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Space Pics v.3

#402
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The California Nebula

What's California doing in space? Drifting through the Orion Arm of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, this cosmic cloud by chance echoes the outline of California on the west coast of the United States. Our own Sun also lies within the Milky Way's Orion Arm, only about 1,500 light-years from the California Nebula. Also known as NGC 1499, the classic emission nebula is around 100 light-years long. On the featured image, the most prominent glow of the California Nebula is the red light characteristic of hydrogen atoms recombining with long lost electrons, stripped away (ionized) by energetic starlight. The star most likely providing the energetic starlight that ionizes much of the nebular gas is the bright, hot, bluish Xi Persei just to the right of the nebula. A regular target for astrophotographers, the California Nebula can be spotted with a wide-field telescope under a dark sky toward the constellation of Perseus, not far from the Pleiades.

Image Credit & Copyright: Farmakopoulos Antonis
 
#404
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Reflections on the 1970s

The 1970s are sometimes ignored by astronomers, like this beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae in Orion - NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 - usually overlooked in favor of the substantial glow from the nearby stellar nursery better known as the Orion Nebula. Found along Orion's sword just north of the bright Orion Nebula complex, these reflection nebulae are also associated with Orion's giant molecular cloud about 1,500 light-years away, but are dominated by the characteristic blue color of interstellar dust reflecting light from hot young stars. In this sharp color image a portion of the Orion Nebula appears along the bottom border with the cluster of reflection nebulae at picture center. NGC 1977 stretches across the field just below center, separated from NGC 1973 (above right) and NGC 1975 (above left) by dark regions laced with faint red emission from hydrogen atoms. Taken together, the dark regions suggest to many the shape of a running man.



Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, Univ. Arizona
 
#405
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Infrared Portrait of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Cosmic dust clouds ripple across this infrared portrait of our Milky Way's satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. In fact, the remarkable composite image from the Herschel Space Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope show that dust clouds fill this neighboring dwarf galaxy, much like dust along the plane of the Milky Way itself. The dust temperatures tend to trace star forming activity. Spitzer data in blue hues indicate warm dust heated by young stars. Herschel's instruments contributed the image data shown in red and green, revealing dust emission from cooler and intermediate regions where star formation is just beginning or has stopped. Dominated by dust emission, the Large Magellanic Cloud's infrared appearance is different from views in optical images. But this galaxy's well-known Tarantula Nebula still stands out, easily seen here as the brightest region to the left of center. A mere 160,000 light-years distant, the Large Cloud of Magellan is about 30,000 light-years across.



Image Credit: ESA / NASA / JPL-Caltech / STScI
 
#406
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The View Toward M106

A big, bright, beautiful spiral, Messier 106 is at the center of this galaxy filled cosmic vista. The two degree wide telescopic field of view looks toward the well-trained constellation Canes Venatici, near the handle of the Big Dipper. Also known as NGC 4258, M106 is about 80,000 light-years across and 23.5 million light-years away, the largest member of the Canes II galaxy group. For a far away galaxy, the distance to M106 is well-known in part because it can be directly measured by tracking this galaxy's remarkable maser, or microwave laser emission. Very rare but naturally occuring, the maser emission is produced by water molecules in molecular clouds orbiting its active galactic nucleus. Another prominent spiral galaxy on the scene, viewed nearly edge-on, is NGC 4217 below and right of M106. The distance to NGC 4217 is much less well-known, estimated to be about 60 million light-years.



Image Credit & Copyright: Fabian Neyer
 
#409
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The Galactic Center in Infrared



The center of our Galaxy is a busy place. In visible light, much of the Galactic Center is obscured by opaque dust. In infrared light, however, dust glows more and obscures less, allowing nearly one million stars to be recorded in the featured photograph. The Galactic Center itself appears on the left and is located about 30,000 light years away towards the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). The Galactic Plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, the plane in which the Sun orbits, is identifiable by the dark diagonal dust lane. The absorbing dust grains are created in the atmospheres of cool red-giant stars and grow in molecular clouds. The region directly surrounding the Galactic Center glows brightly in radio and high-energy radiation, and is thought to house a large black hole.



Image Credit: 2MASS Project, UMass, IPAC/Caltech, NSF, NASA
 
#411
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Stars and Globules in the Running Chicken Nebula

The eggs from this gigantic chicken may form into stars. The featured emission nebula, shown in scientifically assigned colors, is cataloged as IC 2944 but known as the Running Chicken Nebula for the shape of its greater appearance. Seen toward the top of the image are small, dark molecular clouds rich in obscuring cosmic dust. Called Thackeray's Globules for their discoverer, these "eggs" are potential sites for the gravitational condensation of new stars, although their fates are uncertain as they are also being rapidly eroded away by the intense radiation from nearby young stars. Together with patchy glowing gas and complex regions of reflecting dust, these massive and energetic stars form the open cluster Collinder 249. This gorgeous skyscape spans about 60 light-years at the nebula's estimated 6,000 light-year distance.


Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
 
#412
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The View Toward M101

Sweeping through northern skies, Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) made its closest approach on January 17, passing about 6 light-minutes from our fair planet. Dust and ion tails clearly separated in this Earth-based view, the comet is also posed for a Messier moment, near the line-of-sight to M101, grand spiral galaxy in Ursa Major. A cosmic pinwheel at the lower left, M101 is nearly twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy, but some 270 thousand light-centuries away. Both galaxy and comet are relatively bright, easy targets for binocular-equipped skygazers. But Comet Catalina is now outbound from the inner Solar System and will slowly fade in coming months. This telescopic two panel mosaic spans about 5 degrees (10 Full Moons) on the sky.



Image Credit & Copyright: Fritz Helmut Hemmerich
 
#417
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Star Cluster R136 Bursts Out

In the center of star-forming region 30 Doradus lies a huge cluster containing some of the largest, hottest, and most massive stars known. These stars, known collectively as star cluster R136, were captured in the featured image in visible light by the Wide Field Camera 3 in 2009 peering through the Hubble Space Telescope. Gas and dust clouds in 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, have been sculpted into elongated shapes by powerful winds and ultraviolet radiation from these hot cluster stars. The 30 Doradus Nebula lies within a neighboring galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud and is located a mere 170,000 light-years away.



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
 
#420
Storms on Saturn


Saturn Storm
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Saturn Storm

In 2011, astronomers noticed a storm on Saturn that wrapped around the entire planet.

Storms here on Earth might be devastating events that can last for days and bring cities to their knees, but that's nothing compared to Saturn's storms. Massive thunderstorms complete with lightning and high winds can cover an area roughly the same size as our planet and can last for months, circumnavigating the gas giant in the process.

Now, scientists think they've figured out why these super huge storms emerge. In a new study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the California Institute of Technology found that the storms formed due to the convection of water in Saturn's atmosphere.

Convection also plays a huge role in how thunderstorms form on Earth. A thunderstorm develops when warm, moist air rises and cools in the upper atmosphere, with the water condensing and falling as rain. On Earth, about 16 million thunderstorms happen every year. On Saturn, they don't happen all that often--only six have been observed in the past 140 years, but when they do occur, they are spectacular.

Researchers now think that the composition of Saturn's atmosphere (mostly hydrogen and helium) makes the storms so infrequent. Warm air, heavy with water droplets, tries to rise but is hampered by the fact that water is so much heavier than the other elements present in the Saturnian atmosphere, so the warm-cold mixing process takes much longer.

The infrequent nature of the storms is tied to their enormous size. On Saturn, the heavy water molecules just sit there in the atmosphere, warming up, but not enough to rise above the lighter molecules. It takes the upper atmosphere cooling enough to sink to cause the storms. Because so much of the atmosphere cools off and sinks below the warm, watery layer, the process begets a huge storm that lasts for months.

“The upper atmosphere is so cold and so massive that it takes 20 to 30 years for this cooling to trigger another storm,” author of the paper Andrew Ingersoll said in a press release.
 
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