Astronomy Picture of the Day 1-04-03

NASA ^ | 1-04-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2003 January 04

A Magellanic Starfield
Credit: Sally Heap, Eliot Malumuth, Phil Plait , Hubble Heritage Team, NASA

Explanation: Stars of many types and colors are visible in this Hubble Space Telescope close-up of a starfield in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Over 10,000 stars are visible -- the brightest of which are giant stars. Were our Sun at the distance of these stars, about 170,000 light-years, it would hardly be discernable. By contrast, only a few thousand individual stars can be seen in the night sky with the unaided eye, and many of these lie within only a few hundred light-years. So typically, the light we see from nearby stars left during the age of our great-grand-parents, while light from LMC stars started its journey well before the dawn of recorded human history.

[petuniasevan]

Such images from the HST are providing us an ever-expanding window on the universe.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is an irregular type galaxy; it's a satellite to our Milky Way.
It's only visible south of 20 degrees north latitude.

[petuniasevan]

Finally, huh?

[RightWhale]

The Hubble Space Telescope has changed the ways we think about what is out there. The next space telescope will probably change our thinking about the universe even more. Still, we have to get ourselves off the planet and go out there in person before it begins to mean anything. Looking for meaning here.

[BossyRoofer]

HST is really sending some awsome images! Great work keep it comeing APOD!

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

Great pic! Awesome job petuniasevan - keep up the good work!

[firewalk]

thanks for the ping (-:

[sistergoldenhair]

Thanks for the ping.

[SuziQ]

I love seeing pictures of the Magellenic Cloud. The Hubble has been such a boon to the scientific community, as well as to we amateurs who just love looking at the pretty pictures!

[BradyLS]

Finally, huh?

Do you mean to get Hubble to work the way it's supposed to? Don't hold your breath: a debilitating meteorite strike should occur anytime now! ;-) :-D

Thanks again for providing this service to Free Republic. If it weren't for APOD, I'd never remember what a night full of stars looks like.

[WSGilcrest]

Why do most if not all Hubble pics have the corners cropped?

[petuniasevan]

I can't remember the details, but it's a characteristic of images from Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. All its 1600-pixel-width images are like that. If you don't see the cropped corner, the image has already been cropped from a larger one.

[Joan912]

Slowly, very slowly am I beginning to understand some aspects of astronomy. Thank you so much.