NGC 4027 (aka Arp 22) is about 75 million light-years away in the constellation of Corvus. This barred spiral galaxy is a peculiar galaxy with its extended arm, thought to be the result of a collision with another galaxy millions of years ago.
Image Credit: ESO
I noticed something interesting in the middle of yesterday’s astronomy post about the Cat’s Paw nebula.
Image Credit: ESO
Not the whole cat, just his paw. This is the Cat’s Paw Nebula (aka NGC 6334). It’s found in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). Although it appears to be close to the center of the Milky Way in the sky, it is relatively near to Earth, about 5500 light-years away. It’s about 50 light-years across.
The Cat’s Paw is one of the most active star formation regions in the galaxy, containing massive, brilliant blue stars which have formed within the last few million years. It probably contains on the order of ten thousand stars. but many are hidden from view by the dust clouds fueling the rapid star formation.
Image Credit: ESO
BTW, not all catspaws are in space.
This picture of the star cluster Messier 47 was taken using the Wide Field Imager camera, installed on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. M47 is centered about 1,600 light-years away and is only about 78 million years old. The young open cluster is dominated by a sprinkling of brilliant blue stars but also contains a few contrasting red giant stars.
Image Credit: ESO
NGC 7727 is the result of the ongoing merger of two galaxies that began around a billion years ago. Two supermassive black holes are are at the center of the new galaxy, spiralling closer to each other. They’re expected to merge within 250 million years or so.
Image Credit: ESO
The Very Large Telescope at ESO in Chile, has a new infrared sensor called ERIS. This ERIS image reveals the inner region of the galaxy NGC 1097, showing the gaseous and dusty ring that lies at the very center of the galaxy. The bright spots in the ring are stellar nurseries. The image was taken using four different filters by ERIS’s infrared imager, the Near Infrared Camera System (NIX). ERIS will be an upgrade from the pevious NACO imager.
Video Credit: ESO
NGC 3293 is an open cluster in the constellation Carina. It contains omore than 100 stars brighter than 14th magnitude in a 10 arc minute field, including blue supergiants of apparent magnitude as bright as 6.5. The cluster is also home to a pulsating red supergiant V361 Carinae.
Image Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
This video move around an image of the Vela supernova remnant. The image was taken using OmegaCAM at the VST telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Video Credit: ESO
ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) captured this infrared view of the Helix Nebula (aka NGC 7293). The planetary nebula is labout 700 light-years away. This false color picture was created from images taken through three different infrared filters. The telescope’s infrared vision reveals cold nebular gas that is mostly obscured in visible images of the Helix.
Image Credit: ESO / VISTA / J. Emerson.
Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit
Last week, I posted a view of a recently observed Gamma Ray Burst as seen by the X-ray Telescope abort the Swift satellite. This is what it looked like as seen by the Very Large Telescope at the European Souther Observatory in Chile. The GRB is the red spot near the middle of the image.
After the initial bright flash of a GRB has faded, the afterglow shines at longer wavelengths of visible and infrared light. The team at ESO was able to gather data to show burst originated from an extremely distant galaxy when the universe was only 6% of its current age. This was one of the oldest GRB yet detected.
Image Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
The Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal is an elliptical dwarf galaxy found in the constellation Fornax. The galaxy is a satellite of the Milky Way and is receding from the us at 53 km/s. It contains six know globular star clusters, an unusually large number for such a small galaxy. Four of them (Fornax 1, 2, 3, and 5) are pictured below.
Image Credits: ESO and ESA
Video Credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Webb ERO Production Team
Video Credit: ESO
From our galaxy into the Large Magellanic Cloud …
Video Credit: ESO
Seen in visible light and infrared, the galaxy known as M106 a a garden-variety spiral galaxy, but when it’s viewed at radio frequencies (purple) and x-rays (blue), additional arms appear. These are jets powered by matter falling into a massive black hole.
Image Credit: NASA
This short video crossfades down the electromagnetic spectrum from visible light (ESO’s 2.2 m Telescope), infrared (ESO’s VLT and VISTA), and radio (ESO’s ALMA). The Tarantula Nebula (aka 30 Doradus) is a part of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Video Credit: ESA
Named for the southern constellation in whose part of the sky most of its galaxies can be found, the Fornax Cluster is one of the closest clusters of galaxies. At an average of 62 million light-years away, it is almost 20 times more distant than the nearby Andromeda Galaxy. Almost every yellow blob in this two-degree-wide image is an elliptical galaxy in the cluster. The barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 that stands out in the lower right is a member of the cluster.
Image Credit: ESO
ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile captured this image of the Medusa Nebula (also known Abell 21 and Sharpless 2-274). As the star at the heart of this nebula made its final transition into the final stage of its existence, it blew off its outer layers into space, forming this colorful cloud. The Sun will go through a similar process in a few billion years.
Image Credit: ESO
NGC 247 (aka Caldwell 62) is a dwarf spiral galaxy. It’s called the Needle’s Eye because of an unusually large void on one side of its spiral disk. This void contains some older, redder stars but no younger, bluer stars.
Image Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
These thermal images taken from Neptune were taken with the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Taken between 2006 and 2021, they show Neptune gradually cooling down, followed by a dramatic heating of its south pole in the last few years. From 2003 to 2018 Neptune’s average temperature dropped about 8 °C, and over the next three years it spiked 11 °C hotter.
Video Credit: ESO