Space Observatories
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This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye. This image is made up of data from Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer. Blue shows infrared light of 3.6 to 4.5 microns; green shows infrared light of 5.8 to 8 microns; and red shows infrared light of 24 microns. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.of Ariz.
 
 
Comets Kick up Dust in Helix Nebula
In Chandra's X-ray image, the pulsar and a cigar-shaped cloud of energetic particles, known as a pulsar wind nebula, are predominantly seen as high-energy X-rays (blue). A shell of heated gas from the outer layers of the exploded star surrounds the pulsar and the pulsar wind nebula and emits lower-energy X-rays (represented in green and red). Credit: NASA/CXC/Eureka Scientific/M.Roberts et al.
 
 
G11.2-0.3: A Textbook Supernova
A pair of interacting galaxies might be experiencing the galactic equivalent of a mid-life crisis. For some reason, the pair, called Arp 82, didn't make their stars early on as is typical of most galaxies. Instead, they got a second wind later in life -- about 2 billion years ago -- and started pumping out waves of new stars as if they were young again. This picture is a composite captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera with light at wavelength 8 microns shown in red, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer combined 1530 and 2310 Angstroms shown in blue, and the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy Observatory light at 6940 Angstroms shown in green. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ETSU
 
 
Older Galaxy Pair Has Surprisingly Youthful Glow
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Pellerin (STScI)
 
 
Stellar "Infant Mortality" in Spiral Galaxy NGC 1313
This image taken with Hubble Space Telescope depicts bright, blue, newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) - ESA/Hubble Collaboration
 
 
Hubble Observes Infant Stars in Nearby Galaxy
This image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, was made with polarizing filters to show how the dust ejected by the star is distributed in three-dimensional space. The light from the star becomes polarized when it is reflected off the dust. The dust formed around the star and was driven into space. To see the polarized light, astronomers used a polarizing filter, which lets through only light vibrating in one direction and blocks out light vibrating in other directions. Astronomers assembled this picture from separate images taken at three different polarization angles, colored red, green, and blue. NASA, ESA, and R. Humphreys (University of Minnesota)
 
 
Massive Star VY Canis Majoris - Polarized Light
This image taken with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, reveal its complex circumstellar ejecta, with arcs, filaments, and knots of material formed by the massive outflows. This image provided the first evidence that the brightest arcs and knots were created during several outbursts. The random orientations of the arcs also suggested they were produced by localized eruptions from active regions on the star's surface. This is composite picture from separate images taken in blue, green, red, and near-infrared light. NASA, ESA, and R. Humphreys (University of Minnesota)
 
 
Massive Star VY Canis Majoris - Visible Light
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a small field within the Milky Way globular star cluster NGC 6396; the inset image shows a close-up view of a distant elliptical galaxy in the background, revealing more than 100 globular clusters within a galaxy located more than 1 billion light years from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Richer (UBC), J. Kalirai (UCSC)
 
 
NGC 6396
This set of Chandra images shows evidence for a light echo generated by the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, a.k.a. Sagittarius A* (pronounced
 
 
Light Echo at Galactic Center: Chandra Discovers Light Echo from the Milky Way's Black Hole
This is an artist's concept of the birth ring of debris encircling the 12-million-year-old star AU Microscopii. Porous, snowball-sized bodies collide within the birth ring. Stellar winds disperse dust grains away from the star beyond the birth ring to the outer debris disk. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)
 
 
Birth Ring of Debris Around AU Microscopii (AU Mic)
The top view, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows light reflected off dust in a debris disk around the young star AU Microscopii. The bottom frame points out the important features in this image. The image shows the flattened disk, appearing like Saturn's rings, but seen almost exactly edge-on. Normally, starlight would be so bright that the debris disk could not be seen. But astronomers used the coronagraph on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, which blocked out most of the starlight. The black circle in the center of the image is the coronagraph's occulting disk. The disk in this image extends to about 8 billion miles from the star, or three times farther than Neptune is from the Sun. In other observations, the disk has been traced to at least 11 billion miles. The only light seen is starlight reflected off dust in the debris disk. Astronomers used polarizing filters on the Advanced Camera to analyze the dust in the disk. The polarizing filters allowed astronomers to study how dust is reflecting the starlight. A polarizing filter lets through light vibrating in one orientation while blocking light oscillating in other directions. The white lines in the bottom image illustrate the direction a light wave is oscillating. The length of the line represents the degree to which all the light waves are oscillating in the same direction. The astronomers used the polarized light from AU Microscopii's disk to deduce information about the size, shape, and other physical properties of the dust. Astronomers used the polarization study to measure the fluffiness of the dust. The dust is roughly 10 times larger than typical interstellar dust grains, which are about the size of smoke particles. These
 
 
AU Microscopii Debris Disk
 
 
Unwrapping the Pillars
This set of images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Eagle nebula in different hues of infrared light. Each view tells a different tale. The left picture shows lots of stars and dusty structures with clarity. Dusty molecules found on Earth called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons produce most of the red; gas is green and stars are blue. The middle view is packed with drama, because it tells astronomers that a star in this region violently erupted, or went supernova, heating surrounding dust (orange). This view also reveals that the hot dust is shell shaped, another indication that a star exploded. The final picture highlights the contrast between the hot, supernova-heated dust (green) and the cooler dust making up the region's dusty star-forming clouds and towers (red, blue and purple). The left image is a composite of infrared light with the following wavelengths: 3.6 microns (blue); 4.5 microns (green); 5.8 microns (orange); and 8 microns (red). The right image includes longer infrared wavelengths, and is a composite of light of 4.5 to 8.0 microns (blue); 24 microns (green); and 70 microns (red). The middle image is made up solely of 24-micron light. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/N. Flagey (IAS/SSC) & A. Noriega-Crespo (SSC/Caltech)
 
 
Eagle Nebula Flaunts Its Infrared Feathers
 
 
Cosmic Epic Unfolds in Infrared
In the new Chandra Kepler image, red represents low-energy X-rays and shows material around the star -- dominated by oxygen -- that has been heated up by a blast wave from the star's explosion. The yellow color shows slightly higher energy X-rays, mostly iron formed in the supernova, while green (medium-energy X-rays) shows other elements from the exploded star. The blue color represents the highest energy X-rays and shows a shock front generated by the explosion. Credit: NASA/CXC/NCSU/S.Reynolds et al.
 
 
Kepler's Supernova Remnant: A Star's Death Comes to Life
This image shows the area around N90 and is a colour composite made from Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2) exposure. The field of view is 3.1x2.8 degrees. Credits: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble), the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator & Digitized Sky Survey 2
 
 
New stars shed light on the past
This Hubble image image depicts bright blue newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the centre of a fascinating star-forming region known as N90. The high energy radiation blazing out from the hot young stars in N90 is eroding the outer portions of the nebula from the inside, as the diffuse outer reaches of the nebula prevent the energetic outflows from streaming away from the cluster directly. Because N90 is located far from the central body of the Small Magellanic Cloud, numerous background galaxies in this picture can be seen, delivering a grand backdrop for the stellar newcomers. The dust in the region gives these distant galaxies a reddish-brown tint. Credits: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
 
 
New stars shed light on the past
This three-dimensional map, obtained thanks to HST and XMM-Newton data, offers a first look at the web-like large-scale distribution of dark matter, an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the Universe's mass. The map reveals a loose network of dark matter filaments, gradually collapsing under the relentless pull of gravity, and growing clumpier over time. The three axes of the box correspond to sky position (in right ascension and declination), and distance from the Earth increasing from left to right (as measured by cosmological redshift). Note how the clumping of the dark matter becomes more pronounced, moving right to left across the volume map, from the early Universe to the more recent Universe. Credits: NASA, ESA and R. Massey (California Institute of Technology)
 
 
Hubble and XMM-Newton 3D map
This three-dimensional map offers a first look at the web-like large-scale distribution of dark matter, an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the Universe's mass, as mapped with Hubble Space Telescope's largest ever survey of the Universe, the Cosmic Evolution Survey (
 
 
Hubble COSMOS 3D map
This image shows the full COSMOS field at one tenth resolution. COSMOS - the Cosmic Evolution Survey - is the Hubble Space Telescope's largest ever survey of the Universe and was carried out by an international team of 70 astronomers. In making the COSMOS survey, Hubble photographed 575 adjacent and slightly overlapping views of the universe using the Advanced Camera for Surveys' (ACS) Wide Field Camera onboard Hubble. It took nearly 1,000 hours of observations. The distances to the galaxies were determined from their spectral redshifts, using ESO's Very Large Telescope, the Subaru and CFHT telescopes in Hawaii and the Magellan telescope in Chile. At full resolution the image would be 100,800 x 100,800 pixels. The image was taken in hear-infrared light (Hubble's F814W, or I-band, filter). Credits: NASA, ESA and A. Koekemoer (STScI)
 
 
Hubble full COSMOS field
These two false-colour images compare the distribution of normal matter (red, left) with dark matter (blue, right) in the Universe. The brightness of clumps corresponds to the density of mass. The map covers an area of sky nine times the angular diameter of the full Moon, and is the largest sample of the distribution of dark matter ever obtained. It demonstrates how normal matter - including stars, galaxies and gas - is built inside an underlying scaffolding of dark matter. Credits: NASA, ESA and R. Massey (California Institute of Technology)
 
 
Distribution of normal matter (false color)
This composite shows three different components of the Hubble COSMOS survey: The normal matter (in red) determined mainly by the European Space Agency's XMM/Newton telescope, the dark matter (in blue) and the stars and galaxies (in grey) observed in visible light with Hubble. Credits: NASA, ESA and R. Massey (California Institute of Technology)
 
 
Hubble composite COSMOS survey
The Hubble Space Telescope has a narrow field of view, which is only a fraction of the angular diameter of the Moon. Certain research programs have devoted a substantial amount of Hubble observing time to survey comparatively larger areas of sky to address a wide range of galaxy evolution and cosmological questions. This is accomplished by assembling mosaic images taken with Hubble's cameras. These surveys constrain the star formation history of the universe, probing the faintest galaxies and tracking the origin, structure, and merger history of galaxies as they evolve. [Right] – COSMOS. The Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS) is the largest Hubble mosaic of the sky. It covers two square degrees of sky. By comparison, the Earth's moon is one-half degree across. The survey detected over 2 million galaxies spanning 75 percent of the age of the Universe. The field is being imaged by most major space-based and ground-based telescopes. [Left] - Several survey fields are shown for comparison. GEMS Galaxy Evolution from Morphology and Spectral Energy Distributions (GEMS) imaged an area of 900 square minutes of arc on the sky with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. This contiguous field is centred on the Chandra Deep Field South, a deep X-ray telescope survey of the universe. GEMS contains roughly 10,000 galaxies down to a depth of 24th magnitude. GOODS The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) unites extremely deep observations from Hubble with NASA's other space observatories (the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the XMM-Newton telescope), as well as observations by the most powerful ground-based telescopes. GOODS covers a total of roughly 320 square arc minutes. HUDF The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is humankind's farthest view into to the Universe in visible light, uncovering several thousand galaxies down to 31st magnitude. The field of view is one Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys wide field frame. Credits: NASA, ESA and Z. Levay (STScI)
 
 
Hubble (COSMOS, GEMS, GOODS, HUDF)
The large field-of-view is a composite image of DEM L238 (right) and DEM L249, Chandra X-ray data in blue and optical data in white. The inset reveals how DEM L238 appears in the three bands of X-ray emission (low energy X-rays are shown in red, medium energies in green and high energies in blue.) The central region of DEM L238 is green which indicates that it is rich in iron. This overabundance of iron identifies this object as a so-called Type Ia supernova, one possible explosive death of a star. A surprising feature of these images is that the iron in the central regions of DEM L238 and DEM L249 is much denser that in most Type Ia supernovas. The most likely explanation for these results is that the white dwarfs exploded into very dense environments. This implies that the stars which evolved into the white dwarfs were more massive than usual, since such stars expel more gas into their surroundings. These stars would explode in much less time -- about 100 million years -- than the billions of years that astronomers think Type Ias typically require. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NCSU/K.Borkowski; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS
 
 
X-ray Evidence Supports Possible New Class Of Supernova
DEM L238 and DEM L249 are two supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud. X-ray data from NASA\'s Chandra and ESA\'s XMM-Newton observatories suggest that the stars responsible for these debris fields were unusually young when they were destroyed by thermonuclear explosions. The large field-of-view is a composite image of DEM L238 and DEM L249, Chandra X-ray data in blue and optical data in white. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NCSU/K.Borkowski; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS)
 
 
Chandra X-ray and MCELS Optical Image of DEM L238 and DEM L249
DEM L238 and DEM L249 are two supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud. X-ray data from NASA\'s Chandra and ESA\'s XMM-Newton observatories suggest that the stars responsible for these debris fields were unusually young when they were destroyed by thermonuclear explosions. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NCSU/K.Borkowski; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS)
 
 
MCELS Optical Image of DEM L238 and DEM L249
This Chandra image reveals how DEM L238 appears in the three bands of X-ray emission (low energy X-rays are shown in red, medium energies in green and high energies in blue.) The central region of DEM L238 is green which indicates that it is rich in iron. This overabundance of iron identifies this object as a so-called Type Ia supernova, one possible explosive death of a star. (Credit: NASA/CXC/NCSU/K.Borkowski)
 
 
Chandra X-ray image of DEM L238
This 4-panel compares the Chandra image of DEM L238 with the Chandra image of 3 Type Ia supernova remnants located in the Milky Way. The X-ray emission for Kepler\'s remnant contains a bright central region similar to DEM L238, while the X-ray emission for Tycho\'s remnant and SN 1006 are generally much more uniform. These results suggest that the stars that exploded and caused the DEM L238 and Kepler supernova remnants were much younger than the stars that produced the Tycho and SN 1006 remnants. (Credit: NASA/CXC)
 
 
Comparison of Type Ia Supernovas
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