An Eerie Astronomical Photo

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Here is a gorgeous image taken by master astro-photographer Travis Rector (of the University of Alaska), showing a region of cosmic raw material (glowing gas and dark dust.) This is like one of those inkblot tests that psychologists are fond of -- what shape you see in the picture may be highly individual.

What we are actually looking at is a small part of a larger region where star birth is going on right now. Known by its catalog number of IC1396, this "emission nebula" is set to glow by the brilliant light of new stars that have already been born in this region and are shining with adolescent energy.

IC1396 is a cloud of loose gas and dark dust (the dust really isn't that different from what you find under your desk when you are too busy thinking cosmic thoughts to clean up regularly.) The dust is shaped into long filaments, when the light of energetic stars pushes the less dense parts of the dust away from the stars (in this case, in the down direction on this photo.) Only the thickest regions of dust remain after a while, making long, dark tendrils like we see here.

IC 1396 is about 3000 light years away in the constellation of Cepheus. You can see the entire nebula (much larger than the small part seen in our photo) here:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120805.html

So what did the dark shape remind YOU of?

A Beautiful Pinwheel of a Galaxy

A Beautiful Pinwheel of a Galaxy

Taking a break from all the heavy-duty science news for a minute, I want to share a beautiful recent image with you from the Hubble Space Telescope.  What you see on our photo is a large part of a spiral shaped galaxy (or island) of stars, known by its catalog number M83. It is about 15 million light years away in the  constellation of Hydra, the water snake.  

M83 contains billions upon billions of stars and quite a bit of gas and dust -- the cosmic raw material from which new stars, new planets, and perhaps even new Facebook fans can form.

This remarkably detailed image emphasizes the pinkish-red regions that are glowing clusters (or groups) of young stars, seen on the edges of the galaxy's spiral arms.  Actually, the young (adolescent) stars in these clusters glow so hot, they give off not just the light our eyes can see, but also energetic ultraviolet light.  The left-over gas that still surrounds these new star groups (in a way, the womb that gave birth to them) then is set to glow.   The excited gas -- mostly the cheapest, simplest element in the universe, hydrogen -- glows with a characteristic pinkish red.

Just look at all the pinkish glow!  That is to say, see all the new stars that we can see having been born recently -- at least recently on the cosmic time scale, or somewhere between 1 to 10 million years ago.  Like most of our cities in the spring and summer, there is still lots of construction going on in such galaxies.  

Stunning Wide-Field Image of a Star Nursery

Every once in a while, I see a new astronomical picture that leaves me with my mouth open, saying "Wow!" The above image, assembled by a talented amateur astronomer, from information taken by a number of different telescopes, is one of those.

This wide-angle view is centered on a cluster of recently-born stars that is known by its catalog number of NGC 2264. Surrounding the adolescent stars is a whole region of cosmic gas and dust -- the raw material from which stars are born. The nearby gas glows with the characteristic red color of its most common constituent -- hydrogen.

At left center is the Cone Nebula, a region of gas and dust in the shape of a sideways dark cone; the energy of bright stars to the right of the cone is eating away at the sides of this thick dusty region, leaving only a cone of thicker material behind.

To the right of the Cone Nebula, you can see an opposite (larger) cone pattern of bright stars stretching rightward. Some people see the lights of a sideways holiday tree in the pattern of bright stars.

At the bottom center of the image, pointing upward into the bluish emptier region (where the energy of freshly made stars is clearing things out), you can see an odd region of gas and dust that is sometimes called "The Fox Fur Nebula." Click on the picture and take a good look -- can you see the head of a furry red fox pointing upward into the bluish region?

The entire complex of stars and gas and dust is about 2,600 lightyears away, which means the light we see tonight left this region about 2,600 years ago -- a time when humans on Earth lived a much more challenging existence and lifespans were less than half of what we enjoy today.

This remarkable picture was assembled by Dr. Robert Gendler, a physician and amateur astronomer, who is a master at working with photographic information using his computer. The image was constructed from information provided by the Subaru Telescope in Japan and the Digitized Sky Survey, put together by astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute from a number of earlier surveys of the sky. To see more information about the photo, see:
http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/Cone-Subaru-DSS.html

You can go to Dr. Gendler's home page at that site and then browse his many other wonderful images. But take a minute and just enjoy a full-screen version of the picture -- you are seeing the same process of star birth that gave rise to our Sun some five billion years ago.

A Gorgeous New Hubble Image and News from Kepler

Scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope have just released a magnificent new image of one my favorite astronomical objects -- the Horsehead Nebula, a great cloud of "cosmic dirt" in the constellation of Orion. What makes this image a little different from usual is that we are not seeing the tower of dust with visible light, but with heat-rays (what scientists call the "infra-red.") 

It is in such clouds of dust and gas that new stars and planets are being regularly born. Because dust can block regular light, infrared images like this allow us to peer deeper into these regions of star birth. This particular image is about 2.5 light years across (where each light year is about 6 thousand billion miles) -- so we are seeing a good-sized pillar of cosmic "raw material" here. (Yet the Horsehead is just a part of a much larger complex of gas and dust called the Orion Molecular Cloud, which is roughly 1500 light years away from us.)

You can see two recently born stars at the top ridge of dust in the Horsehead in this image, confirming that star birth is happening in this dusty clump. Note that the colors we see on this picture are not real (since these are rays our eyes are not sensitive to.) The colors were picked by Hubble scientists to give a sense of the dustiness of the Horsehead.

You can contrast this infrared picture with a visible-light Hubble image taken with the Hubble in 2000-2001:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2001/12/image/a/

and with an image of a larger region around it taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the ground at:http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_89.html

Aren't they gorgeous images?

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In other news you may have read that the Kepler mission, photographing 150,000 stars regularly in its search for planets orbiting other stars, has found three more planets that are just a little larger than Earth and orbiting in the "habitable zone" of their stars -- where water could be warm enough to be liquid. 

For the full story, see: http://www.kepler.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=243

That page gives you access to the quick info, the paintings of what the planets might like, animation, etc. To get the story in a more organized way, scroll down toward the bottom and click on the link to the full NASA news release.

The gist of the discovery is that we are finding more and more planets that are roughly earth-like -- perhaps a bit bigger, not always around the same kind of star as our Sun -- but Earth-like in their temperatures and other conditions. The Kepler team said that the current discovery is just an appetizer. Many more such planets may be among the 2740 candidate planets Kepler found that they are still examining and not yet ready to confirm.