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Stars and Star Clusters
City of Stars - 47 Tucanae  This image shows the Hubble telescope's close-up look at a swarm of 35, 000 stars near the cluster's central region. The stars are tightly packed together: They are much closer together than our Sun and its closest stars. Comet Borrelly Nucleus Found to the Side  Deep Space 1 flew by comet Borrelly on September 22, 2001 and took these measurements with its plasma instruments between 90,000 kilometers (56,000 miles) and 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away. These data show that the flow of ions around the comet's rocky, icy nucleus (the center of the deep V-shaped feature) is not centered on the comet's nucleus as scientists expected before the Borrelly flyby. Ions in the turbulent flow are heated to about 1 million Kelvin (2 million degrees Fahrenheit) causing the bands of ions to appear broad and jagged compared to the solar wind. Distant Supernova - Before Outburst  
Supernova 1994D in Galaxy NGC 4526   The cluster RDCS1252.9-2927  In this image astronomers are seeing an embryonic cluster as it was when the universe was 1.5 billion years old. The young system, called TNJ1338-1942, is the most distant known developing cluster, or proto-cluster. It is dominated by a massive ‘baby galaxy’ - the green object in the center. The galaxy is producing powerful radio emissions, and is the brightest galaxy in the proto-cluster. The green color indicates that the galaxy is emitting glowing hydrogen gas. Its clumpy appearance suggests that it is still in the process of forming. Smaller developing galaxies are scattered around the massive galaxy. The galaxy on the left of the massive galaxy is a foreground galaxy. The bright object in the upper half of the image is a foreground star. Hubble spies huge clusters of stars formed by ancient encounter  This stunningly beautiful image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the heart of the prototypical starburst galaxy M82. The ongoing violent star formation due to an ancient encounter with its large galactic neighbour, M81, gives this galaxy its disturbed appearance. In the image, taken by Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, the huge lanes of dust that crisscross M82's disk are another telltale sign of the flurry of star formation. Below the center and to the right, a strong galactic wind is spewing knotty filaments of hydrogen and nitrogen gas. More than 100 super star clusters - very bright, compact groupings of about 100, 000 stars - are seen in this detailed Hubble picture as white dots sprinkled throughout M82's central region. The dark region just above the center of the picture is a huge dust cloud. A collaboration of European and American scientists used these clusters to date the ancient interaction between M82 and M81. About 600 million years ago, a region called 'M82 B' (the bright area just below and to the left of the central dust cloud) exploded with new stars. Scientists have discovered that this ancient starburst was triggered by the violent encounter with M81. M82 is a bright (eighth magnitude), nearby (12 million light-years from Earth) galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). The Hubble picture was taken on September 15, 1997. The natural-color composite was constructed from three Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures, which were combined in chromatic order: 4, 250 seconds through a blue filter (428 nm); 2, 800 seconds through a green filter (520 nm); and 2, 200 seconds through a red (820 nm) filter. This image is issued jointly by NASA and ESA.
Detailed Illustration of ACS' Abilities  This is a detailed illustration of how much the Advanced Camera for Surveys will reveal of the young Universe. Hubble Sees a Neutron Star Alone in Space  This is the first direct look, in visible light, at a lone neutronstar, as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble results show thestar is very hot (1.2 million degrees Fahrenheit at the surface), andcan be no larger than 16.8 miles (28 kilometers) across. These resultsprove that the object must be a neutron star, because no other knowntype of object can be this hot, small, and dim (below 25th magnitude). The first clue that there was a neutron star at this location came in1992, when the ROSAT (the Roentgen Satellite) found a bright X-ray source without any optical counterpart in optical sky surveys. Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was used in October 1996 to undertake asensitive search for the optical object, and found a stellar pinpointof light within only 2 arc seconds (1/900th the diameter of the Moon) ofthe X-ray position. Astronomers haven't directly measured the neutronstar's distance, but fortunately the neutron star lies in front of amolecular cloud known to be about 400 light-years away in the southernconstellation Corona Australis. DIRBE 100 micrometer image of sky  
Rainbow Image of a Dusty Star  Resembling a rippling pool illuminated by underwater lights, the Egg Nebula offers astronomers a special look at the normally invisible dust shells swaddling an aging star. These dust layers, extending over one-tenth of a light-year from the star, have an onionskin structure that forms concentric rings around the star. A thicker dust belt, running almost vertically through the image, blocks off light from the central star. Twin beams of light radiate from the hidden star and illuminate the pitch-black dust, like a shining flashlight in a smoky room. Location of star HD 209458  The parent star of HD 209458b is called HD 209458. It is similar to our Sun and lies 150 light-years from Earth. It is visible with binoculars as a seventh magnitude star in the constellation of Pegasus. This is a 1.9 degree three color composite from the Digitized Sky Survey. The blue plate (B) is shown in blue, the red plate (R) in green and the infrared plate (I) in red. Starbirth  
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