Brilliant but Solitary Superstar
An extraordinarily bright isolated star has been found in a nearby galaxy — the star is three million times brighter than the Sun. All previous similar “superstars” were found in star clusters, but this brilliant beacon shines in solitary splendor.
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Celestial fireworks from dying stars
This picture of the star formation region NGC 3582 was taken using the Wide Field Imager at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The image reveals giant loops of gas ejected by dying stars that bear a striking resemblance to solar prominences.
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Red Square Nebula
What could cause a nebula to appear square? No one is quite sure. The hot star system known as MWC 922, however, appears to be embedded in a nebula with just such a shape. The above image combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar in California, and the Keck-2 Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
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Ghost like planetary nebula
The nearly perfect spherical nature of Abell 39, about 7000 light years away, is a ghostly remnant of a Sun-like star and one of the largest existing spheres in the Milky Way.
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Hourglass Nebula
With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a Sun-like star’s life occurs as its outer layers are ejected – its core becoming a cooling, fading white dwarf.
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Thousands new stars from the Spitzer Space Telescope
Thousands of young stars come to the fore in in this beautiful new image from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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van Gogh’s starry night scavenger hunt
The featured picture may appear at first glance to be a faithful digital reproduction of the original Starry Night, actually it is a modern rendition meant not only to honor one of the most famous paintings of the second millennium, but to act as a scavenger hunt.
Carina Nebula from Hubble (for his 20th anniversary)
The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble‘s launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
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Crab Nebula’s Violent Outbursts
Astronomers consider the Crab Nebula one of the steadiest sources of high-energy radiation in the universe. Radiation from the supernova remnant is believed to be so constant that astronomers use it as a standard candle with which to measure the energetic radiation of other astronomical sources. Image: A composite photograph of the Crab Nebula showing X-ray light (light blue), visible light (green and dark blue) and infrared light (red). Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, JPL-Caltech, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State Univ.), R. Gehrz (Univ. Minn.), and STScI
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NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus. Sometimes called the Iris Nebula and dutifully cataloged as NGC 7023, this is not the only nebula in the sky to evoke the imagery of flowers.
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