Space Photos This Week: Virgin Galactic Flight, More

WISE Rosebud

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Young stars create blue "dewdrops" on a cosmic rosebud in a picture from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite released on March 16, 2010.

The red rose is actually dust being heated by a cluster of stars called Berkeley 59. The green regions along the edges are heated hydrocarbons associated with combustion.

Published March 24, 2010

Swirling Star Birth

Image courtesy M. Kornmesser, ESA

Large, bright clouds of gases and dust swirl in the early galaxy dubbed SMM J2135-0102 in an artist's rendering released March 21, 2010. New data on the ten-billion-year-old galaxy reveal vigorous star formation.

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Atacama Pathfinder Experiment got an unexpectedly clear glimpse of this "star factory," thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. This effect causes light from the distant galaxy to be magnified by the gravity of another galaxy cluster between SMM J2135-0102 and Earth.

Published March 24, 2010

Primitive Black Hole

Image courtesy R. Hurt, JPL-Caltech, NASA

A 13-billion-year-old supermassive black hole lacking a ring of dust (shown in an artist's conception) is one of the most primitive black holes yet discovered, according to astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope, who announced the find in the March 15 issue of the journal Nature. (Full story: "Immaculate Black Holes Found Near Universe's Conception.")

Most black holes are surrounded by a bright disk of swirling gases, which in turn is rimmed by a darker ring called a dust torus. But in the very early universe, molecules had yet to combine to form dust, so black holes from that time period have only the hot, gassy disks.

Published March 24, 2010

Orion's Heart

Image courtesy G. Bacon, L. Frattare, Z. Levay, and F. Summers, NASA

Bright, massive stars light up a dusty canyon in the heart of the Orion Nebula, as seen in a 3-D computer model used in the production of the new IMAX film Hubble 3D.

Created using Hubble Space Telescope images, the 3-D model allows viewers to drift through the 15-light-year-wide canyon, where stellar winds from massive stars are sculpting gas clouds even as smaller stars give birth to new planetary systems.

Published March 24, 2010