Nearby Dwarf Galaxy Leo I

1999-10-03 AAO

Leo I is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy in the Local Group of galaxies dominated by our Milky Way Galaxy and M31. Leo I is thought to be the most distant of the eleven known small satellite galaxies orbiting our Milky Way Galaxy. Besides the LMC and ...

Phi Persei: Double Star

1999-10-02

It's clear who is the biggest star in this binary system. Based on recent results, this artist's vision of the double star Phi Persei, 720 light years away, shows a bright, rapidly rotating massive star surrounded by a disk of gas. A small ...

New Stars In 30 Doradus

1999-10-01

Compare these matched Hubble Space Telescope views (visible-light on top; infrared on bottom) of a region in the star-forming 30 Doradus Nebula. Find the numbered arrows in the infrared image which identify newborn massive stars. For example, ...

Massive Stars Of 30 Doradus

1999-09-30

This gorgeous visible-light Hubble Space Telescope image shows a young cluster of massive stars at the center of the 30 Doradus Nebula. Gas and dust clouds in 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, have been sculpted into elongated ...

The Crab Nebula in X-Rays

1999-09-29

Why does the Crab Nebula still glow? In the year 1054 A.D. a supernova was observed that left a nebula that even today glows brightly in every color possible, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. At the nebula's center is an ultra-dense ...

Mystery Object Explained

1999-09-28

rers often discover the unexpected. Such was the case when the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey chanced upon the unusual object circled in the above photograph. The so-called mystery object appeared star-like but displayed colors unlike ...

Our Galaxy in Stars, Gas, and Dust

1999-09-27 John P. Gleason

The disk of our Milky Way Galaxy is home to hot nebulae, cold dust, and billions of stars. The red nebulae visible in the above contrast-enhanced picture are primarily emission nebulae, glowing clouds of hydrogen gas heated by nearby, bright, ...

M83: A Barred Spiral Galaxy

1999-09-26

M83 is a bright spiral galaxy that can be found with a small telescope in the constellation of Hydra. It takes light about 15 million years to reach us from M83. M83 is quite a typical spiral - much like our own Milky Way Galaxy. Spiral ...

Twistin' By The Lagoon

1999-09-25

The awesome spectacle of starbirth produces extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight -- bombarding dusty molecular clouds inside the Lagoon Nebula (M8). At least two long funnel shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, ...

Cometary Globules In Orion

1999-09-24

Intense ultraviolet light from massive, hot stars in the Orion region has sculpted and compressed clouds of dust and gas in to distinctively shaped Cometary Globules. Seen in this IRAS infrared image recorded at a wavelength sensitive to emission ...