Friday, November 16, 2007

Space Mystery

Space has always been a mystery to me, most of us I guess.I have always wondered what is there up beyond the skies? I was browsing ABC when I came across these pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope. Aren't they beautiful and amazing?


The Hubble telescope has captured images of the Veil Nebula, the remains of a star that exploded 5,000 years ago. This is a wide-field image of the star's remains, made as a color composite from individual exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey.


Two galaxies, known collectively as Arp 87, are one of hundreds of known interacting and merging galaxies. The corkscrew shape of the "bridge" of shared matter between the two galaxies suggests that some stars and gas drawn from the larger galaxy have been caught in the gravitational pull of the smaller one. The pair was originally discovered by astronomer Halton Arp in the 1970s.


The colorful, intricate shapes in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope images reveal how the glowing gas ejected by dying sunlike stars evolves dramatically over time. These gaseous clouds, called planetary nebulae, are created when stars in the last stages of life cast off their outer layers of material into space. Ultraviolet light from the remnant star makes the material glow.


NGC 5307 displays a spiral pattern, which may have been caused by the dying star wobbling as it expelled jets of gas in different directions. NGC 5307 resides in the southern constellation Centaurus.


This new photo from the Hubble Telescope shows shells of stars around a bright quasar, known as MC2 1635+119, which dominates the center of the galaxy. The stars presence indicate a titanic clash with another galaxy in the relatively recent past. Scientists believe that the stars' presence supports the idea that quasars are born from interactions between galaxies.


Astronomers used Hubble's powerful resolution to study Comet Holmes' core for clues about how the comet brightened.


NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has probed the bright core of Comet Holmes, which has mysteriously brightened by nearly a millionfold in a 24-hour period beginning 23Oct'07.

Meera signing off.. Stay tuned.

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