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Superior Auroras
Photograph by Shawn Malone
A burst of solar wind—charged particles from the sun—struck Earth on Tuesday, triggering auroras as far south as Michigan, as seen in this picture taken from the shores of Lake Superior in Marquette.
"Just saw some amazing aurora this morning. Color was unreal. Haven't seen this kind of activity in awhile," photographer Shawn Malone said in an email.
(Watch a time-lapse video of auroras seen from a plane window.)
Published April 14, 2011
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Fiery Loops
Image courtesy Joe DePasquale, Digitized Sky Survey 2/ESO
Like tentacles waving in space, large loops of hot gas rise from the nebula NGC 3582 in a new picture from the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile.
The interstellar cloud of gas and dust is an active star-forming region. But as very massive stars live fast and die young, their explosive demises eject material, likely forming the loops. Meanwhile, newborn stars are emitting intense ultraviolet radiation, heating the gas and causing the nebula to glow.
Published April 14, 2011
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Galactic Magnifying Glass
Image courtesy J. Richard (CRAL) and J.-P. Kneib (LAM)/ESA/NASA
Thanks to a cluster of galaxies called Abell 383, astronomers were able to find a galaxy that formed when the universe was just 950 million years old. In the above picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, released April 13, this early galaxy appears as a faint dot just above the bright central galaxy.
The distant galaxy was detected using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. The many galaxies in the Abell 383 cluster are collectively so massive that their gravity acts like a huge magnifying glass, bending and amplifying light from objects behind the cluster.
Published April 14, 2011
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Moon's Missing Slice?
Image courtesy Space Science Institute/JPL/NASA
Spotted near Saturn's rings, the cratered moon Mimas appears to have had a piece sliced off in a new picture from NASA's Cassini orbiter released April 11.
The unusual sight is due to Herschel Crater, an 81-mile-wide (130-kilometer-wide) impact basin that gives the tiny moon a Death Star-like appearance when seen face-on (see a Herschel Crater closeup). In the new shot, Cassini captured Mimas at such an angle that the crater instead makes the moon look flattened on one side.
Published April 14, 2011
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Space Dragon
Image courtesy WISE Team/JPL-Caltech/NASA
Seen in visible light, the nebula known as SH 2-235 looks like a small, amber cloud. But for NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, the nebula springs to life as a green "dragon" more than a hundred light-years wide.
This new WISE picture, released April 8, shows that the dusty cloud is a star-forming region that includes examples of early stages of stellar evolution, such as baby stars wrapped up in their natal blankets of dust and clusters of massive stars emerging from cold clumps of gas.
Published April 14, 2011
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Seeds of Future Stars
Image courtesy D. Arzoumanian (CEA Saclay) for the “Gould Belt survey” Key Programme Consortium/SPIRE/PACS/Herschel/ESA
Bright filaments of molecular gas (amber color) stretch into space near the Cocoon Nebula (blue) in a new picture from the European Space Agency's Herschel space telescope released April 13.
Herschel sees in far-infrared and submillimeter light, and this composite picture combines data from three wavelengths. The view allows scientists to see 27 distinct filaments in this particular region, as well as 45 bright spots within the filaments thought to be prestellar cores—the seeds of stars in the making.
Published April 14, 2011
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