Pic of the Week: Colorful IC 348

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): IC 348 as captured by NASA’s JWST recently observed IC 348. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb))

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). With its sharp, amazing colors you would not think it is real, yet you are looking at a star-forming region about 1,000 light-years away called IC 348.

Here is NASA’s description of what you are seeing:

In regions like IC 348, cold clouds of molecular hydrogen gas collapse to form new stars, creating glowing, sculpted scenes like this one. The star-formation process can create widely varied objects, from massive stars that expire after only a few million years in core-collapse supernova explosions to the smallest and most common stars, which are long lived and produce powerful stellar storms.The smallest stars weigh in at around 8 percent of the Sun’s mass. Below this mass lies a strange class of objects called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs form in the same way stars do, through the collapse of molecular clouds. However, unlike stars, the cores of brown dwarfs never become hot enough to fuse ordinary hydrogen into helium (though many briefly fuse deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, early in their lives).

Pic of the Week: 2026 Astronomy Photographer of the Year Winner

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): “The Quiet Predator” by Ali Alobaidly.

This week’s image is the winning entry in the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2026 contest at the Royal Museums Greenwich. The photo of the Shark Nebula is titled “The Quiet Predator,” and it was submitted by Ali Alobaidly.

Here is how Ali Alobaidly describes his photo:

 The Shark Nebula (LDN 1235) prowls 650 light years away in the constellation Cepheus, its silhouette carved not from flesh and teeth, but from interstellar dust dense enough to block starlight.

This predator drifts silently through space, camouflaged against the faint glow of the background stars, lit only by nearby blue-coloured reflection nebulae.

Unlike its oceanic cousins, the Shark Nebula doesn’t bite, but it does photobomb astrophotographers with a molecular cloud big enough to make Earth look like a speck of plankton.

You can see the other winning and shortlisted images at the main site.

Pic of the Week: The Black Eye Galaxy

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Composite image of Messier 64 (M64) from the JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, CSA, ESA, F. Belfiore (ESO), J. Lee (STScI), A. Leroy (OSU), and D. Thilker (JHU); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University))

This week’s image is from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. It is a composite image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope showing Messier 64 (M64), which is a spiral galaxy about 17 million light-years away.

Here is a little more information from NASA explaining what you are seeing here:

Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it absorbs and re-emits light from surrounding newborn stars. These young stars are embedded in pink star-forming regions in the secondary Hubble-only image. M64’s inner and outer gas regions counter-rotate, creating regions of increased star formation where the two gas “currents” meet and compress. A merger between M64 and a smaller galaxy was likely the cause of the opposing motion of the outer gas. Spiral galaxies were once thought to have peaceful histories. M64 was key evidence that spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way, can and do experience mergers. Webb’s view of M64 will tell astronomers about the structure, motion, and composition of the galaxy’s dust and add context to the galaxy’s merger history and evolution.

Pic of the Week: The Jodrell Bank Lovell Radio Telescope

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Image (Credit): The Jodrell Bank Lovell Radio Telescope, near Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. (https://www.e-merlin.ac.uk/)

The image above shows the Jodrell Bank Lovell Radio Telescope located in England. The Brits plan to shut this telescope down in 2028 as part of budget cuts.

First commissioned in 1957, parts of the telescope came from the World War 1 decommissioned battleships HMS Revenge and HMS Royal Sovereign. In 2019, the telescope was awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

The BBC noted that the Jodrell Bank Lovell Radio Telescope was the only facility in the Western World able to track Sputnik in 1957. Among many other accomplishments, it was also instrumental in confirming the existence of pulsars as well as proving Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Pic of the Week: A Halloween Preview – N44

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA/Hubble, D. Gouliermis)

Talk about eerie. This week’s image is from the NASA/European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble Space telescope. The ghostly image shows nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44, which is about 160,000 light-years away. It is within the Large Magellanic Cloud that orbits our galaxy.

Here is more from NASA describing what you are seeing:

N44 is dominated by two features: a vast central void and a shell of dense, dusty gas. The central void is a ‘superbubble’ spanning roughly 210 by 140 light-years across. The glittering stars at the center of the void are responsible for its creation; through their powerful stellar winds and explosive supernovae, these stars expelled much of the gas from which they were born.

When the stars of N44’s central star cluster swept away this gas, the expelled gas compressed and formed a shell around the superbubble. New stars are forming in this compressed gas shell, making N44 an interesting target for astronomers who are using the nebula to study how stars form in this environment. Their goal is to understand how long it takes from the collapse of cold gas clouds into dense knots to the moment nuclear fusion ignites in the heart of a newborn star.