Starship Asterisk*

starsurfer wrote:NGC 474
http://www.martinpughastrophotography.id.au
Copyright: Martin Pugh

NGC474.jpg

NGC 474 is the large shell elliptical galaxy. The spiral galaxy to the left of it is NGC 470 and the galaxy with tidal plumes is NGC 467.

[img3="Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast)"]http://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/ ... w1548a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

Like a lighthouse in the fog the luminous core of NGC 2768 slowly fades outwards to a dull white haze in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

NGC 2768 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). It is a huge bundle of stars, dominated by a bright central region, where a supermassive black hole feasts on a constant stream of gas and dust being fed to it by its galactic host.

The galaxy is also marked by a prominent plume of dust reaching out from the centre and lying perpendicular to the galaxy’s plane. This dust conceals a symmetrical, s-shaped pair of jets that are being produced by the supermassive black hole as it feeds.

[img3="Credit: ESO/Babak Tafreshi"]http://cdn.eso.org/images/screen/potw1548a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

In this wonderful high definition, singe-exposure image taken during the ESO Ultra HD Expedition, three deep sky objects seem to shine in front of the dish of one of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) high-precision antennas.

The most striking feature is the reddish Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372. It is a large cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, in which star formation has recently taken place. The short-lived massive blue stars forged within the nebula emit copious amounts of ultraviolet radiation, which then ionises the surrounding gas and causes the hydrogen atoms to glow with a characteristic red colour. Eventually supernova explosions and strong stellar winds from the most massive stars will disperse the gas of the Carina Nebula, leaving behind one or more clusters of stars.

Two such star clusters, known as NGC 3532 and IC 2602, can be seen respectively to the top right and top left of the Carina Nebula in this image.

The three celestial objects belong to the constellation of Carina (The Keel) and were first catalogued by the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille. They look close to one another in this image, but actually their distances from us are very different. IC 2602 lies less than 500 light-years from Earth, NGC 3532 is around 1300 light-years away and the Carina Nebula is thought to lie up to 10 000 light-years away.

bystander wrote:The Last Waltz
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2015 Nov 23

[img3="Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.com)"]http://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/ ... w1547a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr][c]https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/9627056154/[/c]

This curious galaxy — only known by the seemingly random jumble of letters and numbers 2MASX J16270254+4328340 — has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope dancing the crazed dance of a galactic merger. The galaxy has merged with another galaxy leaving a fine mist, made of millions of stars, spewing from it in long trails.

Despite the apparent chaos, this snapshot of the gravitational tango was captured towards the event’s conclusion. This transforming galaxy is heading into old age with its star-forming days coming to an end. The true drama occurred earlier in the process, when the various clouds of gas within the two galaxies were so disturbed by the event that they collapsed, triggering an eruption of star formation. This flurry of activity exhausted the vast majority of the galactic gas, leaving the galaxy sterile and unable to produce new stars.

As the violence continues to subside, the newly formed galaxy’s population of stars will redden with age and eventually begin drop off one by one. With no future generations of stars to take their place, the galaxy thus begins a steady descent towards death.

[img3="Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.com)"]http://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/ ... w1547a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr][c]https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/9627056154/[/c]

This curious galaxy — only known by the seemingly random jumble of letters and numbers 2MASX J16270254+4328340 — has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope dancing the crazed dance of a galactic merger. The galaxy has merged with another galaxy leaving a fine mist, made of millions of stars, spewing from it in long trails.

Despite the apparent chaos, this snapshot of the gravitational tango was captured towards the event’s conclusion. This transforming galaxy is heading into old age with its star-forming days coming to an end. The true drama occurred earlier in the process, when the various clouds of gas within the two galaxies were so disturbed by the event that they collapsed, triggering an eruption of star formation. This flurry of activity exhausted the vast majority of the galactic gas, leaving the galaxy sterile and unable to produce new stars.

As the violence continues to subside, the newly formed galaxy’s population of stars will redden with age and eventually begin drop off one by one. With no future generations of stars to take their place, the galaxy thus begins a steady descent towards death.

[c][attachment=0]potw1547a[1].jpg[/attachment][/c][hr][/hr]

This image shows one of the four Unit Telescopes that make up ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal. Each of the 8.2-metre telescopes was given a name in the Mapuche language spoken by indigenous people from the Southern Chile. The Unit Telescope in this image is called Yepun, which means Venus.

The smaller telescope beside Yepun is one of four Auxiliary Telescopes that have a diameter of 1.8 metres. These can be combined with the Unit Telescopes to make the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

Yepun is equipped with the Laser Guide Star Facility that is caught in action in this picture. The laser beam’s colour is precisely tuned to energise a layer of sodium atoms in the atmosphere which creates a small bright spot — an artificial star. This star can be used as a reference to work out how much the atmosphere is distorting the light from actual stars — a process called adaptive optics — which helps to develop clear images.

Above Yepun you can see part of the Milky Way galaxy stretching across the southern sky. The brighter regions on the lower right correspond to the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud — two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.

Ann wrote:

starsurfer wrote:

Ann wrote: Adam Block has posted two new galaxy images, NGC 6118 and NGC 918.

Full size images can be seen at caelumobservatory.com.

Ann

I saw these a few days ago and they're amazing! Also congratulations on including images in a post!

However you haven't included my favourite, which is a new version of Arp 104, Keenan's System!

Here is Keenan's System.

The most remarkable aspect of this interacting pair is the "thread" connecting them. But to me, the most noteworthy thing is that the galaxy at top, NGC 5218, has recently (say, a billion years ago) undergone a tremendous burst of star formation that likely drove most of the starforming gas out of the galaxy. (Tidal forces caused by its interaction with elliptical NGC 5216 also helped driving out gas from NGC 5218.) Therefore NGC 5218 has a rich, brilliant, smoothly distributed population of stars of spectral class A (and possibly late B), a spectacular remnant of its past starburst, but hardly any O-stars any more. NGC 5218 is likely in transition into into a "red and dead", elliptical galaxy.

Full resolution of the image can be seen here.

Ann

starsurfer wrote:

Ann wrote: Adam Block has posted two new galaxy images, NGC 6118 and NGC 918.

Full size images can be seen at caelumobservatory.com.

Ann

I saw these a few days ago and they're amazing! Also congratulations on including images in a post!

However you haven't included my favourite, which is a new version of Arp 104, Keenan's System!

Ann wrote: Adam Block has posted two new galaxy images, NGC 6118 and NGC 918.

Full size images can be seen at caelumobservatory.com.

Ann