NGC 1365: 壮丽的宇宙岛

NGC 1365: 壮丽的宇宙岛

BySamuel Chan

2024年2月1日 NGC 1365: Majestic Island Universe Image Credit & Copyright: Processing – Jean-Baptiste Auroux, Data – Mike Selby Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the faint but heated constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax Cluster of galaxies. This sharp color image shows the intense, reddish star forming regions near the ends of the galaxy’s central bar and along its spiral arms. Seen in fine detail, obscuring dust lanes cut across the galaxy’s bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365’s prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy’s evolution, drawing gas and dust into…

UHZ1：遥远星系与黑洞

UHZ1：遥远星系与黑洞

ByNASA中文

2023年11月10日 UHZ1: Distant Galaxy and Black Hole Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Ákos Bogdán; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & K. Arcand Explanation: Dominated by dark matter, massive cluster of galaxies Abell 2744 is known to some as Pandora’s Cluster. It lies 3.5 billion light-years away toward the constellation Sculptor. Using the galaxy cluster’s enormous mass as a gravitational lens to warp spacetime and magnify even more distant objects directly behind it, astronomers have found a background galaxy, UHZ1, at a remarkable redshift of Z=10.1. That puts UHZ1 far beyond Abell 2744, at a distance of 13.2 billion light-years, seen when our universe was about 3 percent of its current age. UHZ1 is identified in the insets of this composited image combining X-rays (purple hues) from…

M15: 紧实的球状星团

M15: 紧实的球状星团

ByNASA中文

2023年6月15日 M15: Dense Globular Star Cluster Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive; Processing: Ehsan Ebrahimian Explanation: Messier 15 is an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. A 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy it’s one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way. Centered in this sharp reprocessed Hubble image, M15 lies some 35,000 light-years away toward the constellation Pegasus. Its diameter is about 200 light-years, but more than half its stars are packed into the central 10 light-years or so, making one of the densest concentrations of stars known. Hubble-based measurements of the increasing velocities of M15’s central stars are evidence that a massive black hole resides at the…

星系、喷流与著名的黑洞

星系、喷流与著名的黑洞

ByNASA中文

2023年5月4日 The Galaxy, the Jet, and a Famous Black Hole Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration Explanation: Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured in 2017 by planet Earth’s Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant of the Virgo galaxy cluster about 55 million light-years away, M87 is the large galaxy rendered in blue hues in this infrared image from the Spitzer Space telescope. Though M87 appears mostly featureless and cloud-like, the Spitzer image does record details of relativistic jets blasting from the galaxy’s central region. Shown in the inset at top right, the jets themselves span thousands of light-years. The brighter jet seen on the right is approaching and…

韦伯图像: 棒旋星系NGC 1365

韦伯图像: 棒旋星系NGC 1365

ByNASA中文

2023年2月18日 Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 from Webb Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Janice Lee (NOIRLab) – Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Explanation: A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That’s twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals stunning details of this magnificent spiral in infrared light. Webb’s field of view stretches about 60,000 light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the galaxy’s core and bright newborn star clusters. The intricate network of dusty filaments and bubbles is created by young stars along spiral arms winding from the galaxy’s central bar. Astronomers suspect the gravity…

NGC 1365：壮丽的宇宙岛

NGC 1365：壮丽的宇宙岛

ByNASA中文

2022年12月22日 NGC 1365: Majestic Island Universe Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the faint but heated constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax Cluster of galaxies. This impressively sharp color image shows the intense, reddish star forming regions near the ends of central bar and along the spiral arms, with details of the obscuring dust lanes cutting across the galaxy’s bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365’s prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy’s evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material…

GRB 221009A

GRB 221009A

ByNASA中文

2022年10月15日 GRB 221009A Image Credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi LAT Collaboration Explanation: Gamma-ray burst GRB 221009A likely signals the birth of a new black hole, formed at the core of a collapsing star long ago in the distant universe. The extremely powerful blast is depicted in this animated gif constructed using data from the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. Fermi captured the data at gamma-ray energies, detecting photons with over 100 million electron volts. In comparison visible light photons have energies of about 2 electron volts. A steady, high energy gamma-ray glow from the plane of our Milky Way galaxy runs diagonally through the 20 degree wide frame at the left, while the transient gamma-ray flash from GRB 221009A appears at center and then fades. One…

郁金香星云与天鹅座X-1

郁金香星云与天鹅座X-1

ByNASA中文

2022年9月1日 The Tulip and Cygnus X-1 Image Credit & Copyright: Peter Kohlmann Explanation: Framing a bright emission region, this telescopic view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan. Popularly called the Tulip Nebula, the reddish glowing cloud of interstellar gas and dust is also found in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as Sh2-101. Nearly 70 light-years across, the complex and beautiful Tulip Nebula blossoms about 8,000 light-years away. Ultraviolet radiation from young energetic stars at the edge of the Cygnus OB3 association, including O star HDE 227018, ionizes the atoms and powers the emission from the Tulip Nebula. Also in the field of view is microquasar Cygnus X-1, one of the strongest…

银河系的黑洞

银河系的黑洞

ByNASA中文

2022年5月13日 The Milky Way’s Black Hole Image Credit: X-ray – NASA/CXC/SAO, IR – NASA/HST/STScI; Inset: Radio – Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration Explanation: There’s a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Stars are observed to orbit a very massive and compact object there known as Sgr A* (say “sadge-ay-star”). But this just released radio image (inset) from planet Earth’s Event Horizon Telescope is the first direct evidence of the Milky Way’s central black hole. As predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the four million solar mass black hole’s strong gravity is bending light and creating a shadow-like dark central region surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. Supporting observations made by space-based telescopes and ground-based observatories provide a wider view of the galactic…

首张黑洞事件视界尺度的影像

首张黑洞事件视界尺度的影像

ByNASA中文

2022年5月1日 First Horizon-Scale Image of a Black Hole Image Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration Explanation: What does a black hole look like? To find out, radio telescopes from around the Earth coordinated observations of black holes with the largest known event horizons on the sky. Alone, black holes are just black, but these monster attractors are known to be surrounded by glowing gas. This first image resolves the area around the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 on a scale below that expected for its event horizon. Pictured, the dark central region is not the event horizon, but rather the black hole’s shadow — the central region of emitting gas darkened by the central black hole’s gravity. The size and shape of the…