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Orion rising in the Southern Hemisphere day to night timelapse transition. Please select 1080p HD
Plenty to see in this timelapse. Trucks descend the mountain pass just after dark, then head the other way pre-dawn. Some interesting clouds, and then you see Orion rise inverted from a northern perspective.
Jupiter rises just before dawn in a thin wedge of Zodiacal Light.
This image shows a region of the Milky Way that lies within the constellation of Scorpius, close to the central plane of the galaxy. The region hosts a dense cloud of dust and gas associated with the molecular cloud IRAS 16562-3959, clearly visible as an orange smudge among the rich pool of stars at the centre of the image.
Clouds like these are breeding grounds for new stars. In the centre of this cloud the bright object known as G345.4938+01.4677 can just be seen beyond the veil of gas and dust. This is a very young star in the process of forming as the cloud collapses under gravity.
The young star is very bright and heavy — roughly 15 times more massive than the Sun — and featured in a recent Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) result. The team of astronomers made surprising discoveries within G345.4938+01.4677 — there is a large disc of gas and dust around the forming star as well as a stream of material flowing out from it.
Theories predict that neither such a stream, nor the disc itself, are likely to exist around stars like G345.4938+01.4677 because the strong radiation from such massive new stars is thought to push material away.
This image was made using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), which is part of ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. It is the world’s largest survey telescope, with a main mirror that measures over four metres across. The colour image was produced by the VVV survey, which is one of six large public surveys that are devoted to mapping the southern sky.
The bright star in the bottom left of the image is known as HD 153220.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observes some of the most beautiful galaxies in our skies — spirals sparkling with bright stellar nurseries (heic1403), violent duos ripping gas and stars away from one another as they tangle together (heic1311), and ethereal irregular galaxies that hang like flocks of birds suspended in the blackness of space (heic1114, heic1207).
However, galaxies, like humans, are not all supermodels. This little spiral, known as NGC 4102, has a different kind of appeal, with its tightly-wound spiral arms and understated, but charming, appearance.
NGC 4102 lies in the northern constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). It contains what is known as a LINER, or low-ionization nuclear emission-line region, meaning that its nucleus emits particular types of radiation — specifically, emission from weakly-ionised or neutral atoms of certain elements. Even in this sense, NGC 4102 is not special; around one third of all nearby galaxies are thought to be LINER galaxies.
Many LINER galaxies also contain intense regions of star formation. This is thought to be intrinsically linked to their centres but just why is still a mystery for astronomers — either the starbursts pour fuel inwards to fuel the LINERs, or this active central region triggers the starbursts. NGC 4102 does indeed contain a starburst region towards its centre, where stars are being created at a rate much more furious than in a normal galaxy. This star formation is taking place within a small rotating disc, around 1000 light-years in diameter and with a mass some three billion times the mass of the Sun. ...
This galaxy was host to a supernova earlier this year, which is designated as ASASSN-14ha. It is the left of the pair of stars to the right of the core.
Although not new, these are very impressive! His image of WeBo 1 is the first ever colour image of this rare planetary nebula that is near the Heart Nebula.
This sprinkle of cosmic glitter is a blue compact dwarf galaxy known as Markarian 209. Galaxies of this type are blue-hued, compact in size, gas-rich, and low in heavy elements. They are often used by astronomers to study star formation, as their conditions are similar to those thought to exist in the early Universe.
Markarian 209 in particular has been studied extensively. It is filled with diffuse gas and peppered with star-forming regions towards its core. This image captures it undergoing a particularly dramatic burst of star formation, visible as the lighter blue cloudy region towards the top right of the galaxy. This clump is filled with very young and hot newborn stars.
This galaxy was initially thought to be a young galaxy undergoing its very first episode of star formation, but later research showed that Markarian 209 is actually very old, with an almost continuous history of forming new stars. It is thought to have never had a dormant period — a period during which no stars were formed — lasting longer than 100 million years.
The dominant population of stars in Markarian 209 is still quite young, in stellar terms, with ages of under 3 million years. For comparison, the Sun is some 4.6 billion years old, and is roughly halfway through its expected lifespan. ...
This spectacular image of the star cluster Messier 47 was taken using the Wide Field Imager camera, installed on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This young open cluster is dominated by a sprinkling of brilliant blue stars but also contains a few contrasting red giant stars.
Although it is bright and easy to see, Messier 47 is one of the least densely populated open clusters. Only around 50 stars are visible in a region about 12 light-years across, compared to other similar objects which can contain thousands of stars.
Messier 47 has not always been so easy to identify. In fact, for years it was considered missing, as Messier had recorded the coordinates incorrectly. The cluster was later rediscovered and given another catalogue designation — NGC 2422. The nature of Messier’s mistake, and the firm conclusion that Messier 47 and NGC 2422 are indeed the same object, was only established in 1959 by Canadian astronomer T. F. Morris. ...
