哈勃太空望远镜

A menagerie of interesting astronomical finds are visible in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In addition to several large elliptical galaxies, a ring-shaped galaxy is lurking on the right of the image. A pair of bright stars are also visible at the left of the image, notable for their colorful crisscrossing diffraction spikes. This collection of astronomical curiosities is the galaxy cluster ACO S520, located in the constellation Pictor and captured by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. ACO S520 represents one of a series of Hubble observations searching for massive, luminous galaxy clusters that had not been captured by earlier surveys. Astronomers took advantage of occasional gaps in Hubble’s busy schedule to capture images of these barely explored galaxy clusters, revealing a…

This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows JO204, a ‘jellyfish galaxy’ so named for the bright tendrils of gas that appear in this image as drifting lazily below JO204’s bright central bulk. The galaxy lies almost 600 million light-years away in the constellation Sextans. Hubble observed JO204 as part of a survey performed with the intention of better understanding star formation under extreme conditions. While the delicate ribbons of gas beneath JO204 may look like floating jellyfish tentacles, they are in fact the outcome of an intense astronomical process known as ram pressure stripping. Ram pressure is a particular type of pressure exerted on a body when it moves relative to a fluid. An intuitive example is the sensation of pressure you…