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Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae,...

Explanation: Something strange happened to this galaxy, but what? Known as the Cigar Galaxy and cataloged as M82, red glowing gas and dust are being cast out from the center. Although this starburst galaxy was surely stirred up by a recent pass near its neighbor, large spiral galaxy M81, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust. Evidence indicates that this material is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. In the featured images, a Hubble Space Telescope image in visible light is shown...

Explanation: What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy -- but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, the Spindle galaxy, pictured here, but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. A perhaps more familiar galaxy seen edge-on is our own Milky Way galaxy. Also cataloged as M102, the Spindle galaxy has numerous and complex dust lanes appearing dark and red, while many of the bright stars in the disk give it a more blue underlying hue. The blue disk of young stars can be seen in this...

Combination of a Hubble Space Telescope image of SN 1987A and the compact argon source. The faint blue source in the centre is the emission from the compact source detected with the JWST/NIRSpec instrument. Outside this is the stellar debris, containing most of the mass, expanding at thousands of km/second. The inner bright "string of pearls" is the gas from the outer layers of the star that was expelled about 20,000 years before the final explosion. The is the fast debris are now colliding with the ring, explaining the bright spots. Outside of the inner ring are two outer rings,...

"Stars could be there, we just can't see them." Hydrogen gas in the primordial galaxy J0613+52 with red indicating regions turning away from Earth and blue showing regions turning toward us (Image credit: STScI POSS-II with additional illustration by NSF/GBO/P.Vosteen.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Astronomers have accidentally discovered a dark galaxy filled with primordial gas untouched that appears to have no visible stars. The researchers behind the discovery say this galaxy, designated J0613+52, could be "the faintest galaxy found to date." Interestingly, scientists using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) discovered the "dark" galaxy through a complete error. "The GBT was accidentally pointed to...

The Orion: A molecular cloud shows cosmic filamentary structures where stars are being born. Image: ESA / Herschel / Ph. André, D Polychroni, A. Roy, V Könyves, N Schneider for the Gould Belt survey Key Program ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the first part of this series, we saw that electromagnetic processes in plasmas – electrically conducting gases – could, over trillions of years, produce the giant filaments that we see today as the largest structures in the universe. This happened without a Big Bang, without dark energy or dark matter, based on processes that we observe here on Earth in the laboratory...

Explanation: Galaxies are fascinating not only for what is visible, but for what is invisible. Grand spiral galaxy NGC 1232, captured in detail by one of the Very Large Telescopes, is a good example. The visible is dominated by millions of bright stars and dark dust, caught up in a gravitational swirl of spiral arms revolving about the center. Open clusters containing bright blue stars can be seen sprinkled along these spiral arms, while dark lanes of dense interstellar dust can be seen sprinkled between them. Less visible, but detectable, are billions of dim normal stars and vast tracts of...

This image shows the orientation of the magnetic field in the distant 9io9 galaxy, seen here when the Universe was only 20% of its current age — the furthest ever detection of a galaxy’s magnetic field. Dust grains within 9io9 are somewhat aligned with the galaxy’s magnetic field, and due to this, they emit polarized light, meaning that light waves oscillate along a preferred direction rather than randomly. ALMA detected this polarization signal, from which astronomers could work out the orientation of the magnetic field, shown here as curved lines overlaid on the ALMA image. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/J. Geach et...

Explanation: This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The featured image, digitally sharpened, shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in visible light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as...

SORRY, THE PREVIOUS POST HAD AN ERROR SOMEHOW AND I COULD NOT POST THE ENTIRE CONTENT. Explanation: If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), NGC 1566 presents a gorgeous face-on view. Classified as a grand design spiral, NGC 1566 shows two prominent and graceful spiral arms that are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark cosmic dust lanes. Numerous Hubble Space Telescope images of NGC 1566 have been taken to...

Composite X-ray, radio and optical image of the distant quasar galaxy 3C 297. (NASA/CXC/Univ. of Torino/V. Missaglia et al./ESA/STScI & International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/NRAO/AUI/NSF) It's the classic social faux pas. You're in a happy clique, surrounded by all your friends – and one by one, you subsume them, absorbing them into yourself, until you're all alone, a grotesque agglomeration alone in what was once a crowded environment. That seems to be what happened to a galaxy 9.2 billion years ago, scientists have determined. A galaxy in the relatively early Universe named 3C 297 is mysteriously all alone – even though its...

Scientists have just spotted a strange circular filament wobbling around the sun's pole that has them really excited. A huge filament of solar plasma has broken off the sun's surface and is circling its north pole like a vortex of powerful winds, but scientists have no clue what caused it. "Talk about polar vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our star," space weather forecaster Tamitha Skov said on Twitter while sharing a video sequence taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics...

The location of the most distant galaxy ever detected. (NASA, ESA, CSA, M. Zamani/ESA/Webb) Light that has traveled for over 13.4 billion years to reach our neighborhood of space has been confirmed as originating from the earliest, most distant galaxy detected yet. That places the most distant of these four very young objects at the very dawn of the Universe, just a short time after the Big Bang – a time period when the Universe was still foggy and bleary and the first rays of light were penetrating the darkness. So detailed are the JWST's long spectroscopic observations that researchers...

The spiral galaxy NGC 1068, also known as the squid galaxy, is a bustling 'Disneyland' of neutrino production, researchers said. At the heart of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 1068, researchers found a thriving 'factory' of ghostly particles called neutrinos. A nearby spiral galaxy is pumping out ghostly neutrinos — mysterious particles that barely interact with the matter around them, scientists have found. The elusive particles are coming from a hotspot of neutrino production in the heart of the spiral galaxy Messier 77, which is anchored by a black hole. The region is rich in dense gas and electromagnetic fields,...

Explanation: This 180 degree panoramic night skyscape captures our Milky Way Galaxy as it arcs above the horizon on a winter's night in August. Near midnight, the galactic center is close to the zenith with the clear waters of Lake Traful, Neuquen, Argentina, South America, planet Earth below. Zodiacal light, dust reflected sunlight along the Solar System's ecliptic plane, is also visible in the region's very dark night sky. The faint band of light reaches up from the distant snowy peaks toward the galaxy's center. Follow the arc of the Milky Way to the left to find the southern hemisphere...

Explanation: Find the Big Dipper and follow the handle away from the dipper's bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you'll come upon this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (left), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular...

A color image of CEERS-93316. (University of Edinburgh) SPACE It's a record that has been broken multiple times over the past two years alone, and one that we expect to see broken again soon. Astronomers using the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have announced the discovery of what appears to be the most distant galaxy yet. If this sounds familiar, it's already happened twice this year. In April, astronomers announced their observation of a galaxy in a moment of time just 330 million years after the Big Bang. Last month, in other JWST data, another was found at...

July 22 (UPI) -- NASA's latest deep-space telescope continues to shock astronomers and amateurs with jaw-dropping new images captured from the outer reaches of the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope appears to have pictured a wormhole spinning in the "Phantom Galaxy," a place whose very center scientists believe may contain a black hole. "I've been doing this for 10 years now, and [Webb] data is new, different and exciting," Judy Schmidt, who processed raw data from NASA into a stunning photo of the Phantom Galaxy, told Space.com. "Of course I'm going to make something with it." The latest images...

Explanation: The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 30 million light years distant and fully 60 thousand light years across, M51, also known as NGC 5194, is one of the brightest and most picturesque galaxies on the sky. The featured image is a digital combination of images taken in different colors by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, highlighting many sharp features. Anyone with a good pair of binoculars, however, can see this Whirlpool toward the constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici). M51 is a spiral galaxy of type Sc and is the dominant member of a...

The radio lobes of Alcyoneus. (Oei et al., arXiv, 2022) Astronomers have just found an absolute monster of a galaxy. Lurking some 3 billion light-years away, Alcyoneus is a giant radio galaxy reaching 5 megaparsecs into space. That's 16.3 million light-years long, and constitutes the largest known structure of galactic origin. The discovery highlights our poor understanding of these colossi, and what drives their incredible growth. But it could provide a pathway to better understanding, not just of giant radio galaxies, but the intergalactic medium that drifts in the yawning voids of space. Giant radio galaxies are yet another mystery...