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Zoom into The Fornax Galaxy Cluster & Galaxy NGC 1365 | ESO
The Fornax Galaxy Cluster is one of the closest of such groupings beyond our Local Group of galaxies. This pan sequence, based on a new VLT Survey Telescope image, shows the central part of the cluster in great detail. The field includes the elegant barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and the big elliptical galaxy NGC 1399.
Panning Across The Fornax Galaxy Cluster & Galaxy NGC 1365 | ESO
The Fornax Galaxy Cluster is one of the closest of such groupings beyond our Local Group of galaxies. This pan sequence, based on a Very Large Telescope (VLT) survey image, shows the central part of the cluster in great detail. The field includes the elegant barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and the big elliptical galaxy NGC 1399.
At the lower-right is the elegant barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and to the left the big elliptical NGC 1399. The Fornax Galaxy Cluster is one of the closest of such groupings beyond our Local Group of galaxies. This new VLT Survey Telescope image shows the central part of the cluster in great detail.
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365: Infrared View | ESO’s HAWK-I
This striking new image, taken with the powerful HAWK-I infrared camera on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory in Chile, shows NGC 1365. This beautiful barred spiral galaxy is part of the Fornax cluster of galaxies, and lies about 60 million light-years from Earth.
The picture was created from images taken through Y, J, H and K filters and the exposure times were 4, 4, 7 and 12 minutes respectively.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/P. Grosbøl
At around 60 million light-years from Earth, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 is captured beautifully in this image by the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), the blue and fiery orange swirls show us where stars have just formed and the dusty sites of future stellar nurseries.
At the outer edge of the image, enormous star-forming regions within NGC 1365 can be seen. The bright, light-blue regions indicate the presence of hundreds of baby stars that formed from coalescing gas and dust within the galaxy's outer arms.
This Hubble image was captured as part of a joint survey with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The survey will help scientists understand how the diversity of galaxy environments observed in the nearby Universe influence the formation of stars and star clusters. Expected to image over 100,000 gas clouds and star-forming regions beyond our Milky Way, the PHANGS survey is expected to uncover and clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, star formation and the overall shape and morphology of galaxies.
Credit: European Space Agency /Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 | James Webb Space Telescope
Judy Schmidt: "Dusty, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365. Interestingly, the dust bar is not nearly as prominent as it is in visible light. In the center is a modest active galactic nucleus (AGN). The circumnuclear dust is also quite striking. This time, I was happy to receive the PHANGS team's reduction of the data. Makes it much easier because their mosaic was much better matched and aligned."
Distance: about 56 million light-years
Technical details:
Red (screen layer mode): MIRI F2100W
Orange: MIRI F1130W
Cyan: MIRI F770W
Extra overall brightness in grayscale: MIRI F1000W
North is not up.
Credit: NASA/European Space Agency (ESA)/Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)/Canadian Space Agency (CSA)/J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
Orbital Sunset above Earth's South Pacific Ocean | International Space Station
An orbital sunset is pictured from the International Space Station as it was soaring 267 miles above the south Pacific Ocean.
Expedition 67 Crew
Commander Oleg Artemyev (Russia)
Roscosmos Flight Engineers: Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov (Russia)
NASA Flight Engineers: Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins (USA)
European Space Agency (ESA) Flight Engineer: Samantha Cristoforetti (Italy)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
Journey to Our Own Milky Way's Black Hole | National Science Foundation
Dimensional animation flying the viewer into the center of the Milky Way galaxy to the planet earth, geolocating the EHT telescopes around the planet, return to the galaxy and the S-stars orbiting the black hole in the center of our galaxy, Sgr A*.
Credit: National Science Foundation Black Hole PIRE Project, University of Arizona
Turbulent Cauldron of Starbirth in N in Centaurus A Galaxy | Hubble
The NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope offers a stunning unprecedented close-up view of a turbulent firestorm of starbirth along a nearly edge-on dust disk girdling Centaurus A, the nearest active galaxy to Earth.
Distance:13 million light years
Credit: E.J. Schreier, (Space Telescope Science Institute) and NASA/European Space Agency (ESA)
Galaxy Centaurus A: Revisiting an Old Friend | NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
Just weeks after NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory began operations in 1999, the telescope pointed at Centaurus A (Cen A, for short). This galaxy, at a distance of about 12 million light years from Earth, contains a gargantuan jet blasting away from a central supermassive black hole.
Since then, Chandra has returned its attention to this galaxy, each time gathering more data. And, like an old family photo that has been digitally restored, new processing techniques are providing astronomers with a new look at this old galactic friend.
This image of Cen A contains data from observations, equivalent to over nine and a half days worth of observing time, taken between 1999 and 2012. In this image, the lowest-energy X-rays Chandra detects are in red, while the medium-energy X-rays are green, and the highest-energy ones are blue.
As in all of Chandra's images of Cen A, this one shows the spectacular jet of outflowing material that is generated by the giant black hole at the galaxy's center. The new image also highlights a dust lane that wraps around the waist of the galaxy. Astronomers think this feature is a remnant of a collision that Cen A experienced with a smaller galaxy millions of years ago.
In addition to allowing for the creation of new images, the data housed in Chandra's extensive archive on Cen A provide a rich resource for a wide range of scientific investigations. For example, in 2013, researchers published new findings on the point-like X-ray sources in Cen A. They found that these sources had masses that fell into two categories. These separate groups correspond to systems where either a neutron star or a black hole is pulling material from a companion star. Information like this may tell us important details about the way the massive stars explode, and gives us even more reason to appreciate this new view of a familiar object.
Hubblecast 46: The Hubblecast's Dr. J, aka Joe Liske, takes us on a tour of Centaurus A, a bright and dusty galaxy in the Southern sky. Hubble's observations are the most detailed ever made of this galaxy.
Galaxy Centaurus A: Black Hole Jets Made Visible | ESO APEX & NASA Chandra
Color composite image of Centaurus A, revealing the lobes and jets emanating from the active galaxy’s central black hole. This is a composite of images obtained with three instruments, operating at very different wavelengths. The 870-micron submillimeter data, from LABOCA on APEX, are shown in orange. X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in blue. Visible light data from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2 m telescope located at La Silla, Chile, show the stars and the galaxy’s characteristic dust lane in close to "true color".
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimeter); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)
Centaurus A is our nearest giant galaxy, at a distance of about 13 million light-years in the southern constellation of Centaurus, and as such, it is one of the most extensively studied objects in the southern sky. It is an elliptical galaxy, currently merging with a companion spiral galaxy, resulting in areas of intense star formation and making it one of the most spectacular objects in the sky.
Distance:13 million light years
Centaurus A hosts a very active and highly luminous central region, caused by the presence of a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 100 million solar masses (see eso0109), and is the source of strong radio and X-ray emission. Thick dust layers almost completely obscure the galaxy's center.
This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5-meter Danish telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, through three filters (B, V, R).
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/R. Gendler, J.-E. Ovaldsen & S. Guisard (ESO)
Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, is well known for its dramatic dusty lanes of dark material. Hubble’s new observations, using its most advanced instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3, are the most detailed ever made of this galaxy. They have been combined here in a multi-wavelength image which reveals never-before-seen detail in the dusty portion of the galaxy.
As well as features in the visible spectrum, this composite shows ultraviolet light, which comes from young stars, and near-infrared light, which lets us glimpse some of the detail otherwise obscured by the dust.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency, and the Hubble Heritage (Space Telescope Science Institute/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. O’Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee
This video zoom sequence starts with a broad view of the Milky Way. We close in on a region not far from the plane of a the galaxy and can soon see a strange fuzz with a dark band across it. This is the famous peculiar radio galaxy Centaurus A. The final view shows a very detailed image from the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Distance:13 million light years
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Nick Risinger
This FORS2 image of Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, is an example of how frontier science can be combined with esthetic aspects. This galaxy is a most interesting object for the present attempts to understand active galaxies. It is being investigated by means of observations in all spectral regions, from radio via infrared and optical wavelengths to X- and gamma-rays. It is one of the most extensively studied objects in the southern sky. FORS2, with its large field-of-view and excellent optical resolution, makes it possible to study the global context of the active region in Centaurus A in great detail. Note for instance the great number of massive and luminous blue stars that are well resolved individually, in the upper right and lower left.
Distance:13 million light years
Centaurus A is one of the foremost examples of a radio-loud active galactic nucleus (AGN). On images obtained at optical wavelengths, thick dust layers almost completely obscure the galaxy's center. This structure was first reported by Sir John Herschel in 1847. Until 1949, NGC 5128 was thought to be a strange object in the Milky Way, but it was then identified as a powerful radio galaxy and designated Centaurus A. The distance is about 10-13 million light-years (3-4 Mpc) and the apparent visual magnitude is about 8, or 5 times too faint to be seen with the unaided eye.There is strong evidence that Centaurus A is a merger of an elliptical with a spiral galaxy, since elliptical galaxies would not have had enough dust and gas to form the young, blue stars seen along the edges of the dust lane. The core of Centaurus A is the smallest known extragalactic radio source, only 10 light-days across. A jet of high-energy particles from this center is observed in radio and X-ray images. The core probably contains a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 100 million solar masses.
This image is a composite of three exposures in B (300 sec exposure, image quality 0.60 arcsec; here rendered in blue color), V (240 sec, 0.60 arcsec; green) and R (240 sec, 0.55 arcsec; red).
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