Return to home page.
Most Popular | Venus | Earth | Mars | Jupiter | Saturn | Neptune | Stars | Galaxies | Nebula | Spacecraft | Art



Nebulae and Gas Clouds
New Hubble Image Reveals Details in the Heart of the Trifid Nebula  Three huge intersecting dark lanes of interstellar dust make the Trifid Nebula one of the most recognizable and striking star birth regions in the night sky. The dust, silhouetted against glowing gas and illuminated by starlight, cradles the bright stars at the heart of the Trifid Nebula. This nebula, also known as Messier 20 and NGC 6514, lies within our own Milky Way Galaxy about 9,000 light-years (2,700 parsecs) from Earth, in the constellation Sagittarius. The Center of the Orion Nebula  This spectacular color panorama of the center the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture, seamlessly composited from a mosaic of 15 separate fields, covers an area of sky about five percent the area covered by the full Moon. NOAO Image of Trifid Nebula  
WFPC2 Mosaic of Carina Nebula Region   The Crab Nebula  This picture shows a Hubble Space Telescope image of the inner parts of the Crab. The pulsar itself is visible as the left of the pair of stars near the center of the frame. Colliding Gas in the Helix Nebula  This colorful image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the collision of two gases near a dying star.<BR><BR>Astronomers have dubbed the tadpole-like objects in the upper right-hand corner 'cometary knots' because their glowing heads and gossamer tails resemble comets.
The Large Magellanic Cloud  This ground-based image of the Large Magellanic Cloud was taken by the German astrophotographer Eckhard Slawik. It spans 10 x 10 degrees. Just to the left of the middle of this image the largest star-forming region in the Local Group of galaxies, 30 Doradus, is seen as a red patch. N11B itself is seen in the upper right part of the LMC. The Cygnus Loop  This image shows a small portion of a nebula called the 'Cygnus Loop.' Covering a region on the sky six times the diameter of the full Moon, the Cygnus Loop is actually the expanding blastwave from a stellar cataclysm - a supernova explosion - which occurred about 15,000 years ago. Closeup of Filamentary Structure in Trifid Nebula  
The Tarantula Nebula  NASA's new Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, has captured in stunning detail the spidery filaments and newborn stars of the Tarantula Nebula, a rich star-forming region also known as 30 Doradus. This cloud of glowing dust and gas is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way, and is visible primarily from the Southern Hemisphere. This image of an interstellar cauldron provides a snapshot of the complex physical processes and chemistry that govern the birth - and death - of stars.<BR><BR>At the heart of the nebula is a compact cluster of stars, known as R136, which contains very massive and young stars. The brightest of these blue supergiant stars are up to 100 times more massive than the Sun, and are at least 100,000 times more luminous. These stars will live fast and die young, at least by astronomical standards, exhausting their nuclear fuel in a few million years. Close-up of M27, the Dumbbell Nebula  An aging star's last hurrah creates a flurry of glowing knots of gas that appear to be streaking through space. This closeup image of the Dumbbell Nebula was taken by the JPL-built and designed Wide Field and Planetary 2 Camera, onboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Trifid Nebula  
Click on an image to enlarge
NextNext

© 2006, 321Space.com  All rights reserved. Wallpapers are free to download for non-commercial use on your own computer.   Privacy Policy | Site Map | Contact us