Breathtaking new images arrive from the Hubble Space Telescope

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One of the perks of being a science journalist is that you are regularly impressed with the best images from different space agencies around the world. This week, Hubble was the darling, and the venerable Space Telescope provided us with these five absolutely stunning images of stars, galaxies and nebulae.

We’ll start with an elegant barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light-years from Earth, called NGC 5728. This image was taken in the optical and infrared bands, which alone provide a striking composition. However, what the image only indicates is that NGC 5728 is a “monumental energetic” place called the Seyfert Galaxy. The brilliant shine in the center is what gives it away. These very high energy galaxies are powered by their active nuclei, called active galactic nuclei (AGN).

Some AGNs emit so much radiation that they can blind telescopes viewing them, but limiting our observations to visible and infrared light means that we can look directly into the center of this galaxy’s reactive nucleus. To capture the portrait, Hubble used its Wide Field Camera (WFC), which is sensitive in these bands. Best of all, the image is available from ESA in sizes that make an excellent wallpaper.

Next, a glorious nebula surrounds a star nursery named NGC 346, which sits at the center of the Little Magellanic Cloud. The star-forming region is surrounded by a spectacular structure of columns and filaments. The flows and explosions of hot young stars shake the nebula’s clouds, erode the densest regions and leave smoke trails in their wake.

The sinuous crest of dust that encircles the region stands out like an artist’s blossoming. Hubble saw this structure in a highly detailed silhouette against the region’s (very pink) background glow. As new stars are born, more of the dust will be removed, revealing even more regions of star formation within the cluster.

Elsewhere in the sky, globular cluster NGC 6717 is found in the constellation Sagittarius, near the center of the Milky Way. Backscattering glow from the galactic center creates a luminous veil of dust around these closely clustered stars. This darkening effect is called “extinction”. The extinction makes it difficult to observe this globular cluster and others like it, so astronomers used both the WFC and Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to create this image.

Prominent stars closer to the house can be seen in the center of the image. They are surrounded by “intersecting diffraction peaks” resulting from interactions with the Hubble secondary mirror.

Where NGC 6717 is extinct, Palomar 6 observers must contend with blush: a phenomenon where the interposition of gas and dust absorbs certain frequencies of starlight, changing what we see. Palomar 6 is another globular cluster near the center of the galaxy. It is officially named ESO 520-21 and is found in the constellation of Ophiuchus.

The constellation represents Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, who is depicted grabbing a snake. Ophiuchus was one of the 48 original constellations described by Ptolemy around the 2nd century. The 48 constellations are among the 88 constellations currently recognized by the International Astronomical Union.

And finally, I present to you the flamboyant halo of colors that is AG Carinae. This image is a composite of previous observations, superimposed on Hubble’s 31st anniversary image of the beautiful Newborn Nebula. Ionized hydrogen and nitrogen are shown in red here, while visible spectrum images of dust reflecting starlight are shown in blue:

AG Carinae is a rarity, one of about fifty of its kind known to exist throughout the Local Group. It is a very young star that will only live a few million years. The mass of the star is estimated to be about seventy times the mass of our sun, but it shines a million times brighter. This enormous mass makes it unstable; the star sits in the center of a shell that it has carved out with its repeated explosions, forming an iris-like nebula as wide as the distance between Earth and Alpha Centauri. It will continue this tug-of-war between gravity and its own radiative force until it has finally thrown out enough material to become stable.

For more on AG Carinae and her nebula, check out ESA’s press release on this new scan, which includes a nifty slider tool you can use to compare versions.

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