous detail. Inspection of the image as well as data taken by the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory indicate how different the two supernova remnants are. In particular, the smaller shell appears to be the result of Type Ia supernova where a white dwarf exploded, while the larger shell appears to be the result of a Type II supernova where a massive normal star exploded. Since those two stellar types evolve on such different time scales, they likely did not form together and so are likely not physically associated. Considering also that no evidence exists that the shells are colliding, the two shells are now hypothesized to be superposed by chance. DEM L316 lies about 160,000 light years away in the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy, spans about 140 light-years across, and appears toward the southern constellation of the Swordfish (Dorado). NASA-APOD

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Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/Coelum

This vibrant image depicts a turbulent area of outer space which, to some, evokes a fox, hence the name Fox Fur Nebula. It lies in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn, near the left arm of Orion, just below the large, bright star S Mon (not visible in this image).

The enigmatically textured shapes comprise dust and gas, whipped into peculiar shapes by powerful stellar winds. Blue-colored areas are formed of dust reflecting starlight. Red areas are glowing from emission caused by the ionization of hydrogen gas by starlight.

The Fox Fur Nebula is part of a much larger complex known as The Christmas Tree Cluster.

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Credit & Copyright: Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory)

Some 50 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This sharp view of the gorgeous island universe shows off a striking yellow nucleus and galactic disk with tightly wound spiral arms. NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy's dust lanes and turbulent star-forming regions are found along the spiral arms, but X-ray images suggest that resulting winds and stellar explosions create plumes of hot gas extending into a halo around NGC 2841. Of course, the prominent stars with a spiky appearance in the picture are close foreground objects within the Milky Way and not associated with NGC 2841.

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