If you are looking for some images for the upcoming Fourth of July celebrations, then this week’s pic will give you everything you need. The red, white, and blue of these images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory should put you in the right spirit.
The images from the top clockwise are Cassiopeia A, the ZwCl 0024+1652 galaxy cluster, spiral galaxy NGC 4736, and nebula NGC 3603. You can learn more about each of these images at this NASA site.
Happy Fourth of July!
This week’s image is from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope. It shows the center of the Milky Way Galaxy with its more than 60 million stars.
Here is more from ESA pertaining to what you are seeing above:
The galactic bulge – the central region of our galaxy – is a vast, tightly packed structure filled mainly with old, cooler stars, giving it its characteristic yellow colour. Seen from some 26 000 light-years away, Euclid observes the galaxy’s centre through a complex foreground of material along its line of sight.
This ultra-wide view towards the bulge reveals not only stars, but also seemingly empty dark regions. The dark patches are not devoid of stars: they mark dense, dust-rich molecular clouds that absorb and scatter light from the bulge behind them. As Euclid looks through two of the Milky Way’s spiral arms, it also encounters regions of active star formation, traced by newly formed, massive blue stars. Their intense ultraviolet radiation ionises surrounding hydrogen gas, producing the faint red glow clearly visible in one of the cutouts.
The image below provides more context about the location of the image shown above. Go to this link for more information on the Euclid’s survey.
This week’s image is from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It shows galaxy Messier 83 (M83), which is located approximately 15 million light-years from Earth. It is part of a study analyzing Chandra data from 2000 to 2014.
NASA provides more information on a recent study involving supernova remnants being studied by astronomers:
In the composite image, Messier 83, or M83, is shown to have a spiral structure, viewed straight on. At the center is a brilliant white and yellow pool of light. From that light, spiral arms of hot pink cloud corkscrew out in wide, sweeping arches. The galaxy is covered in a faint grey haze, and flecked with red, green, blue, white, and yellow dots.
Over a 14-year period from 2000 to 2014, astronomers pointed NASA’s X-ray observatory at the M83 galaxy. They discovered that about half of the X-ray sources believed to be supernova remnants, the aftermath of stellar explosions, were exhibiting dramatic changes in brightness. This result was entirely unexpected.
Those changes in brightness are highlighted in the timelapse videos. In each video, a series of static images flashes by, focused on one of the two X-ray sources once believed to be supernova remnants. In the videos, the X-ray sources appear as bright blue blobs with glowing cores. But in each image, taken months or years apart, the shapes change, as does the intensity of the blue color, and the brightness of the core. By presenting the substantively different images of the same objects one after another in quick succession, short timelapse videos are created.
The most likely explanation for the changes in brightness is that the team has uncovered a population of stellar survivors, stars that lived through an orbiting partner’s destruction in a supernova explosion. Material is being pulled from the surviving star onto the black hole or neutron star that formed in the supernova, a process known to cause rapid changes in X-ray brightness.
Go to the NASA link for images of two supernova remnants within galaxy M83.
This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the dwarf irregular galaxy ESO 490-017 as a mist of stars in the upper center of the image (hence the term “irregular”). The galaxy is about 23 million light-years away and only 12,000 light years across, compared to the 100,000 light-year diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy. If you look carefully, you can spot a variety of regular galaxies in the background that blend in with the stars in the foreground.
This week’s image of Saturn comes from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited the planet for 13 years. Even after seeing so many images of Saturn, the spacecraft continued to surprise us with new and unique views.
Here is a little more about the image from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day:
Telescopic views of Saturn and its beautiful rings often make it the star of star parties. But this stunning view of the outer gas gaint planet’s rings and night side just isn’t possible from telescopes in the vicinity of planet Earth. Peering out from the inner Solar System they can only bring Saturn’s day side into view. In fact, this image of Saturn’s slender sunlit crescent with the planet’s night shadow cast across its broad and complex ring system was captured by the robot spacecraft Cassini. After a seven year long journey from planet Earth, Cassini called Saturn orbit home for 13 years (from 2004 – 2017) before it was directed to dive into the atmosphere of the gas giant on September 15, 2017. This magnificent mosaic is composed of frames recorded by Cassini’s wide-angle camera only two days before its grand final plunge. And Saturn’s night will not be seen again until another spaceship from Earth calls.
Our Awesome Universe 