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The Hubble telescope captured this crystal-clear optical and near-infrared view of a dwarf galaxy that is glowing brightly with hot, young stars and gas clouds, making it an ideal laboratory for studying star formation and evolution, astronomers reported Thursday.
The image shows that even in the scale of galaxies, great things come in small packages.
"Dwarf galaxy NGC 4214 may be small, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in content. It is packed with everything ... an astronomer could ask for," the European Space Agency noted in an image advisory.
The galaxy is located around 10 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici ("The Hunting Dogs"). Inside the hole of the large, heart-shaped cavity at the center of the image lies a large cluster of massive, young stars ranging in temperature from 10,000 to 50,000 degrees C. Their strong stellar winds blew the cavity clear of gas, which prevents any further star formation.
Other regions of the galaxy contain large amounts of star-forming gas, seen glowing red in this image. The area with the most hydrogen gas, and thus the youngest cluster of stars, about 2 million years old, lies in the upper portion of this image. This region is visible due to ionization of the surrounding gas by ultraviolet light of a young cluster of stars within.
Clusters of much older, red supergiant stars in a late stage of their evolution are also dotted across the galaxy. The variety of stars at different stages in their evolution indicate that the recent and ongoing starburst periods are by no means the first, and the galaxy's abundant supply of hydrogen means star formation will continue into the future.
The image was made with the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope.
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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Alas .... those looking for god. Take a gander.
Nature can do such a better job of displaying the power of ... well .... nature, than that of our feeble imaginations.
Don't you think?
..I don't know... my imagination can do a pretty amazing job of displaying power. But then again, it is just my imagination. ;-)
I think we do a great job of imagining power, but a poor one at communicating it within cognitive terms that others can relate to.
Almost like a dream.
I remembered one morning, the one and only time I could consciously recall being in a dream (and realizing I was actually dreaming at that moment) and I was absolutely terrified. And, this was pre-inception days. I remember being able to effect matter, change my environment and essentially effect the sky above me. While this is all commonplace in most of our dreams, I've never been self-aware I was dreaming within the dream itself (at least that I can remember) and that moment came at such a shock to me I remember waking up absolutely terrified.
It was a really weird feeling. Hard to describe feeling so scared, yet so amazed all at once.
Simply beautiful. I have been in search of a new desktop background.
Mob,
Try this one. It's way to wide for a screen saver, but one of the more beautiful artist renditions of space (as an infographic) that I've seen in a while.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Systemesolaire2.jpg
It's a 30,000 pixel wide image; one may not wish to download while also, let's say, participating in a video conference... Just sayin'
Michael,
It's nothing to sneeze at ... or download with a slow connection. It's a big file and best viewed on a large monitor.
I'm a designer and I work on a 27" Mac. It's quite beautiful to see under optimal conditions.
agreed.
Michael - Don't you already have this picture?
Probably; I'm not as good at keeping my photo library organized as I would like.
Michael,
Are you an Astronomer?
If you are (and you love art like me), you may want to check out Jeremy Geddes' work.
He does awesome surreal pieces, my favorite's are a series he did of a lone astronaut floating about in random, urban scapes.
Some of his work can be dark, but a lot of it is extremely captivating.
http://www.jeremygeddesart.com/
Chad, that is so mean!
I'm on a deadline, and you've given me a link to a wonderful distraction!
MUST FOCUS! (phew)
And yes, I am an astronomer (minor league, but I have fun).
Is that Moya in the upper right hand corner?
Dealing with "time" with galaxies is tricky. So ... this is 10 million light years away, meaning what we see happened 10 million years ago, but the young stars are 2 million years old the way we see them here, which means they are really now 12 million years old now, but we can't see that yet. Ouch ... my head hurts.
If the stars are 2 million years old wouldnt that mean that they formed in the galaxy 8 million years ago? If the light from the galaxy is 10 million years old then we are already seeing the 2 million year old stars thus they formed 2 million years ago and the light from them and the galaxy took 10 million years to travel to us so we could view them in Hubble.
It's easier than that. We talk about age as it appears to us right now. We do not usually even consider light distance when talking about such stuff.
If I'm talking about a "star that went supernova yesterday", I'm talking about when we see the event.
Another consideration - we have only a rough idea of how far astronomical objects are away from us, and those numbers are revised frequently. I don't know if the galaxy that contains the supernova I saw yesterday is 9 million light years away, or 10 million, or something else.
(ASTRONOMY'S DIRTY SECRET: We are often overjoyed when we can round a number off to the nearest million.)
Michael: So it really is just all guess work with you guys huh?
Sorry been gone, unexpected travel opportunity arose :)
Mitchell
Hiya Mitchell!
We prefer to call it a S.W.A.G. - a Scientific Wild "Alec" Guess - it sounds so much better that way.
JAFO, JAFO's all !
wo amazing whats out there,beautiful pictures and great back grounds for my computer, cant find anything else like that on earth :)
looks really good on my 50" plasma screen :)
You guys do know that the stars are created because it is the will of Jesus, right?
Sorry. I couldn't resist due to all the religious nut balls who posted on the latest Stephen Hawking articles.