nebulas

NGC 6960 The west end of the Veil Nebula is known as the Witch's Broom (NGC 6960). It lies approximately 1,400 light-years away towards the constellation Cygnus. (3-inch Orion EON 72 refractor at f/11.4, Orion StarShoot III monochrome CCD camera, Hydrogen-alpha/Oxygen-III/Sulfur-II image with...

The constellation Orion is a hotbed of massive star formation, most prominently in the great nebula that sits in Orion's sword. The glowing gas of the nebula is powered by a group of young massive stars, but behind it is a cluster of younger stars and clumps of gas. Still gathering together...

People across America will have a chance to gaze up at Jupiter and its four largest moons this weekend the same way Galileo did almost 400 years ago. To celebrate "Galilean Nights," a project supported by the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009), public observing events will be held...

European Southern Observatory (ESO) unveiled the second of three images from its GigaGalaxy Zoom project. It is a new and wonderful 340-million-pixel vista of the central parts of our home galaxy as seen from ESO's Paranal Observatory with an amateur telescope. This 34°-by-20°-wide image...

The first of three images of the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) GigaGalaxy Zoom project — a new 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO's observing sites in Chile — is now available. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the universe as it is seen...

New photographs of the center of the Milky Way reveal the chaotic environment at the heart of our galaxy, where a supermassive black hole is thought to lurk. The close-up views come from two recent projects - one undertaken by an amateur astronomer. Stephane Guisard, an engineer at the European...

University of Hawaii astronomer finds giant galaxy hosting the most distant supermassive black hole The black hole contains at least a billion times as much matter as does our Sun. September 4, 2009 University of Hawaii astronomer Tomotsugu Goto and colleagues have discovered a giant galaxy...

This new image, centred on the B[e] star HD 87643, beautifully shows the extended nebula of gas and dust that reflects the light from the star. The nebula appears at the upper right. The image was released by the European Southern Observatory on Aug. 5, 2009. Credit: ESO A new look at a...

A long-period comet called 2001 RX14 (Linear) turned up in images captured in 2002 by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico. Credit: Mike Solontoi/University of Washington Some of the comets that make their way to Earth's neighborhood from the frigid outer reaches of the solar...

These images are some of the first to be taken during Spitzer's warm mission. At left is a cloud, known as DR22, bursting with new stars in the Cygnus region of the sky. The picture at upper right shows a relatively calm galaxy called NGC 4145. The final picture at lower right shows a dying star...

Some of the comets that make their way to Earth's neighborhood from the frigid outer reaches of the solar system likely follow a different route than previously thought, new modeling suggests. The study's findings, detailed in the July 31 issue of the journal Science, are good news for our...

Huge 'bubble' spotted in space Friday, July 24, 2009 It looks like a bubble or maybe a camera fault, but a new recording is a newly discovered planetary nebula is visible. Dave Jurasevich of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, met on July 6, 2008 the 'Cygnus Bubble', which is...

Huge breeding of stars discovered in our galaxy June 23, 2009 A team of researchers at a distance of fourteen thousand light years from our planet a vast star field found previously was hidden behind a thick dust. It is one of the largest of its kind in our galaxy and can be more about how...

Interstellar Boundary Explorer detects neutral hydrogen coming from the Moon Solar wind particles impact only the dayside of the Moon, where most of them are embedded in the lunar surface. NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of fast hydrogen...

Cosmic light seen by space telescope Sunday, April 5, 2009 A small, dense object only 20 kilometers in diameter is responsible for the creation of an enormous X-ray nebula, stretching 150 light years. This cloud (and its central source of power) are now observed by the Chandra X-Ray...

We, the Earth and 2012 Last updated: Sunday, February 15, 2009 Please enter the Photon Belt But Debt You recognize that you have insufficient time to do everything in one day? As days have fewer hours than before. Yes? Then you will also be hampered by what in metaphysical circles since...