Next APOD: 2009 November 16 - M83s Center from Refurbished Hubble

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APOD: 2009 November 16 - M83s Center from Refurbished Hubble

M83's Center from Refurbished Hubble
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgement: R. O'Connell (U. Virginia)

Explanation: What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy M83? Just about everything, from the looks of it. M83 is one of the closest spiral galaxies to our own Milky Way Galaxy and from a distance of 15 million light-years, appears to be relatively normal. Zooming in on M83's nucleus with the latest telescopes, however, shows the center to be an energetic and busy place. Visible in the above image -- from the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 pointing through the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope -- are bright newly formed stars and giant lanes of dark dust. An image with similar perspective from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the region is also rich in very hot gas and small bright sources. The remnants of about 60 supernova blasts can be found in the above image.

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Next APOD: 2009 November 12 - Art and Science in NGC 981

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APOD: 2009 November 12 - Art and Science in NGC 981

Art and Science in NGC 981
Credit & Copyright: Joseph Brimacombe

Explanation: This beautiful telescopic skyscape features spiral galaxy NGC 981. The island universe is about 50,000 light-years across and lies some 60 million light-years away toward the constellation Aries. An artistic presentation, the image shows spiky foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy and convoluted dust clouds that hang above our galactic plane, dimly reflecting starlight. It also captures NGC 981 in a cosmic moment important to astrophysicists on planet Earth. Light from supernova SN2009js, absent is previous images, is indicated by the two lines just below and left of the galaxy.s center. The supernova itself, the death explosion of a massive star within the plane of galaxy NGC 981, was just discovered in October by supernova search teams in Japan and the US.

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Next APOD: 2009 November 11 - Great Observatories Explore Galactic Center

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APOD: 2009 November 11 - Great Observatories Explore Galactic Center

Great Observatories Explore Galactic Center
Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC, and STScI

Explanation: Where can a telescope take you? Four hundred years ago, a telescope took Galileo to the Moon to discover craters, to Saturn to discover rings, to Jupiter to discover moons, to Venus to discover phases, and to the Sun to discover spots. Today, in celebration of Galileo's telescopic achievements and as part of the International Year of Astronomy, NASA has used its entire fleet of Great Observatories, and the Internet, to bring the center of our Galaxy to you. Pictured above, in greater detail and in more colors than ever seen before, are the combined images of the Hubble Space Telescope in optical light, the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory in X-ray light. A menagerie of vast stars fields are visible, along with dense star clusters, long filaments of gas and dust, expanding supernova remnants, and the energetic surroundings of what likely is our Galaxy's central black hole. Many of these features are labeled on a complementary annotated image. Of course, a telescope's magnification and light gathering ability creates only an image of what a human could see if visiting these places. To actually go requires rockets.

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Next APOD: 2009 November 9 - NGC 2623: Galaxy Merger from Hubble

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APOD: 2009 November 9 - NGC 2623: Galaxy Merger from Hubble

NGC 2623: Galaxy Merger from Hubble
Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Evans (Stony Brook) et al.

Explanation: Where do stars form when galaxies collide? To help find out, astronomers imaged the nearby galaxy merger NGC 2623 in high resolution with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007. Analysis of this Hubble image and images of NGC 2623 in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope, in X-ray light by XMM-Newton, and in ultraviolet light by GALEX, indicate that two originally spiral galaxies appear now to be greatly convolved and that their cores have unified into one active galactic nucleus (AGN). Star formation continues around this core near the above image center, along the stretched out tidal tails visible on either side, and perhaps surprisingly, in an off-nuclear region on the upper left where clusters of bright blue stars appear. Galaxy collisions can take hundreds of millions of years and take several gravitationally destructive passes. NGC 2623, also known as Arp 243, spans about 50,000 light years and lies about 250 million light years away toward the constellation of the Crab (Cancer). Reconstructing the original galaxies and how galaxy mergers happen is often challenging, sometimes impossible, but generally important to understanding how our universe evolved.

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