Official Space is Awesome Thread

[stryper]

Probably my favorite all-time thread...awesome finds Argonne!

[Argonne69]

The central portion of star cluster RCW 38. Located 5,500 light-years from Earth, the area is littered with young, hot, massive stars that will live fast and die young. Many will very likely explode as supernovae. The image was taken with the HAWK-I infrared imager, allowing it to peer through the dusty cluster. The radiation emitted from the young stars causes the surrounding gas to glow blue.

 

 

Image: ESO/K. Muzic

 

Here is the same cluster seen in optical wavelengths.

 

 

Image: ESO

[Argonne69]

A wee bit of a dust storm on the Red planet.

 

[Argonne69]

Latest images of Saturn's moon Titan.

 

 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Nantes/University of Arizona

[Argonne69]

Due North

 

 

Image: Jake Mosher

[Argonne69]

NGC 6726 and NGC 6727

 

 

Image: Mark Hanson, Warren Keller, Steve Mazlin, Rex Parker, Tommy Tse, David Plesko, Pete Proulx

[Argonne69]

Earth-based telescopes using adaptive optics are getting very good at correcting atmospheric distortion.

 

 

Image: ESO/P. Weilbacher (AIP)/NASA, ESA, and M.H. Wong and J. Tollefson (UC Berkeley)

[Argonne69]

Based on the latest estimates the universe contains between one and two trillion galaxies. Previous estimates pegged the number at several hundred billion. The number of stars in the universe is approximately 700 sextillion. That's a seven followed by 23 zeros.

 

This photo was taken in a starless portion of the northern sky. Every point of light is a distant galaxy in the Coma cluster.

 

 

Image: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE; M. W. L. Smith et al 2017

[i*windows]

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1825/?lang

[Argonne69]

Saturn's northern aurora.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, and L. Lamy

[Argonne69]

The Veil Nebula

 

 

Image: Steve Milne and Barry Wilson

[Argonne69]

The edge on view of spiral galaxy NGC 3628

 

 

Image: P. Gardner, Great Basin Observatory

[Argonne69]

RS Pup, a Cepheid type variable star, surrounded by a reflection nebula

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team

[Argonne69]

Galaxy AM 0644-741, a ring galaxy.

 

 

Image: NASA, CXC, INAF, A. Wolter

[Argonne69]

A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)

 

 

Image: NASA

[Argonne69]

The Soul Nebula (IC 1898)

 

 

Image: Jesus M Vargas and Maritxu Poyal

[Argonne69]

Cocoon Nebula Deep Field

 

 

Image: Marcel Drechsler

[Argonne69]

Corona Australis

 

 

Image: Josep Drudis

[Argonne69]

Our Sun.

 

 

Image: Alan Friedman

[radiman]

Awesome images.

[Argonne69]

The launch of a Delta IV heavy rocket carrying the Parker Solar Probe from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A flash from a Perseid meteor is also visible.

 

 

Image: Derek Demeter (Emil Buehler Planetarium)

[Argonne69]

The Pencil Nebula

 

 

Image: Jose Joaquin Perez

[Argonne69]

The first rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, a Bumper V-2 (1950).

 

 

Image: NASA

[Argonne69]

Neutron star (blue dot) in Supernova Remnant E0102-72.3

 

 

Image: NASA/CXC/ESO/F. Vogt/VLT/MUSE

[Argonne69]

A Perseid meteor photobombs the Andromeda galaxy. The sand-sized rock took only a fraction of a second to pass through the 10 degree field.

 

 

Image: Fritz Helmut Hemmerich

[Argonne69]

NGC 1898, a globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The light leaving these stars takes ~160,000 years to reach our eyes.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble, NASA

[Argonne69]

Spiral galaxy NGC 6744. It's 175,000 light years wide, roughly 75% larger than our own Milky Way. It lies 30 million light years away in the southern constellation Pavo.

 

 

Image: Martin Pugh

[vaca22]

Argonne, did I read or see somewhere that the Milky Way and some other galaxy are hurtling toward each other at like 300k mph? I thought I saw a picture. But I'm wondering how that picture was taken!

[Argonne69]

Argonne, did I read or see somewhere that the Milky Way and some other galaxy are hurtling toward each other at like 300k mph? I thought I saw a picture. But I'm wondering how that picture was taken!

 

The Milky Way and Andromeda are on a collision course, and will merge in ~4 billion years, forming Milkomeda. They're moving at ~110 kph towards each other. At that point any life in the galaxy will have a brilliant fireworks display as the gas in the two galaxies collide. It's highly unlikely that any of the hundreds of billions of stars in the two galaxies will collide given the vast distances between them. Eventually the two black holes at the center of each will merge after circling each other for quite some time.

 

Over its lifetime of 13.5 billion years, the Milky Way has collided with numerous smaller galaxies.

 

Any photo of the Milky Way is a computer generated image. Since we're inside the galaxy, we can't get a "bird's eye" view of the entire galaxy. It's like standing in a forest, and trying to see the entire forest from above. It's also possible you saw a photo of two distant galaxies colliding that was used as an example of what the Milky Way/Andromeda collision will look like in the distant future.

[bogeypro]

any of you folks work for nasa?