--- Carl Sagan
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Close-up of some of the most interesting parts of the Hubble Space Telescope image of the active galaxy Messier 82 (M82).
Left: A portion of M82’s bluish disk, largely composed of hot young stars. Numerous bright blue-white star-forming clumps and wisps of darker, cooler dust and gas appear superimposed on the disk.
Centre: The central “inner-city” portion of the galaxy shows the combined light of countless stars and reveals numerous star-forming clumps, dark red clouds of gas and dust obscuring the light from the galaxy’s core, and an overall field of fainter red (cooler) and blue (hotter) stars.
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In Eastern Algeria’s stretch of the Sahara, the Tifernine Dune Field - a section of the Grand Erg Oriental dune sea - meets the Tinrhert Plateau, as seen in a 2008 astronaut photograph.
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Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant
This supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago. But this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star’s core.
Source: apod.nasa.gov
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Io’s Surface: Under Construction
Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA
This moon of Jupiter holds the distinction of being the Solar System’s most volcanically active body — its bizarre looking surface continuously formed and reformed by lava flows. Generated using 1996 data from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, this high resolution composite image of Io is centered on the side of Io that always faces away from Jupiter. It has been enhanced to emphasize Io’s surface brightness and color variations, revealing features as small as 1.5 miles across. The notable absence of impact craters suggests that the entire surface is covered with new volcanic deposits much more rapidly than craters are created
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NGC 604: Giant Stellar Nursery
Credit: H. Yang (UIUC), HST, NASA
Scattered within this cavernous nebula, cataloged as NGC 604, are over 200 newly formed hot, massive, stars. At 1,500 light-years across, this expansive cloud of interstellar gas and dust is effectively a giant stellar nursery located some three million light-years distant in the spiral galaxy, M33.
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The setting sun highlights cloud patterns—as well as the Pacific Ocean surface itself—in this photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station.
Source: earthobservatory.nasa.gov
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Ghost of the Cepheus Flare
Credit & Copyright: Stephen Leshin
Spooky shapes seem to haunt this starry expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus. Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds faintly visible in dimly reflected starlight. Far from your own neighborhood on planet Earth, they lurk at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away.
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