Mgławica Trifid w czerwieni, bieli i...

1997-12-08 Jason Ware

Three dark dust lanes give the picturesque Trifid Nebula its name. The red and blue colors of the Trifid Nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes. A big bright star near the center of the red region appears ...

Odległa gromada galaktyk

1997-12-07

In this 1994 Hubble Space Telescope photograph, every bright object is a galaxy. Oddly - most of them are spiral galaxies. This rich cluster of galaxies, named CL 0939+4713, is almost half way across the visible universe. Photos like this ...

Galeria portretów kwazarów

1997-12-06

QUASARs (QUASi-stellAR objects) lie near the edge of the observable Universe. Discovered in 1963, astronomers were astounded that such objects could be visible across billions of light-years, as this implies they must emit prodigious amounts of ...

Widząc przez galaktyki

1997-12-05

In this dramatic picture, spiral galaxy NGC 5091 appears in the foreground. Tilted nearly edge-on, the dust lanes between its spiral arms are clearly visible. The large elliptical galaxy NGC 5090 lies just beyond it - both are about 100 million ...

Niebo pełne planet

1997-12-04

Look up tonight. Just after sunset, the crescent moon and all five "naked-eye" planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) will be visible (depending on your latitude), lying near our solar system's ecliptic plane. Venus and Jupiter will ...

Runaway Star

1997-12-03

Runaway stars are massive stars traveling rapidly through interstellar space. Like a ship plowing through the interstellar medium, runaway star HD 77581 has produced this graceful arcing bow wave or "bow shock" - compressing the gaseous material ...

Pufy Micro-Quasar GRS1915

1997-12-02

On the far side of our Galaxy, gas clouds explode away from a small black hole. This might seem peculiar, as black holes are supposed to attract matter. But material falling toward a black hole collides and heats up, creating an environment ...

Orion: The Big Picture

1997-12-01 J. C. Casado

Orion is big. Some of the stars that form the constellation of Orion are part of a giant gas cloud complex that stretches over 100 light years and appears more than 50 times the diameter of the Moon. Components of this cloud include the ...

Merkury: A Cratered Inferno

1997-11-30

Mercury's surface looks similar to our Moon's. Each is heavily cratered and made of rock. Mercury's diameter is about 4800 km, while the Moon's is slightly less at about 3500 km (compared with about 12,700 km for the Earth). But Mercury is ...

Lasery w Eta Carinae

1997-11-29

Have you heard about the great LASER light show in the sky? A team led by K. Davidson (U. Michigan) and S. Johansson (U. Lund) discovered that the chaotically variable star Eta Carinae emits ultraviolet light in such a narrow band that it is most ...