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The Pleiades Star Cluster in Taurus | Kitt Peak National Observatory
This very bright open cluster has a large angular extent, making it a great binocular object. If you viewed this object through a large telescope, you would only see a few stars, not the entire cluster. Perhaps the most famous open cluster, this is easily visible with the naked eye. In fact, many children with great eyesight look toward this cluster and mistake it for the Little Dipper. When you view this cluster through binoculars, it does in fact look like a measuring cup.
M45, or the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, are all names for this cluster. In Greek mythology, the Seven Sisters were the daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and the half-sisters of Hyades. It is interesting to note that when counting the brightest stars in this cluster, most people only come up with six. Some versions of the mythology describe a missing sister, the reason why we do not see a seventh bright star is unknown.The bright blue, massive stars that make up this cluster are less than 100 million years old.
This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing Program (AOP) program at Kitt Peak Visitor Center during 2014.
The Pleiades: Closest Star Cluster to Earth | Kitt Peak National Observatory
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona. The Pleiades are an open cluster easily visible to the naked eye. The cluster is dominated by several hot, luminous and massive stars. The blue nebulosity surrounding the brightest stars are due to blue light from the stars scattering off of dust grains in the interstellar gas between us and the stars. The cluster is also known as the 'Seven Sisters'. The image was generated with observations in the B (blue), V (green), and I (red) filters. In this image, North is right, East is up.
The Pleiades is located approximately 440 light-years away towards the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). The cluster’s central region spans about eight light-years, with the diameter of The Pleiades as a whole estimated at 43 light-years. The Pleiades is a very prominent sight to the unaided eye during winter in the Northern Hemisphere, while in summer the cluster is best seen by observers in southern latitudes.
Most of the cluster’s members are very young, hot blue stars formed within the last 100 million years. So far, about 1,000 stars have been confirmed. The hint of bluish nebulosity around the brightest stars originates from a cloud of interstellar gas and dust that the cluster is passing through at the moment. The tiny particles of dust scatter the blue light from the nearest stars more favorably than other colors, so the region appears to twinkle in blue. The cluster contains many brown dwarfs, or failed stars. These objects, though more massive than planets, do not possess enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion reactions in their cores and burst into life as bright stars.
Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Richard Cool (University of Arizona) and WIYN
This colorized and digitally sharpened image of the Sun is composed of frames recording emission from hydrogen atoms in the solar chromosphere on May 15, 2024. Approaching the maximum of Solar Cycle 25, a multitude of planet-dwarfing active regions and twisting, snake-like solar filaments are seen to sprawl across the surface of the active Sun. Suspended in the active regions' strong magnetic fields, the filaments of plasma lofted beyond the Sun's edge appear as bright solar prominences. The large prominences seen near 4 o'clock, and just before 9 o'clock around the solar limb are post flare loops from two powerful X-class solar flares that both occurred on that day. In fact, the 4 o'clock prominence is associated with the monster active region AR 3664 just rotating off the Sun's edge.
Seeing both sides of the Sun at once | Europe's Proba-2 & Solar Orbiter Missions
This video shows the Sun as seen from Earth orbit by the European Space Agency’s Proba-2 mission on the left, and as seen from the opposite side of the Sun by the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter mission on the right. The two spacecraft carry an almost-identical imager instrument that takes photos of the Sun in ultraviolet light. The images shown here were measured by Proba-2’s SWAP (Sun Watcher using Active Pixel System detector and Image Processing) imager and Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument at a wavelength of 17.4 nanometers.
By watching the side of the Sun facing away from Earth, Solar Orbiter has allowed us to track the monster active region AR3664 as it rotates in and out of Earth’s view. AR3664 was very active in May 2024, producing many powerful solar flares and sending out highly energetic particles and large amounts of material in so-called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). It was responsible for the beautiful aurorae seen on Earth on May 10–12, and on May 20 Solar Orbiter saw it produce the largest solar flare of the current solar cycle (class X12).
“Solar Orbiter’s position, in combination with other missions watching the Sun from Earth’s side, gives us a 360-degree view of the Sun for an extended period of time. This will only happen three more times in the future of Solar Orbiter, so we are in a unique situation to observe active regions on the far side that will then rotate into Earth’s view,” explains Daniel Müller, Solar Orbiter Project Scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA).
The European Space Agency's sun-watching spacecraft monitors the Sun's behavior to better understand the influence of space weather on our home planet. The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission, in partnership with NASA, is orbiting the Sun from closer than ever before and is providing the first high resolution images of the Sun's poles.
Boeing Starliner over Egypt's Mediterranean Coast | International Space Station
The Starliner spacecraft on NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test is pictured docked to the Harmony module's forward port as the International Space Station orbited 262 miles above Egypt's Mediterranean coast.
Expedition 71 Crew
Station Commander: Oleg Kononenko (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia): Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin (Russia)
NASA: Tracy Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barrett, Jeanette Epps
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.
The Sound of Space Data: Crab Nebula Sonification | NASA/JPL
This video is a sonification of X-ray light emitted by the Crab Nebula. The data was obtained by NASA’s NuSTAR and Chandra space observatories, whose teams turned the data into sound to enable people to audibly perceive different features of the Crab Nebula, making it more accessible for the visually impaired.
In this sonification, X-ray wavelengths from NuSTAR (represented as unique colors) are mapped to musical pitches and sounds. Red, yellow, purple, blue, and white are mapped to notes from low to high. For Chandra, brightness in the X-ray data corresponds with pitch and volume, and a bell sound indicates the position of the pulsar at the center of the nebula.
The Crab Nebula is what remains of a star that exploded as a supernova. The explosion that created the Crab Nebula was visible from Earth in the year 1054, when it was recorded by Chinese astronomers. Most of the star’s mass was pushed into space, creating a wide debris field that continues to expand.
The rest of the stellar material collapsed into a dense object called a pulsar. The pulsar’s rapid rotation and strong magnetic field accelerate particles and shoot them into space.The particles emit high-energy X-rays that NuSTAR can detect, but as they travel outward, they collide with the debris scattered by the supernova, causing them to slow down and lose their energy. This is why NuSTAR only sees light from a relatively small region close to the pulsar. Lower energy X-rays detected by Chandra can be seen farther out.
Distant Merging Quasars at Cosmic Dawn Discovered |Gemini North Telescope
Cosmoview Episode 82: With the help of the GNIRS instrument on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRLab, a team of astronomers have discovered a double-record-breaking pair of quasars. Not only are they the most distant pair of merging quasars ever found, but also the only pair confirmed in the bygone era of the Universe’s earliest formation.
Galaxy mergers fuel the formation of quasars—extremely luminous galactic cores where gas and dust falling into a central supermassive black hole emit enormous amounts of light. So when looking back at the early Universe astronomers would expect to find numerous pairs of quasars in close proximity to each other as their host galaxies undergo mergers. However, they have been surprised to find exactly none—until now.
Cosmic Dawn spanned from about 50 million years to one billion years after the Big Bang. During this period the first stars and galaxies began appearing, filling the dark Universe with light for the first time. The arrival of the first stars and galaxies kicked off a new era in the formation of the cosmos known as the Epoch of Reionization.
The Epoch of Reionization, which took place within Cosmic Dawn, was a period of cosmological transition. Beginning roughly 400 million years after the Big Bang, ultraviolet light from the first stars, galaxies and quasars spread throughout the cosmos, interacting with the intergalactic medium and stripping the Universe’s primordial hydrogen atoms of their electrons in a process known as ionization. The Epoch of Reionization was a critical epoch in the history of the Universe that marked the end of the cosmic dark ages and seeded the large structures we observe in our local Universe today.
To understand the exact role that quasars played during the Epoch of Reionization, astronomers are interested in finding and studying quasars populating this early and distant era.
Since 2002 Gemini North has also been known as the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North telescope. Dr. Gillett, who died in April 2001, was one of the primary visionaries of the Gemini telescopes. He was instrumental in assuring that the design of Gemini's twin 8-meter telescopes would make major scientific contributions to astronomy.
Images and Videos: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava)/T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab)/D. de Martin (NSF NOIRLab)/M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)/ESA/Hubble/NASA/M. Kornmesser/N. Bartmann (NSF NOIRLab)
Pan of The Crab Nebula: A New View | James Webb Space Telescope
The NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope dissected the Crab Nebula’s structure, aiding astronomers as they continue to evaluate leading theories about the supernova remnant’s origins. With the data collected by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), a team of scientists were able to closely inspect several of the Crab Nebula’s major components.
For the first time ever, astronomers mapped the warm dust emission throughout this supernova remnant. Represented here as fluffy magenta material, the dust grains form a cage-like structure that is most apparent toward the lower left and upper right portions of the remnant. Filaments of dust are also threaded throughout the Crab’s interior and sometimes coincide with regions of doubly ionized sulphur (sulphur III), colored in green. Yellow-white mottled filaments, which form large loop-like structures around the supernova remnant’s center, represent areas where dust and doubly ionized sulphur overlap.
The dust’s cage-like structure helps constrain some, but not all of the ghostly synchrotron emission represented in blue. The emission resembles wisps of smoke, most notable toward the Crab’s center. The thin blue ribbons follow the magnetic field lines created by the Crab’s pulsar heart—a rapidly rotating neutron star.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University)
The Crab Nebula: A New View | James Webb Space Telescope
The NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope dissected the Crab Nebula’s structure, aiding astronomers as they continue to evaluate leading theories about the supernova remnant’s origins. With the data collected by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), a team of scientists were able to closely inspect several of the Crab Nebula’s major components.
For the first time ever, astronomers mapped the warm dust emission throughout this supernova remnant. Represented here as fluffy magenta material, the dust grains form a cage-like structure that is most apparent toward the lower left and upper right portions of the remnant. Filaments of dust are also threaded throughout the Crab’s interior and sometimes coincide with regions of doubly ionized sulphur (sulphur III), colored in green. Yellow-white mottled filaments, which form large loop-like structures around the supernova remnant’s center, represent areas where dust and doubly ionized sulphur overlap.
The dust’s cage-like structure helps constrain some, but not all of the ghostly synchrotron emission represented in blue. The emission resembles wisps of smoke, most notable toward the Crab’s center. The thin blue ribbons follow the magnetic field lines created by the Crab’s pulsar heart—a rapidly rotating neutron star.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University)
Pan of Nebula RCW 7 in Puppis: A Stellar Nursery of Protostars | Hubble
Named RCW 7, this nebula is located just over 5,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. It is a visually striking collection of interstellar gas and dust.
Nebulae are areas of space that are rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they coalesce into protostars, surrounded by spinning discs of leftover gas and dust. In the case of RCW 7, the protostars forming here are particularly massive, giving off strongly ionizing radiation and fierce stellar winds that have transformed it into what is known as a H II region.
H II regions are filled with hydrogen ions—where H I refers to a normal hydrogen atom, H II is hydrogen that has lost its electron. The ultraviolet radiation from the massive protostars excites the hydrogen, causing it to emit light and giving this nebula its soft pinkish glow. Here Hubble is studying a particular massive protostellar binary named IRAS 07299-1651, still in its glowing cocoon of gas in the curling clouds towards the top of the nebula. To expose this star and its siblings, this image was captured using the Wide Field Camera 3 in near-infrared light. The massive protostars here are brightest in ultraviolet light, but they emit plenty of infrared light. This can pass through much of the gas and dust around them and be seen by Hubble. Many of the other, larger-looking stars in this image are not part of the nebula, but sit between it and our Solar System.
The creation of an H II region marks the beginning of the end for a molecular cloud. Over only a few million years, the radiation and winds from the massive stars gradually disperse the gas—even more so as the most massive stars come to the end of their lives in supernova explosions. Only a fraction of the gas will be incorporated into new stars in this nebula with the rest being spread throughout the galaxy to eventually form new molecular clouds.
Image Description: Clouds of gas and dust with many stars. The clouds form a flat blue background towards the bottom, and become more thick and smoky towards the top. They are lit on one side by stars in the nebula. A thick arc of gas and dust reaches around from the top, where it is brightly lit by many stars in and around it, to the bottom where it is dark and obscuring. Other large stars lie between the clouds and the viewer.
Video Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Tan (Chalmers University & University of Virginia), R. Fedriani (Institute for Astrophysics of Andalusia)
Nebula RCW 7 in Puppis: A Stellar Nursery of Protostars | Hubble
Named RCW 7, this nebula is located just over 5,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. It is a visually striking collection of interstellar gas and dust.
Nebulae are areas of space that are rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they coalesce into protostars, surrounded by spinning discs of leftover gas and dust. In the case of RCW 7, the protostars forming here are particularly massive, giving off strongly ionizing radiation and fierce stellar winds that have transformed it into what is known as a H II region.
H II regions are filled with hydrogen ions—where H I refers to a normal hydrogen atom, H II is hydrogen that has lost its electron. The ultraviolet radiation from the massive protostars excites the hydrogen, causing it to emit light and giving this nebula its soft pinkish glow. Here Hubble is studying a particular massive protostellar binary named IRAS 07299-1651, still in its glowing cocoon of gas in the curling clouds towards the top of the nebula. To expose this star and its siblings, this image was captured using the Wide Field Camera 3 in near-infrared light. The massive protostars here are brightest in ultraviolet light, but they emit plenty of infrared light. This can pass through much of the gas and dust around them and be seen by Hubble. Many of the other, larger-looking stars in this image are not part of the nebula, but sit between it and our Solar System.
The creation of an H II region marks the beginning of the end for a molecular cloud. Over only a few million years, the radiation and winds from the massive stars gradually disperse the gas—even more so as the most massive stars come to the end of their lives in supernova explosions. Only a fraction of the gas will be incorporated into new stars in this nebula with the rest being spread throughout the galaxy to eventually form new molecular clouds.
Image Description: Clouds of gas and dust with many stars. The clouds form a flat blue background towards the bottom, and become more thick and smoky towards the top. They are lit on one side by stars in the nebula. A thick arc of gas and dust reaches around from the top, where it is brightly lit by many stars in and around it, to the bottom where it is dark and obscuring. Other large stars lie between the clouds and the viewer.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Tan (Chalmers University & University of Virginia), R. Fedriani (Institute for Astrophysics of Andalusia)
The Lagoon Nebula: Wide-field View | Kitt Peak National Observatory
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the KPNO 0.9m-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. M8 is a giant star forming region. It is so large that it is faintly visible to the naked eye. The gas in the nebula is energized by a massive star at its center, causing the gas to glow. The dark objects within the nebula are called Bok globules—dense clouds of gas where new stars are forming. The image was generated with observations in Hydrogen alpha (red), Oxygen [OIII] (green) and Sulfur [SII] (blue) filters. In this image, North is left, East is down
Credit: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage)
The Lagoon Nebula Close-up & Star Herschel 36| Kitt Peak National Observatory
M8, the Lagoon Nebula, is a tremendous star forming region in our galaxy. Under dark skies it is easily seen with the unaided eye just above the "teapot" (spout) asterism of Sagittarius. A view through a small telescope (with the eye) shows the milky glow of nebulosity pervades the entire field. A star cluster, NGC 6530, highlights how star formation is proceeding in this cloud. A few of NGC 6530's stars can been seen in the bottom right of this image, but most of it is just outside the field to the right.
Charge-coupled device (CCD) images like this hint at the turbulent activity of the gases in the cloud. As stars form, they create strong stellar winds (and radiation) that heat and churn their surrounding natal material. Shown here is a particularly dense part of M8 with an "hour-glass" like shape. This hour-glass is the brightest part of the nebula left of the dark rift that divides the nebula. The star next to the hourglass is called Herschel 36 and it is most responsible for all of the activity in this area. The hour-glass structure itself spans a little more than a lightyear across in the longest dimension. At this scale, our solar system would be about 1/1000th of a pixel.
This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing Program (AOP) program at Kitt Peak Visitor Center during 2014.
Credit: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Jack Harvey and Tom Doughtery/Adam Block
The Lagoon Nebula, Messier object 8 (M8) or NGC 6523, in the constellation of Sagittarius, as seen by the 4-meter Kitt Peak Mayall Telescope in 1973. North is at the top. The Lagoon Nebula glows with the red light of hydrogen (H alpha) excited by the radiation of very hot stars buried within its center. Deep within the cloud, dark filaments of obscuring matter emit strong infrared radiation. Several peculiar variable stars in the nebula occasionally flare up, increasing in brightness to some 25 times their normal luminosity. The nebula is about 60 light-years across.
The Mayall Telescope saw first light on February 27, 1973, and was the second-largest telescope in the world at that time.
The Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius | SPECULOOS Southern Observatory
If you had a brand new state-of-the-art telescope facility, what would you look at first? Researchers at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory—comprised of four small telescopes, each with a 1-meter primary mirror—chose to view the Lagoon Nebula. This magnificent picture is the result, and was one of the SPECULOOS’ first observations. The nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in our galaxy where new stars are being born, and is found roughly 4,000-5000 light-years from us.
This striking image is made even more impressive by the fact that the SPECULOOS is not designed to study nebulae. The name says it all—SPECULOOS, the Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars. In other words, the primary mission of this telescope facility is to find Earth-like planets orbiting faint nearby stars. The candidates it discovers will be passed over to larger telescopes, such as the European Southern Observatory ESO’s forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), to be studied in more detail.
SPECULOOS is located at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile, taking full advantage of the location’s dark skies, ideal atmospheric conditions, and the support systems ESO has there—from telescope infrastructure to staff accommodation. It will have a partner, the SPECULOOS Northern Observatory, in the Canary Islands. It will hunt for planets in the northern skies not visible from Chile. Together they promise to vastly expand our knowledge of the exoplanets in our neighborhood.
The Lagoon Nebula:"Behind The Veil" (Infrared View) | VISTA Telescope
This infrared view of the star formation region Messier 8, often called the Lagoon Nebula, was captured by the VISTA telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This color picture was created from images taken through J, H and Ks near-infrared filters. These were acquired as part of a huge survey of the central parts of the Milky Way. The field of view is about 34 by 15 arcminutes.
The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) is a 4-meter class specialized wide field survey telescope for the southern hemisphere, equipped with a near infrared camera VIRCAM (VISTA InfraRed CAMera) with 1.65 degree diameter field of view at VISTA's nominal pixel size, containing 67 million pixels of mean size 0.339 arcsec and available broad band filters at Z, Y, J, H, Ks and narrow band filters at 0.98, 0.99, and 1.18 micron.
Distance:4,000 light years
Image Credit: ESO/VVV
Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit
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