The subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the stunning spiral galaxy NGC 5530. This galaxy is situated 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus, the Wolf, and classified as a ‘flocculent’ spiral, meaning its spiral arms are patchy and indistinct. While some galaxies have extraordinarily bright centers that host a feasting … Read more
Astrophysics observations at ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths often probe the most dynamic aspects of the universe. However, the high energy of ultraviolet photons means that their interaction with the materials that make up an observing instrument are less efficient, resulting in low overall throughput. New approaches in the development of thin film coatings are addressing this … Read more
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has returned to Wānaka, New Zealand, for two scheduled flights to test and qualify the agency’s super pressure balloon technology. These stadium-sized, heavy-lift balloons will travel the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes for planned missions of 100 days or more. Launch operations are scheduled to begin in late March from Wānaka Airport, NASA’s … Read more
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sparkling spiral galaxy paired with a prominent star, both in the constellation Virgo. While the galaxy and the star appear to be close to one another, even overlapping, they’re actually a great distance apart. The star, marked with four long diffraction spikes, is in our own galaxy. … Read more
A tiny fraction of the stellar nursery known as Sh2-284 is visible in this glittering, star-filled NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. This immense region of gas and dust is the birthing place of stars, which shine among the clouds. Bright clusters of newborn stars glow pink in infrared light, and clouds of gas and dust, … Read more
Arp 105 is a dazzling ongoing merger between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy drawn together by gravity, characterized by a long, drawn out tidal tail of stars and gas more than 362,000 light-years long. The immense tail, which extends beyond this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, was pulled from the two galaxies … Read more
Sweeping spiral arms extend from NGC 4536, littered with bright blue clusters of star formation and red clumps of hydrogen gas shining among dark lanes of dust. The galaxy’s shape may seem a little unusual, and that’s because it’s what’s known as an “intermediate galaxy”: not quite a barred spiral, but not exactly an unbarred … Read more
An open cluster of stars shines through misty, cocoon-like gas clouds in this Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 460. NGC 460 is located in a region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. This particular region contains a number of young star clusters and nebulae of different sizes … Read more
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a vibrant spiral galaxy called NGC 5042 resides about 48 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (the water snake). The galaxy nicely fills the frame of this Hubble image, while a single, foreground star from the Milky Way shines with cross-shaped diffraction spikes near the galaxy’s … Read more
A “classification” is when a volunteer or citizen scientist finishes marking up or sorting one image or other piece of data. Each classification done by volunteers for the Redshift Wrangler project tells us something about the distance and age of a far-away galaxy, bringing us one step closer to understanding how galaxies evolve. These volunteers … Read more