Via NASA
stars
Stars shine brightly, just like you! These luminous balls of gas are just scintillating and marvelous in the night sky, and even in picture. So if you want all the wholesome and funny puns and memes that can come from these astronomically-oriented bodies, look no further.
Via NASA
Via NASA:
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way. About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus, NGC 7331 was recognized early on as a spiral nebula and is actually one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. Since the galaxy's disk is inclined to our line-of-sight, long telescopic exposures often result in an image that evokes a strong sense of depth. The effect is further enhanced in this sharp image from a small telescope by galaxies that lie beyond the gorgeous island universe.
Via NASA
The same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars' birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe, held together by gravity. These behemoths contain hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies that are immersed in gas with temperatures of millions of degrees.
This hot gas, which is the heftiest component of the galaxy clusters aside from unseen dark matter, glows brightly in X-ray light detected by Chandra. Over time, the gas in the centers of these clusters should cool enough that stars form at prodigious rates. However, this is not what astronomers have observed in many galaxy clusters.
When a star that is much more massive than out sun gets to the end of it's like it explodes into a Super Nova. A Super Nova can outshine and entire galaxy and radiate stellar matter at speeds up to 10% the speed of light. This particular Super Nova was given the name SN 1572. SN 1572 is also known as Tycho's Supernova, Tycho's Nova, "B Cassiopeiae" (B Cas), or 3C 10. This Super Nova is located in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is one of one of about eight supernovae visible to the naked eye in historical records. It burst forth in early November 1572 and was independently discovered by many individuals.
The Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search, or SWEEPS, was a 2006 astronomical survey project using the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys - Wide Field Channel to monitor 180,000 stars for seven days to detect extrasolar planets via the transit method.
The stars that were monitored in this astronomical survey were all located in the Sagittarius-I Window, a rare transparent view to the Milky Way's central bulge stars in the Sagittarius constellation as our view to most of the galaxy's central stars is blocked by lanes of dust. These stars in the galaxy's central bulge region are approximately 27,000 light years from Earth.
