As the protostar continues to age and release energetic jets, it’ll consume, destroy, and push away much of this molecular cloud, and many of the structures we see here will begin to fade. Eventually, once it finishes gathering mass, this impressive display will end, and the star itself will become more apparent, even to our visible-light telescopes.
Source link
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents a visually striking collection of interstellar gas and dust. Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they...
The 23-year-old orbiter is taking images that offer horizon-wide views of the Red Planet similar to what astronauts aboard the International Space Station see over Earth. NASA’s longest-lived Mars robot is about to mark a new milestone on June 30: 100,000 trips around the Red Planet since launching 23 years ago. During that time, the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has...
Nebulae are areas rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they coalesce into very young, developing stars, called protostars, which are still surrounded by spinning discs of leftover gas and dust. The protostars forming in RCW 7 are particularly massive, giving off strongly...
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. It’s not an unusual globular cluster in and of itself, but it is a peculiarity when compared to its surroundings. NGC 2005 is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy some 162,000 light-years...
NGC 4689 holds an interesting — albeit less royal — place in modern astronomy. The universe is so incredibly vast that at a distance of 54 million light-years NGC 4689 is relatively nearby for a galaxy. This image includes data from two sets of observations, one made in 2019, the other in 2024 , and both are part of programs that observed multiple ‘nearby’ galaxies...
This image showcases three views of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. The first image (left), released in November 2023, features the Horsehead Nebula as seen in visible light by ESA’s Euclid telescope, which has contributions from NASA. The second image (middle) shows a view of the Horsehead Nebula in near-infrared light from...
XRISM is a collaborative mission between JAXA and NASA, with contributions from over 70 institutions in Japan, the U.S., Canada, and Europe. NASA Goddard developed the Resolve detector and many of the instrument subsystems, together with the two X-ray Mirror Assemblies. Goddard is also responsible for the Science Data Center, which developed analysis software and the...
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features NGC 3783, a bright barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light-years from Earth that also lends its name to the eponymous NGC 3783 galaxy group. Like galaxy clusters, galaxy groups are aggregates of gravitationally bound galaxies. Galaxy groups, however, are less massive and contain fewer members than...