The Dust Skeleton of M51

With most of the starlight removed from this Hubble image, the sharpest view ever of the narrow spiraling dust lanes of the Whirlpool Galaxy is revealed.

Near-infrared image of the Whirlpool Galaxy

Hubble image of the Whirlpool Galaxy in visible light.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Regan and B. Whitmore (STScI), R. Chandar (University of Toledo), S. Beckwith (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Messier 81 and Messier 82

WISE image of the spiral galaxies Messier 82 (seen edge-on at the top of the image) and Messier 81 (see face-on at the bottom of the image). M81 and M82 swept by one another a few hundred million years ago--triggering a burst of star formation in both--and will likely pass near each other again multiple times until they eventually merge into a single galaxy.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

ESO's Hidden Treasures

The ESO launched a rather technical competition in 2010 inviting amateur astronomers to sift through their vast archives of astronomical data for diamonds in the rough. First prize--and what a prize it was, a trip to ESO's Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile--went to astronomy enthusiast Igor Chekalin. Below is a sampling of the 20 highest ranked images out of the nearly 100 entries submitted, including Chekalin's winning submission of the reflection nebula Messier 78.

M78

Abell 1060

Orion Nebula

NGC3169 & NGC3166 and SN 2003cg

NGC 3521

Source/Credit: ESO

Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's object in Dutch)

Hanny's Voorwerp is named after its discoverer Hanny van Arkel who, in 2007, was participating in the Galaxy Zoo project when she noticed the Voorwerp--a supergiant cloud of glowing green gas--but couldn't classify it, and so brought it to the attention of the Galaxy Zoo forum. There it caught the attention of other Galaxy Zoo volunteers, the Galaxy Zoo team and eventually professional astronomers.

Credit: NASA, ESA, William Keel (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), and the Galaxy Zoo team



This diagram explains the formation of the strange green object known as Hanny’s Voorwerp. Astronomers believe that it is part of the long streamer of gas that extends from galaxy IC 2497, lit up brightly by the searchlight beam of a recently extinguished quasar. Credit: NASA, ESA

Henize 2-10

This composite image of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 combines X-ray data (purple) from Chandra, radio data (yellow) from the NRAO's Very Large Array and optical data (red, green and blue) from Hubble.


Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Virginia/A.Reines et al); Radio (NRAO/AUI/NSF); Optical (NASA/STScI)



The Andromeda Galaxy in Infrared and X-ray

This mosaic of the Andromeda spiral galaxy reveals explosive stars in its interior (X-rays in blues) and cooler, dusty stars forming in its many rings (infrared light seen in orange hues). The image is a combination of observations from the Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories.

Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/J.Fritz

Mapping Dark Matter

This map of dark matter (tinted blue) in the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689 was created by inferring the invisible matter's location and mass based on the degree of gravitational lensing Abell 1689 produces.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe (NASA JPL/Caltech and STScI)

NGC 7252

New image of the colliding galaxies NGC 7252 taken by ESO's Wide Field Imager in Chile.
Credit: ESO

NGC 4452

Hubble edge-on image of the galaxy NGC 4452.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

NGC 5427, Messier 100 (NGC 4321), NGC 1300, NGC 4030, NGC 2997 and NGC 1232

Paranal Observatory's Very Large Telescope's infrared shots of six spiral galaxies: NGC 5427, Messier 100 (NGC 4321), NGC 1300, NGC 4030, NGC 2997 and NGC 1232.













Credit: ESO/P. Grosbøl

NGC 3982

Hubble's view of the spiral galaxy NGC 3982.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253)

An infrared mosaic of the Sculptor galaxy (NGC 253)--the nearest starburst galaxy to the Milky Way--from WISE.

Red shows active side of infant stars heating up their dusty cocoons.
Green shows emerging young stars.
Blue shows stars of all ages.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

NGC 1365

This infrared light image taken by the Very Large Telescope's HAWK-I camera is of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365.
Credit: ESO/P. Grosbøl

NGC 300

This La Silla Observatory image of the spiral galaxy NGC 300 is assembled from many different images with a combined exposure time of about fifty hours. NGC 300 is similar in structure to our own Milky Way galaxy.
Credit: ESO

NGC 4666

Visible light image of the starburst galaxy NGC 4666 (center) and neighbouring galaxy NGC 4668 (lower left) from the ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Credit: ESO/J. Dietrich

Abell 1689 Galaxy Cluster

Hubble image of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689 whose massive gravity acts like a lens distorting and magnifying the light of galaxies behind it into the arcs of light surrounding the cluster in this image.
Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Jullo (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), P. Natarajan (Yale University), and J.-P. Kneib (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, CNRS, France)

NGC 4696

Featured prominently in this Hubble image is the elliptical galaxy NGC 4696 with its atypical single long dust lane sweeping 30,000 light-years across its face.
Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

Spiral Galaxy NGC 4911

This is a long exposure (28 hours) natural-color image from Hubble Space Telescope of the NGC 4911 galaxy located 320 million light-years in the Coma Cluster of galaxies.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Antennae Galaxies

Composite Image of the Antennae galaxies: Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red).


Credit: NASA, ESA, SAO, CXC, JPL-Caltech, and STScI

IC 3418 Takes A Plunge And Leaves Stars In Its Wake

The turbulent starforming wake (or tail) of the galaxy IC 3418 is the result of its plunge through the hot gas that permeates the Virgo galaxy cluster.


Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech