Image (Credit): Chinese photographers’ entry “Cosmic Neighbours: Beauty and the Beast.”(Yijing Zhu and Xinghan Yang)
This week’s image is from another finalist in the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s annual ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. The photo is labeled “Cosmic Neighbours: Beauty and the Beast” by photographers Yijing Zhu and Xinghan Yang. It was taken in Ürümqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China.
Here is a description of the photo from the photographers:
This image captures a dramatic cosmic pairing: the serene elegance of Bode’s Galaxy (M81, left) alongside the chaotic violence of the Cigar Galaxy (M82, right). Located about 12 million light years from Earth, these two neighbours are locked in a gravitational dance that has shaped their destinies profoundly. M81 retains its perfect grand design spiral form, a picture of galactic grace.
In stark contrast, M82 is a starburst galaxy, reeling from a close encounter with its larger companion. This gravitational disturbance has triggered a furious burst of star formation at its core, which blasts into space spectacular red filaments of superheated hydrogen gas that are clearly visible in this deep exposure.
Image (Credit): Images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that provide a red, white, and blue version of the universe. (NASA/CXC/SAO)
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.
Image (Credit): Image of our Milky Way galaxy’s center in visible light taken on March 23, 2025 by ESA’s Euclid space telescope. (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay))
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.
Image (Credit): Location of Euclid’s galactic bulge survey. (ESA)
Image (Credit): Galaxy M83 shown in both X-ray and Optical Light. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/AURA/STScI, Hubble Heritage Team, W. Blair (STScI/Johns Hopkins University) and R. O’Connell (University of Virginia); Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Jubett, L. Frattare and P. Edmonds)
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.
Image (Credit): Image of the dwarf irregular glaxy ESO 490-017 (top center) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, R. Tully (University of Hawaii); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))
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.
