io9: spitzer space telescope

A Galactic Jam Session To Celebrate 400 Years Of Stargazing

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00:00 PST

It was the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first telescopic view of the heavens the other day, and NASA unveiled this incredible panoramic view of the center of our galaxy. It's a composite of images from all of NASA's great observatories.

The first image consists of a near-infrared view from the Hubble Space Telescope, an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an X-ray view from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, all mashed up. This is one of the most detailed images ever of our galaxy's mysterious core, and exposes the whole range of stellar evolution, from areas bursting with star birth, to hot new stars, to cooler old stars, to black holes.

The X-ray light reveals gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive black hole as well as winds from nearby stars and stellar explosions. The infrared light reveals all of the areas teeming with bright newborn stars.

Check out the other images in our gallery.

Hubble Space Telescope image

Spitzer Space Telescope image

Chandra Observatory image

[NASA]

Felicia Day Assures Us the Milky Way Isn't Doomed

Lauren Davis — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:00:00 PDT

In an unholy blending of space porn and Felicia Day, the Spitzer Science Center has released a funny and informative PSA on colliding galaxies. In this mock behind-the-scenes video, Day explains to an explosions-loving filmmaker why we shouldn't fear Andromeda.

Bad Astronomy]

This Sparkling Galaxy Hides A Stellar Secret

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:30:00 PDT

This spiral galaxy, NGC 2841, is helping NASA solve a huge mystery: why do galaxies look so smooth, with such an even distribution of stars?

According to NASA, studying NGC 2841 has helped an international team of astronomers discover that stars flow out of the "hot, dense nurseries" and then disperse to form the smooth distribution pattern that we usually see in similar spiral galaxies. This image is a composite of three different images from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The shorter wavelengths are represented in blue, and the show the oldest stars, plus foreground stars in our own galaxy. Green represents the medium wavelengths, and red is the longest wavelengths. [Spitzer Space Telescope]

A Wounded Galaxy Sings With Light

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:00:00 PDT

Another galaxy smashed through the heart of the Cartwheel Galaxy 100 million years ago, and today the Cartwheel remains one of the most powerful UV-emitting galaxies near us, as that blue outer ring shows.

This false-color composite image consists of images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (green), the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and the Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple). The image was created in 2006, but NASA re-released it over the weekend, as part of a celebration of the International Year Of Astronomy 2009. [NASA]

Look Into The Heart Of A Stellar Collision Zone

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:30:00 PST

They call this the Swan nebula, but don't let the serene nickname fool you. It's a battlezone, where solar winds from super-massive stars collide, creating "bow shocks" like the wake of a speedboat.

This new image, from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, shows a turbulent star-forming region, where rivers of gas and stellar winds erode thickets of dusty material. It's one of the best examples we've seen yet of the gas ripples that can form around stars in "choppy cosmic waters." Image by AP/NASA/JPL.

The New Hottest Spot in the Milky Way

Nivair H. Gabriel — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:39:31 PDT

Two days ago, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed an image of what could be the brightest star in our galaxy: Wolf-Rayet star WR 102ka or, more fondly, the "Peony nebula" star. Astronomers say that it burns with the light intensity of 3.2 million suns — but that's a rough estimate, and one that might even stretch to 4 or 5 million suns.

Researchers at NASA and Germany's Potsdam University observed the Peony nebula star, which by the way is about 100 times wider and 200 times heavier than our familiar sun. NASA offers more images, including a zoomed-in video view, of the Peony nebula at the link below.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Potsdam Univ.

Brightest Star in the Galaxy Has New Competition [Spitzer Space Telescope @ NASA]

Our Future Galactic Overlords Glow Red With Power Lust

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:16:00 PDT

Do you notice anything funny about this picture of NGC 6946, the "Fireworks Galaxy"? Like that lurid wealth of red splotches, for example? The bright red areas represent regions in the galaxy that are actively forming new stars, and there do seem to be an awful lot of them. Could we be facing a star-formation gap with this malevolent galaxy, which is a mere 100 million light years away from us? Could all those bonus stars be the breeding ground for the invaders who will subjugate our descendants in a mere billion years or so? We'd better start preparing for the worst. To help you prepare, here's a rogues gallery of the many faces of the Fireworks Galaxy. (Even its name is violent!)

New image from Spitzer Space Telescope.

Look into the Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:52:04 PDT

No it's not some Heidiggerian metaphor, that pushpin really does mark the black hole at the center of our lives. Meet Sagittarius A, the ginormous black hole that resides in mega-gravitational splendor at the center of the Milky Way, sucking up energy and spitting it back out in the form of X-rays and even hotter, crazier particles too. Do you dare look more closely at its firey depths?

Well, obviously you do. So here you go.

These two images are taken from a high-def virtual tour of the galaxy, thanks to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which is packed with beautiful images that you can zoom around in just by moving your mouse. It's like the Google maps version of the whole galaxy.

A Glimpse of the Milky Way [official site]

300 Baby Stars In Our Nearest Star-Factory

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:30:34 PST

Newborn stars are surrounded with dust in the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud, in this new image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Only about 407 light years from Earth, Rho Oph is one of the closest star-forming regions to us. There are more than 300 young stellar objects within the central cloud, which contains the crucial molecular hydrogen needed to form new stars from cosmic gas. Click through for another Rho Oph image, plus a picture of the galaxy that ended the dark ages.

The gravity from this cluster of galaxies forms a natural "zoom lens" that lets astronomers view a galaxy that formed just 700 million years after the Big Bang. You can just about glimpse the galaxy A1689-zD1 on the right side of the picture, inside the box. It's one of the youngest and brightest galaxies we've ever seen, formed during the cosmic "dark ages." Researchers believe the dark ages, when stars and galaxies started to form, lasted from 400,000 years to a billion years after the Big Bang — and this new discovery may have been one of the galaxies that helped end that era. [Spitzer Space Telescope]

The Biggest Space Explosions Ever Recorded

charliejane — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:30:23 PST

You can still see the shock wave from the explosion of supernova Cassiopeia A in this color-enhanced image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The blue glow around the dead star is the "forward shock," material blasted with energy by the shock wave when the star blew. Click through for a gallery of the biggest space detonations ever, including a deep-space eruption that released thousands of suns' worth of energy in a few seconds.

All images by AP.

Exploding Space Gas Gets A Makeover

charliejane — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:30:34 PST

The discs of hot gas around binary stars and black holes are much, much bigger than scientists had previously thought. This new illustration shows the disc around a super-dense white dwarf star. The disc sends off asteroid-sized eruptions of space dust, which are drawn towards the dwarf star's bigger companion star. It's a far cry from the well-manicured disc that scientists had expected to find. Click through for an image of the neat, Saturn-like grooves that scientists had originally predicted. Which do you think looks cooler?

[National Optical Astonomy Observatory]

Comet Vs. Comet Around A Dead Star

charliejane — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:00:07 PST

A planetary system seems to have survived the death of its star, judging photos released last August from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The Helix Nebula, 700 light years from Earth, is the unraveling remains of a star not unlike our sun. It's also one of the few nebulae to show any evidence of bodies that survived that disaster. More nebula pics, including one that shows battling comets that outlasted the sun's death, after the jump.

Helix Nebula image by NASA. [BBS News]