Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar

Happy New Year 2015, and Peace For All!HST Images Source: www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/12/2014-hubble-space-telescope-advent-calendar/100863

"Mystic Mountain,” a pillar of gas and dust 3 LY tall, located within the Carina Nebula, whichin turn is located 7,5 KLy away in the southern constellation of Carina.

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The Ring Nebula is the glowing remains of a once sun-like star. The nebula measures ~ 1 Lyacross, and is ~ 2 KLy away, in constellation Lyra. The white dot in the center of the nebula is awhite dwarf.

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The Sombrero Galaxy, ~ 28 MLy away, 50 KLy across, is one of the brightest galaxies visible fromEarth, just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility. The central bulge harbors ~ 2,000 globular starclusters, 10 times as many as orbit the Milky Way.

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Sharpless 2-106 is several Ly across, 2 KLy away, in the Milky Way. A massive young star createsthe furious activity seen inside the nebula. Twin lobes of glowing blue super-hot gas, stretchoutward from the central star.

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Hoag's Object, a galaxy 600 MLy away in the constellation Serpens. It is ~ 120 KLy wide, largerthan the Milky Way. The gap may contain star clusters too faint to see. The blue ring of stars maybe the remains of a galaxy that passed nearby ~ 2 to 3 GYA.

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UGC 1810 is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational pull of the galaxy below, UGC1813. The interacting pair (called Arp 273), lies in the constellation Andromeda,~ 300 MLy away.The two galaxies are separated by tens of KLy.

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Galaxy ESO 137-001 is moving at ~ 7.2 Gm/h toward the upper right of this image, betweenother galaxies in the Norma cluster, > 200 MLy away. The galaxy remains intact due to its gravity.Tattered threads of gas (the blue jellyfish-like tendrils) trail the galaxy.

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Galaxy Cluster Abell 2218. 2 GLy away, this cluster’s gravitational field deflects light passingthrough it, like an optical lens bends light to form an image. Gravitational lensing magnifies,brightens, and distorts images from faraway objects. The arc patterns in the image are distortedviews of galaxies 5-10 times farther away.

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The Retina Nebula, ~ .25 Ly wide, 1.9 KLy away, is material streaming outward from a dying star.Viewed from the side, we see intricate tendrils of dust (compared to the eye's retina). Gas onthe inside is ionized by light from the central star, and glows.

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The Whirlpool Galaxy. A striking feature is its two curving arms (star-formation regions), whichbegins with the dark clouds of gas on the inner edge, then moves to the bright pink regions, andends with the blue clusters along the outer edge. Hubble's clear view shows that NGC 5195 (thesmaller galaxy) is located along almost the same line-of-sight, but behind the Whirlpool.

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Star HD 44179, ~ 2.3 KLy away, in constellation Monoceros, is surrounded by a structure knownas the Red Rectangle, from its shape and its apparent colour when seen in early images fromEarth. This image shows that it is shaped like an X. The star at the center is similar to the sun,but at the end of its lifetime.

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Star Cluster Pismis 24, at the core of nebula NGC 6357, ~ 8 KLy away, is a gaseous nebula ionizedby the youngest (bluest) heavy stars. The UV radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas andcreates a bubble.

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The Cat's Eye Nebula, a “bull's eye” pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells.Each "ring" is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky. Observationssuggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals.

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Spiral Galaxy Southern Pinwheel (M83). The vibrant magentas and blues reveal that it is ablazewith star formation. It lies 15 MLy away in the constellation Hydra. This photo shows thousandsof star clusters, each with hundreds of thousands of individual stars.

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Uranus, with the shadow of its Ganymede moon, creating the illusion of a “pupil” in a 16 000-km-diameter "eye“ (which is actually a gigantic and seemingly perpetual “storm”).

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A Star Factory in the Monkey Head Nebula, a collection of carved knots of gas and dust in a smallportion of the nebula, a roiling region located 6.4 KLy away. Massive, newly formed stars nearthe center (and toward the bottom of this image) are blasting away at dust within. Ultravioletlight from these bright stars helps carve the dust into giant pillars.

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A Celestial Spiral, known as IRAS 23166+1655, forming around the star LL Pegasi (also known asAFGL 3068) in the constellation of Pegasus, one of the most perfect geometrical forms yetdiscovered in space. shows what appears to be a thin regular spiral pattern winding around thestar (hidden behind thick dust). The pattern suggests a regular periodic origin for the shape.

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Inside the Orion Nebula, a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming.More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. The bright central region is thehome of the four largest, called the Trapezium. Ultraviolet light from these stars causes a cavityin the nebula and disrupts the growth of hundreds of smaller stars.

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Dust Lanes in galaxy NGC 7049, in the southern sky constellation Indus. A family of globularclusters appear as glittering spots dusted around the galaxy halo. The dust lanes, appearing asa lacy web, are backlit by millions of stars in the galaxy halo.

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A rainbow in the Egg Nebula. Resembling a rippling pool illuminated by underwater lights, theEgg offers astronomers a special look at the normally invisible dust shells swaddling an agingstar. These dust layers, extending over one-tenth of a light-year from the star, have an onionskinstructure that forms concentric rings around the star. The artificial "Easter-Egg" colors comefrom polarizing filters, used to dissect how the light reflects.

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The dusty lanes of Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, lies from 10 to 16 MLy away from us.This composite image shows features in the visible spectrum, as well as ultraviolet light fromyoung stars, and near-infrared light, which lets us see details otherwise obscured by dust.

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The Crab Nebula supernova remnant about 6.5 KLy away, centered around the Crab Pulsar,a small and very dense neutron star (~ 1.5 times the mass of our sun) crunched into asphere only 20 km in diameter, spinning at 1,800 RPM. The Crab is believed to match upwith a supernova observed in the year 1054, by Chinese astronomers.

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Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300, ~ 61 MLy away, is just slightly larger than the Milky Way, is con-sidered typical of barred spirals. Blue and red supergiant stars, star clusters, and star-formingregions are visible across the spiral arms, and many more distant galaxies are visible in thebackground.

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“Light echoes” around V838 Monocerotis, a variable star ~ 20 KLy from Earth. This image from2005 reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. Theeffect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since thestar suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002.

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The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Starting in 2003, the Hubble telescope was pointed toward arelatively empty part of our sky, and in a series of sessions, built up an exposure of just under1 million seconds, capturing thousands of extremely distant galaxies, some as far away as 13GLy. Almost every bit of light in this image is a galaxy full of billions of star.

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HST 25 Years 1990 - 2015