Researchers at NSF’s Gemini North telescope in Hawaii captured two galaxies colliding – NGC 4568 and NGC 4567 — entangled by their mutual gravitational field. These two will eventually combine to form a single elliptical galaxy in approximately 500 million years. You can also see the glowing remains of a supernova that was detected in 2020.
When the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope isn’t capturing nebulas going haywire, it provides us with a mesmerizing look inside the Orion Nebula. More specifically, the colorful region in the Orion Nebula surrounding the Herbig-Haro object HH 505. The outflows you see around HH 505 originate from the star IX Ori, which lies on the outskirts of the Orion Nebula around 1,000 light-years from Earth.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a dying star at the center of the Butterfly Nebula that used to be approximately five times the mass of our Sun. In this case, the star has cast off its envelope of gases and is unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet radiation that makes the ejected material glow in the nebula, located 3,400 light-years away in the Scorpius. constellation
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured some fascinating images over the past three decades, but the Giant Magellan Telescope is ready to take over its reigns in the near future, right alongside the JWST. The telescope has just received a $205 million investment from its international consortium to accelerate construction, marking one of the largest funding rounds since its founding.
The European Space Agency (ESA) recently imaged Messier 61, a spiral starburst galaxy and one of the largest galactic members of the Virgo Cluster. It’s known as a starburst galaxy because it has an unusually high amount of stars being born, allowing astronomers to use it as a laboratory to better understand the mesmerizing phenomena of star formation.
Scientists have for the first time ever observed a neutron star merger in millimeter-wavelength light using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which is located in the high-altitude Atacama Desert in Chile. This array consists of 66 radio telescopes, making it the world’s largest radio telescope.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured Earendel, the oldest and most distant star observed yet in the universe. This star is actually named after a character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” prequel “The Silmarillion,” was found in a Hubble image with gravitational lensing. The light from this star took 12.9 billion light-years to reach Earth and requires an extremely powerful telescope to detect.
Astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observed the star-forming region of 30 Doradus, better known as the Tarantula Nebula. It’s located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way, approximately 170 000 light-years away from Earth. Peer into its heart, and you’ll discover some of the most massive stars known, a few with more than 150 times the mass of our Sun.
Aside from targeting super-Earths, the James Webb Space Telescope is busy capturing never before observed galaxies, like the Cartwheel Galaxy, which lies 500 million light-years away from Earth in the Sculptor constellation. Its shape resembles that of a wagon wheel and is actually the result of a high-speed collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy not visible here.
NASA’s Juno space probe completed its 43rd close flyby of Jupiter on July 5, 2022 and used its JunoCam instrument to capture this incredible photo of the vortices, or hurricane-like spiral wind patterns, near Jupiter’s north pole. Don’t let its painting-like look fool you, as these powerful storms can measure over 30 miles in height and hundreds of miles across.