In 1604, astronomer Johannes Kepler noticed a new bright object in the sky that was visible to the naked eye for the next year-and-a-half. He was seeing a supernova, the death of a star more than ten times the mass of our Sun that was 20,000 light years from Earth. This false color animation shows the remnant of Kepler’s Supernova, first in infrared, then visible light, then low energy x-rays, then high-energy x-rays, and finally all four together.
Video Credits: NASA / ESA / STScI
Messier 100 is a spiral galaxy located within the southern part of constellation Coma Berenices about 55 million light-years away. It’s about 107,000 light-years in diameter and one of the brightest and largest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. The image of the galaxy’s core shown above was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.
Image Credits: ESA / NASA / STScI
This tangled web is an object known as SNR 0454-67.2. It’s a supernova remnant created after a massive star ended its life in a cataclysmic explosion and threw off its constituent material out into surrounding space. SNR 0454-67.2 lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The remnant is probably the leftovers from a Type Ia supernova explosion. A Type IA supernova is the death of a white dwarf star that grown by siphoning material from a stellar companion until it reached critical mass and exploded.
Image Credit: ESA / NASA
The Pillars of Creation are a feature in the Eagle Nebula. This pair of images was taken by Hubble in 2014. The first image shows the Pillars in visible light capturing the silhouette of the dark cloud. The second shows the Pillars in the near-infrared light. The dust transparent at IR wavelengths, revealing the stars within and behind the cloud.
Video Credit: STScI
The galaxy’s dust and inner flat disk stand out when viewed using infrared light.
Video Credit: STSci
This cosmic pillar of gas and dust is almost a couple of light-years wide. It’s a part one of our galaxy’s largest star forming regions, the Carina Nebula, visible in southern skies. The nebula is around 7,500 light-years away. While the pillar has been shaped by the winds and radiation of the nebula’s young, hot, massive stars, it’s interior is home to stars in the process of formation. A penetrating infrared view shows the pillar is dominated by two, narrow, energetic jets blasting outward from a hidden infant star.
Image Credits: ESA / NASA
NGC 2207 and IC 2163 are a pair of colliding spiral galaxies about 80 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. NGC 2207 is in the process of tidally stripping IC 2163.
Image Credit: NASA
