Humans on earth are the equivalent of ants on a football, restricted in their perception of the brilliance of the cosmos that surrounds them. However unlike ants, humanity can marvel the mysteries of the universe without stepping out of its backyard!
It's been nearly 400 years since Galileo observed the heavens through the first telescope. Four centuries later, the Hubble Space Telescope with its cutting-edge technology, continues to probe the corners of the universe trying to answer the questions that have eluded mankind for eons.
We at Cerebrus Constipatus are not yet enlightened enough to answer the queries of the ages, though we can help you marvel the genius of the cosmos through our mammoth eye in the sky!
Antennae Galaxies - NGC 4038-4039
Image Courtesy of HubbleSite
With chaos, comes order. The Antennae galaxies which began interacting about 200 to 300 million years ago are one the closest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. The galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms" extending far out from their cores.
The two orange blobs distinctive in the image are the cores of the original galaxies, and comprise mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink.
The image is a trailer of what is to come when our own Milkyway collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in several billion years.
Sombrero Galaxy - M104
The Messier 104 galaxy, popularly known as the Sombrero galaxy because of its uncanny resemblance to the broad-rimmed Mexican hat, is one of the most photogenic galaxies visible from earth. The galaxy has the signature white, bulbous core surrounded by thick dust trails comprising its spiral structure. Situated more than 28 million light-years from earth, the galaxy stretches 50,000 light-years across.
Here's a shot of the Sombrero galaxy in infrared; the galaxy takes on a distinctive "bull's eye" appearance, a contrast to its normal sombrero resemblance.
Cigar Galaxy - M82
The mosaic capture of Messier 82, nicknamed the Cigar galaxy because of its elliptical shape and tilt, is exceptional for its bright blue disk, nets of shredded clouds, and the fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its core regions. The image was released on the 16th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope on 24th March 2006. The galaxy is 12 million light-years away from our solar system.
Hoag's Object
Image Courtesy of HubbleSite
The unusual galaxy known as Hoag's Object is a ring-shaped galaxy first documented by astronomer Art Hoag in 1950. The hallmark of the galaxy is the perfect ring of fiery, blue stars pin-wheeling around the yellow nucleus core made up of mostly older stars. The gap between the two celestial populations may contain star clusters that are almost too faint to see. Though the birth of this peculiar galaxy is still debated, some astronomers predict it could be a result of an interaction between two galaxies which is estimated to have occurred about 2 to 3 billions years ago.
The entire galaxy spreads across 120,000 light-years, just a tad larger than our own Milky Way. Its situated 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens.
Evil Eye Galaxy - M64
Image Courtesy of HubbleSite
Notoriously nicknamed "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy, the Messier 64 is one of the most spectacular examples of collisions between two galaxies. The collision which is estimated to have occurred more than a billion years ago, gave birth to an unusual star system with a strange appearance combined with bizarre internal motions. Just like in a majority of galaxies, all the stars in the Black Eye are rotating in the same clockwise direction, however detailed research remarkably revealed that the interstellar gas in the outer regions rotates in the opposite direction from the gas and stars in the inner regions, which is very peculiar for a pinwheel spiral galaxy.
The galaxy resides roughly 17 million light-years from our planet in the northern constellation Coma Berenices.
Whirlpool Galaxy - M51
The stunning Whirlpool galaxy spiraling its graceful, winding arms across the celestial landscape is one of the most beautiful stellar phenomenons documented by the human race. The epitomes of the galaxy are its two spiraling arms, spread across the canvas of space. The prominence of the spiral arms is speculated to be due to the close encounter with the compact yellow core galaxy seen in the upper right corner of the image.
The M51 is located 31 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, and its beautiful face-on view and proximity to Earth allow astronomers to study a classic spiral galaxy's structure and star-forming processes.
Supernova Ribbon - SN 1006
An eerie fragile ribbon drifting though deep space. An alien propulsion trail? An intergalactic highway? Wishful thinking. The image captured by the Hubble in February 2006, documents a supernova remnant of a stellar explosion which occurred more than a thousand years ago. A supernova is usually caused by the death of a massive star, and this remnant is from the final spasms of a dying white dwarf star situated nearly 7,000 light-years away from Earth.
The remnant stretches more than 60 light years in diameter and it is still expanding at roughly 6 million miles per hour. The SN 1006 is situated in our own galaxy, just 14 degrees off the plane of the galaxy's disk.
Eagle Nebula
What appears to be a phantom rising menacingly though space, is actually a massive tower of cold gas and dust surging from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebulae. The soaring tower is 9.5 light years high, to give you a better scale, about 57 trillion miles high, or about twice the distance from our sun to the next nearest star!
The Eagle Nebulae is a gigantic incubator for newly born stars, feeding on the gas surrounding them. The bumps and fingers of material in the center of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas. These might look small, but they're approximately the size of our solar system. The blue color at the top is from glowing oxygen, while the red color seen in the lower region is from glowing hydrogen. The Eagle Nebulae is located in the constellation Serpens.
Planetary Nebula - NGC 2818
The awe-inspiring image is of the famed planetary nebula NGC 2818, which is located in the southern constellation of Pyxis. The stunning structure of the nebula is comprised of the outer layers of a star that were expelled into interstellar space. The luminous clouds were shed by the star after it ran out of fuel to sustain the nuclear reactions in its core. Our own sun will eventually go through a similar process, but not for another 5 to 6 billion years.
Planetary nebulas fade off gradually over tens of thousands of years, and the long dying star will eventually cool off for billions of years as a white dwarf. The red in the images is from glowing nitrogen, green is from glowing hydrogen while glowing oxygen in blue. The nebula is 10,400 light-years away from our planet.
Orion Nebula
An exquisite capture of a giant furnace of dust and gas, gives us a peek inside the Orion Nebula, where thousands of stars are constantly forming. The image taken by the Hubble is the sharpest view of this awe-inspiring region. The colors and structure are due to the impact of ultraviolet radiation continuously being emitted by the massive, young stars. The central region is illuminated by four colossal stars, the biggest in the nebula. The stars are called the Trapezium because they are arranged in a trapezoid pattern.
The image is a massive mosaic compiled using 520 separate images merged together with ground based images to complete the nebula.
Abstract art? Another dramatic capture of the Orion Nebula can make the worst of cynics admire the brilliance of the cosmos. What seems to an abstract figure hidden in swirls of colors is actually a focused capture of the region just below and to the left of the Trapezium stars. The amazing capture was released by the Hubble team in the later half of 2006.
The Orion Nebula is just 1,500 light-years away from earth, the nearest star forming region to our planet.
Crab Nebula - NGC 1952
The demise of a star 6,500 light years away gave birth to the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year wide remnant of a supernova explosion. The orange fragments in the image are tattered remains of the dead star and containing mostly hydrogen. The unearthly bluish glow is due to spinning of the neutron star powering the nebula from the center. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star, but how dense exactly? Well, a sugar cube made of this matter would weigh around 400 billion tonnes, that dense. You can imagine the surface of the neutron star to be that of a hard, smooth ball where the highest mountain is less than one micrometer.
Neutron stars are extreme in a lot of ways, the neutron star at the center of the Crab Nebula spins 30 times per second ejecting twin beams of radiation with every spin. The temperature of a neutron star immediately after a supernova explosion can be over 1000 billion degrees!
The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue seen in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, while red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen.
Helix Nebula
A mystical eye surveying the universe is the Helix planetary nebula, the remnants expelled by a dying, sun-like star. One of the most exotic nebulas visible from earth, the Helix is also the closest planetary nebula located just 690 light-years away from our planet.
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