Monkey Head Nebula Target For Hubble Space Telescopes 24th Anniversary

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), This portion of the Monkey Head Nebula was imaged in the infrared using Hubble'sWide Field Camera 3. Credit: ESA/Hubble To celebrate its 24th year in orbit, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has released a beautiful new image of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula. This colourful region is filled with young stars embedded within bright wisps of cosmic gas and dust. NGC 2174 lies about 6400 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Hubble previously viewed this part of the sky back in 2001, creating a stunning image released in 2011, and the space telescope has now revisited the region to celebrate its 24th year of operation. Nebulae are a favourite target for Hubble. Their colourful plumes of gas and fiery bright stars create ethereally beautiful pictures. Some of the most famous of Hubble's images have been of nebulae — for example, the telescope's 22nd and 23rd anniversary images of the Tarantula (heic1206) and Horsehead (heic1307) nebulae, and its festive 2012 image of planetary nebula NGC 5189 (heic1220). In April of this year, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope will be celebrating 24 years of observing. To celebrate this milestone, the observatory is releasing a brand new image of part of NGC 2174, otherwise known as...

Read More........→August 11, 2014

WISE Feels the Heat from Orion's Sword

The Orion nebula is featured in this sweeping image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The nebula (also cataloged as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke. This metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in...

Read More........→February 18, 2013