Official Space is Awesome Thread

[Argonne69]

Glad to hear that NASA was able to bring Hubble Space Telescope back online after being in safe mode for a month. The Hubble team switched to a backup Power Control Unit, which provides power to the payload computer. 

 

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NGC 4303 as seen with MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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NGC 3627 as seen with MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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Pleiades, aka the Seven Sisters (M45).

 

 

Image: Royal Observatory Greenwich/Jashanpreet Singh Dingra

 

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NGC 1087 as seen with MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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The M57 nubula, aka "The Rose".

 

 

Image: Royal Observatory Greenwich/Josep Drudis

 

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NGC 4303 as seen with MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

 

 

Image: ESO

 

[Argonne69]

The NGC 6188 nebula. [Click to enlarge]

 

 

Image: Royal Observatory Greenwich/Jean-Claude Canonne, Didier Chaplain, Georges Chassaigne, Philippe Bernhard, Laurent Bourgon and Nicolas Outters

 

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NGC 4254 as seen with MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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The Sun as seen through 3 different wavelengths.

 

 

Image: Royal Observatory Greenwich/Hassan Hatami

 

 

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NGC 3627 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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NGC 1087 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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NGC 1300 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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A small section of the Cygnus supernova blast wave. The blast, which is ~2,400 light-years away, was from a supernova explosion that tore apart a dying star 20 times more massive than our Sun between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.
 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Blair; CC BY 4.0; Acknowledgement: Leo Shatz)

 

[Argonne69]

A "cosmic tail" emerging from the spiral galaxy D100 taken by combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Cramer et al.; CC BY 4.0

 

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The "space butterfly", planetary nebula NGC 2899. The nebula stretches out to a maximum of 2 light-years from its center.

 

 

Image: ESO

 

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G292.0+1.8, a young remnant from a supernova that scientists believe has a pulsar (a magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits electromagnetic radiation) at its center. The shell of the supernova is ~36 light-years across.

 

 

Image: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Hughes et al.

 

[Argonne69]

The dwarf elliptical galaxy PGC 29388 is relatively small, containing ~100 billion stars. Lol. Small. What's interesting about the photo is that the lights in the background are not stars, but distant galaxies. It's estimated that there may be up to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Armandroff

 

 

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NGC 1385 in the constellation Fornax is 68 million light-years away. NASA describes the galaxy as "jewel-bright".

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

 

 

 

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Hubble captures a fairly rare Einstein ring, i.e. gravitational lensing. Two galaxies in the foreground act as a lens by bending the light coming from two distant galaxies and a quasar.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Treu | Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt

 

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Spiral galaxy NGC 7513 is located 60 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation. It is moving away from us at 972 miles (1,565 km) per second.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Stiavelli

 

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Hurricane Ida taken from the ISS. Observing and predicting weather has been an important function of the space program since the early days. The ability to track hurricanes has saved countless lives.

 

 

Image: ESA

 

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HH111, a Herbig-Haro object, is located ~1,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. Herbig-Haro objects are young stars that blast twin superheated jets of ionized gas from their poles through surrounding bodies of dust and gas. HH objects are difficult to observe because the surrounding dust and gas absorb much of the visible light. This photo combines both optical and infrared (heat) wavelengths of light.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini

 

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Spiral galaxy NGC 2608 gets "photobombed" by two starts inside our Milky Way (One in the center, and the other in the lower right). Bright stars in our galaxy in the foreground often appear as lens flares. The other specks of light are not stars in our galaxy, but rather thousands of distant galaxies.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble/NASA/A. Riess et al.

 

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Star cluster Westerlund 2 is filled with young stars surrounded by dense clouds of dust that are in the process of forming planets. The stars in the center lack the dust, and will not have planets.

 

 

Image: ESA/NASA/Hubble Heritage Team/STScI

 

 

 

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Arp 195, a trio of galaxies tugging back and forth with each other using gravitational forces.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton

 

[driverwedge]

Amazing stuff as usual, Argonne!  Thanks!

[Argonne69]

City lights on Earth "battle it out" with the light from distant stars in this photo taken by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet from the ISS' cupola. The orange band is the emission of sodium atoms ~55 miles above the Earth's surface.

 

 

Image: ESA/NASA, T. Pesquet

 

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Another beauty taken from the ISS. This one by NASA astronaut Meghan McArthur shows Italy at night.

 

 

Image: NASA/M. McArthur

 

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Hubble captures the NGC 6717 globular cluster. It is located 23,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. Globular clusters contain more stars in their centers than in the outer fringes. They can contain hundreds of thousands, or even millions of stars.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Sarajedini