Galaxy Pictures, good pictures of Planet Earth

GIANT GALAXY STRING DEFIES MODELS OF HOW UNIVERSE EVOLVED

Wide-field telescope observations of the remote and therefore early Universe, looking back to a time when it was a fifth of its present age (redshift = 2.38), have revealed an enormous string of galaxies about 300 million light-years long. This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which can't explain how a string this big could have formed so early.

Cartwheel Galaxy Makes Waves

A new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer completes a multi-wavelength, neon-colored portrait of the enormous Cartwheel galaxy after a smaller galaxy plunged through it, triggering ripples of sudden, brief star formation.

Whirlpool Galaxy M51 NGC 5194

The Whirlpool Galaxy is in a close encounter with nearby galaxy NGC 5195. The companion's gravity is firing off star formation in the Whirlpool, as seen in the numerous clusters of massive, luminous young red stars in the spiral arms and dust clouds. Also known as M51 and NGC 5194, Whirlpool galaxy is 31 million lightyears from Earth.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 4603

Pulsating stars referred to as Cepheid variables are found in the spiral galaxy NGC 4603 in the Centaurus cluster. It is the most distant galaxy in which that class of star has been found.

This is an image of the galaxy M100 (100th object in the Messier Catalog) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on 31 December 1993. M100 is a spiral galaxy like our own, the Milky Way, and is tens of millions of light years away

Andromeda Galaxy

M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the closest large galaxy to our own Milkyway galaxy. At a distance of approximately 2.2 million light years and at a size of nearly 65,000 light years across, this galaxy is easily seen as a naked eye object in the night sky and appears as a faint fuzzy patch in the constellation, Andromeda. The two smaller fuzzy objects in the image above are the satellite galaxies, M32 and M110.

A new image shows evidence for a galaxy being stripped bare of its star-forming material by its violent ongoing encounter with the hot gas in the center of a galaxy cluster, astronomers announced last week.

The picture, from the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope on Kitt Peak, was presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The disruptive process is believed to influence the evolution of galaxies and their star-forming ability over time, but direct observational evidence has been somewhat scant.

The galaxy, NGC 4402, is more than 50 million light-years from Earth. It is in the midst of the relatively nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies. As the NGC 4402 moves toward the center of the cluster (located out of the image toward the bottom left), it experiences a "wind" from hot gas that permeates the cluster and which reaches temperatures of millions of degrees.

Cigar Galaxy

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a galaxy that appears to be sizzling hot, with huge plumes of smoke swirling around it. The galaxy, known as Messier 82 or the "Cigar galaxy," is in fact, smothered in smoky dust particles (red) blown out into space by the galaxy's hot stars (blue). It took all three of Spitzer's instruments to show that the galaxy is also surrounded by a huge, hidden halo of smoky dust that appears red in infrared image. Of those instruments, Spitzer's infrared spectrograph told astronomers that the dust contains a carbon-containing compound, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. This smoky molecule can be found on Earth in tailpipes, barbecue pits and other places where combustion reactions have occurred.

This spectacular image of the large spiral galaxy is based on three exposures in ultra-violet, blue and red light, respectively. The colours of the different regions are well visible: the central areas contain older stars of reddish colour, while the spiral arms are populated by young, blue stars and many star-forming regions.

Barred Spiral Galaxy

NGC 1365 is one of the most prominent barred galaxies in the sky. It is a supergiant galaxy with a diameter of about 200 000 light years.

A massive straight bar runs through this galaxy and contains the nucleus at the centre. It consists mostly of older stars that give a reddish colour to the bar.

The gravitational perturbation from the bar causes interstellar gas and dust clouds to form a pair of spiral arms that extend from the ends of the bar. Young luminous hot stars, born out of the interstellar clouds, give these arms a prominent appearance and a blue colour.

The bar and spiral pattern rotates clockwise, as seen from us. One full turn takes about 350 million years.

Circinus Galaxy-Optical
Much of the gas in the disk of the Circinus spiral is concentrated in two specific rings -- a larger one of diameter 1,300 light years another with a diameter of 260 light years. In the Hubble image, the smaller inner ring is located on the inside of the green disk. The larger outer ring extends off the image and is in the plane of the galaxy's disk. This Hubble Space Telescope image of the Circinus Galaxy was taken on April 10, 1999 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

Illustration of the Milky Way's Arms
This side-view schematic of the Milky Way galaxy, shows the prominent spiral arms, the central galactic bulge, and the location of the Sun.