Pic of the Week: Super Star Cluster Westerlund 1

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Super star cluster Westerlund 1. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), M. G. Guarcello (INAF-OAPA) and the EWOCS team)

This week’s image from the James Webb Space Telescope was released late last year. It shows Westerlund 1, a colorful “super star” cluster.  

Here is the description of what you are seeing from NASA:

Super star clusters are young and contain more than 10,000 times the mass of the Sun packed into a small volume. Westerlund 1 is the most massive yet identified in our galaxy, with 50,000 to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun contained within a region less than six light-years across. Still considered an open cluster now, someday it will evolve into a globular cluster – a roughly spherical, tightly packed collection of old stars bound together by gravity.

Super star clusters are one of the most extreme environments in which stars and planets can form. Because our galaxy is past its peak of star formation, and because stars live relatively short lives, only a few of these clusters still exist to give us clues to that past era.

Westerlund 1 has a large, dense, and diverse population of evolved, massive stars. It contains so many massive stars that in a timespan of less than 40 million years, it’ll be the site of more than 1500 supernovas. This cluster is a natural laboratory for the study of extreme stellar physics, helping us learn how the most massive stars in our galaxy live and die, and how stellar winds, supernovae, and other ejected material affect star formation within their environment.

Pic of the Week: 30 Doradus for Valentine’s Day

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Composite image of 30 Doradus. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; Infrared: NASA/JPL-CalTech/SST; Optical: NASA/STScI/HST; Radio: ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, N. Wolk, K. Arcand)

Yes, NASA has an image ready for Valentine’s Day. This image comes from three sources – the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

Here is more from NASA (and even more can be found at the linked site):

Otherwise known as the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Dor is located about 160,000 light-years away in a small neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because it one of the brightest and populated star-forming regions to Earth, 30 Dor is a frequent target for scientists trying to learn more about how stars are born.

With enough fuel to have powered the manufacturing of stars for at least 25 million years, 30 Dor is the most powerful stellar nursery in the local group of galaxies that includes the Milky Way, the LMC, and the Andromeda galaxy.

The massive young stars in 30 Dor send cosmically strong winds out into space. Along with the matter and energy ejected by stars that have previously exploded, these winds have carved out an eye-catching display of arcs, pillars, and bubbles.

A dense cluster in the center of 30 Dor contains the most massive stars astronomers have ever found, each only about one to two million years old. (Our Sun is over a thousand times older with an age of about 5 billion years.)

Pic of the Week: The Sombrero Galaxy

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Messier 104 (M104) captured by the JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

This week’s image, released late last year, comes from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Messier 104 (M104), called the Sombrero galaxy, shines in all its blueness. It is about 31 million light-years away. It would have been interesting to see this galaxy from above (or below, for that matter).

Here is more about the galaxy from NASA:

In Webb’s mid-infrared view of the Sombrero galaxy, also known as Messier 104 (M104), the signature, glowing core seen in visible-light images does not shine, and instead a smooth inner disk is revealed. The sharp resolution of Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) also brings into focus details of the galaxy’s outer ring, providing insights into how the dust, an essential building block for astronomical objects in the universe, is distributed. The galaxy’s outer ring, which appeared smooth like a blanket in imaging from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, shows intricate clumps in the infrared for the first time.

Note: Below is another view of the galaxy from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Image (Credit): Messier 104 (M104) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. (This image was created from data from HST program 9714: K. Noll, H. Bond, C. Christian, L. Frattare, F. Hamilton, Z. Levay, and T. Royle (STScI)).

Pic of the Week: Jupiter’s Swirling Polar Region

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Jupiter’s north polar region. (Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Brian Swift © CC BY)

This week’s image comes from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which captured these images of Jupiter’s north polar region. The spacecraft came within 6,800 miles of the clouds you see.

Launched in August 2011, the Juno spacecraft has been studying Jupiter since 2016 to better understand the origin and evolution of the planet.

You can learn more about the Juno mission here.

Pic of the Week: The Glow of Cassiopeia A

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Image (Credit): Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. (NASA/CXC/SAO (x-ray); NASA/ESA/STScI (optical); NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/D. Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/Caltech (infrared); NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand (image processing))

This week’s image was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and highlighted in Scientific American magazine. It shows a colorful supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A, which is about 350 light-years away.

The magazine article notes:

The recent photographs are helping scientists answer some of their most pressing questions about supernovae, such as which types of stars explode in which ways and how exactly those outbursts unfold. “There is a lot of complicated but beautiful physics in understanding how this explosion takes place,” says Purdue University astronomer Danny Milisavljevic, who led the team behind the JWST images…

Astronomers will keep studying Cassiopeia A, although their success makes them eager to turn JWST’s eyes toward some of the other roughly 400 identified supernova remnants in our galaxy. Getting a larger sample will help researchers connect differences in how remnants look and evolve to differences among the stars that produced them.