Under the gravitational grasp of a large gang of galaxies, the small bluish galaxy NGC 1427A is plunging headlong into the Fornax cluster. The apparently small, perfect spiral galaxy in the upper left is in the distant background.
The Andromeda Galaxy photographed with a 12.5-inch telescope by amateur astronomer Robert Gendler.
A halo of hot, infalling gas surrounding galaxy NGC 5746. It was detected with NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope.
Spiral galaxies seen edge-on often show dark lanes of interstellar dust blocking light from the galaxy’s stars, as in this image of the galaxy NGC 4565 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II). The dust is formed in the outer regions of dying stars, and it drifts off to mix with interstellar gas. The new analysis of quasar colors shows that galaxies also expel dust to distances of several hundred thousand light years, ten times farther than the visible edge of the galaxy seen in this image. The thin haze of intergalactic dust dims and reddens the light from background quasars.
This Chandra image of M87 shows high energy X-rays. The faint, outer ring is about 85,000 light years across and gives an unambiguous signature of a weak shock wave (like a sonic boom) generated by an outburst from the supermassive black hole at the center of M87. The properties of the shock, including the change in temperature and density in the gas, are consistent with classical physics. The bright yellow, inner ring may be the gas just outside the "piston" that is powering the shock further out, and the ring in the middle was probably produced by another outburst.
In this composite image of spiral galaxy M106, optical data is shown as yellow, radio data from the Very Large Array appears as purple, X-ray data from Chandra is coded blue and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope appears red. The anomalous arms appear as purple and blue emission.
Galaxy NGC5291 (orange, at the center) and its ring of debris (in blue) as seen by the Very Large Array interferometer. Researchers have found evidence for the presence of dark matter in dense star-forming groups (shown in red), where 'recycled' dwarf galaxies exist.
This composite image shows a tail that has been created as a galaxy plunges into the galaxy cluster Abell 3627. X-rays from Chandra (blue) and optical light (white and red) from the SOAR telescope show that as the galaxy plummets, it sheds material and forming stars behind it in a tail that stretches over 200,000 light years long. This demonstrates that stars can form well outside of their parent galaxy.
A big galaxy is stealing gas right off the "back" of its smaller companion in this new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image
A classic spiral galaxy with open arms and vigorous star formation, the young galaxy NGC 300 is located about seven million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. Image is from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer.
This color image of NGC4622 shows the strong inner counter-clockwise outward winding single arm and the strong outer clockwise outward winding pair of arms.
Markarian 273 is a galaxy with a bizarre structure that vaguely resembles a toothbrush. The "handle" of the brush is about 130 thousand light-years long and is strongly indicative of a merger between two galaxies. Markarian 273 has an intense region of starburst, where 60 solar masses of new stars are born each year. The galaxy is located 500 million light-years away from Earth.
Dust clogs the disks of spiral galaxies, obscuring their light. When galaxies are edge-on, such as NGC 891 shown here, dust is especially prominent.
The black hole at the center of the Triangulum Galaxy has a mass that is no more than 1,500 times the mass of the sun. Its spiral arms are loosely wound at an angle of 43 degrees.
A theoretical model of a galaxy like the Milky Way, showing trails of stars torn from disrupted satellite galaxies that have merged with the central galaxy. The structures seen in the SDSS-II star maps support this prediction of a complicated outer Milky Way. The region shown is about one million light years on a side; the sun is just 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way and would appear close to the center of this picture.
A red, green and blue image of NGC 1275, which was created by combining the data using Hubble's three Advanced Camera for Survey filters. The three images were processed with the method of Lupton et al (2004) to preserve the colour of objects avoiding saturation. The detail in the ilaments was enhanced by using the unsharp mask filter in the GNU Image Manipulation Tool.
Segue 1 is 50 times dimmer than the star cluster pictured above but is 1000 times more massive, meaning most of its mass must be made up of dark matter.
A pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 147 was captured by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. One of the galaxies (left-most galaxy shown) is relatively undisturbed, apart from a smooth ring of starlight. The other galaxy (right-most in image) exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.
This image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope showcases the brilliant core of NGC 1569, one of the most active galaxies in our local neighborhood. The entire core is 5,000 light-years wide.
This composite image shows the hot gas around the elliptical galaxy M84 in an X-ray image (blue) and a radio image (red). The bubbles (some visible in the hot gas) were generated by jets coming out of M84's central black hole. The top bubble (blue) is bursting and the hot relativistic gas, shown in red, is spilling out.
This interacting group contains several galaxies (called Arp 194), along with a "cosmic fountain" of stars, gas and dust that stretches over 100,000 light-years.
Composite of three images is one of the most detailed ever of the Sombrero Galaxy.
The massive radio galaxy PKS 0745-191, for which the cluster is named, appears at the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image. The picture forms the inset in the Suzaku image above.
This composite of visible (or optical), radio, and X-ray data reveals the giant elliptical galaxy M87.
The nearly edge-on galaxy NGC 5746 is partially obscured in visible-light photographs, making accurate classification impossible. This image from the Spitzer Space Telescope reveals the galaxy's true nature, showing a dramatic ring of warm dust surrounding the galaxy's bright nucleus.
In the Spitzer image of NGC 1097, infrared light with shorter wavelengths is blue, while longer-wavelength light is red.
This image is an edge-on view of the spiral galaxy NGC 4945, which is thought to look much like the Milky Way, but with a brighter center that harbors a supermassive black hole. Sites of active star formation in the image appear bright pink.
This mosaic of M31 merges 330 individual images taken by the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope aboard NASA's Swift spacecraft. It is the highest-resolution image of the galaxy ever recorded in the ultraviolet. The image shows a region 200,000 light-years wide and 100,000 light-years high (100 arcminutes by 50 arcminutes).
Astronomers obtained this portrait of Barnard’s Galaxy using the Wide Field Imager attached to the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. Also known as NGC 6822, this dwarf irregular galaxy is one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbors.
This photo of the spiral galaxy NGC 891 was the "first light" image made by the 32-inch reflecting telescope at the University of Utah's new, $860,000 Willard L. Eccles Observatory, located in southern Utah about 250 miles from the university's Salt Lake City campus. The observatory will be used for research, student education and even public star parties once it is equipped for remote-control operations.
This Hubble Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4710 shows a faint, ethereal "X"-shaped bulge at the galaxy's center.
This image of the central parts of Centaurus A reveals the parallelogram-shaped remains of a smaller galaxy that was gulped down about 200 to 700 million years ago. The image is based on data collected with the SOFI instrument on ESO’s New Technology Telescope at La Silla.
ESO's Wide Field Imager has captured the intricate swirls of the spiral galaxy Messier 83, a smaller look-alike of our own Milky Way. Shining with the light of billions of stars and the ruby red glow of hydrogen gas, it is a beautiful example of a barred spiral galaxy, whose shape has led to it being nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel.
An image of the stretched-out Messier 66 galaxy, as seen through three filters on the Hubble Space Telescope.
This image of the galaxy M82 was taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Scientists now think the galaxy is home to an oddity known as a micro-quasar.
A leggy cosmic creature, actually the "hiding galaxy" IC 342, comes out of hiding in this new infrared view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Full Story.
This infrared image of the nearby galaxy Messier 83 was taken by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
The starburst galaxy NGC 1313, as imaged by the Gemini South 8-meter telescope in Chile using narrow-band filters in the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph. NGC 1313 has a well-defined bar with twisted, asymmetric spiral arms. While pronounced star formation appears along the outer reaches of both arms, it’s much stronger to the northeast (left on the new Gemini image). Other regions of star formation are nearby, especially to the southwest (right). Full Story.
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer found a tail behind a galaxy called IC 3418. The star-studded tail can be seen as detected by the space telescope in ultraviolet light. The tail has escaped detection in visible light. Full Story.
The galaxy PGC 39058 is located about 14 million light-years away from Earth, and contains millions of stars – many of them not unlike the bright star that appears in the foreground. This striking Hubble image shows that the nearby star easily outshines the more distant PGC 39058 galaxy.
This striking new image, taken with the powerful HAWK-I infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile, shows NGC 1365. This beautiful barred spiral galaxy is part of the Fornax cluster of galaxies, and lies about 60 million light-years from Earth.
This beautiful image is from the Hubble Space Telescope and shows the galaxy NGC 1300 which is a classic example of a barred spiral.
This image of the Andromeda Galaxy is a composite of an infrared photo from ESA's Herschel space telescope and the XMM-Newton’s X-ray telescope. The infrared frame shows rings of dust that trace gaseous reservoirs where new stars are forming and the X-ray image shows stars approaching the ends of their lives.
The Whirlpool Galaxy, AKA spiral galaxy M51, sports a new look when seen in near-infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope. With most of the starlight removed, this image provides the sharpest view of the dust structure of the galaxy to date.
Messier 82 (M82) galaxy, known as a starburst galaxy, produces stars at rate tens or even hundreds of times faster than in normal galaxies. Astronomers believe that a brush with neighboring galaxy M81 millions of years ago, creating shock waves, set off this blast of star formation.
In this image of galaxy NGC 157, the spiral arms appear to form a giant "S". The HAWK-I instrument (High-Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager) on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile produced this picture of the galaxy. NCG 157 lies distantly in the constellation of Cetus (the Sea Monster).
The galaxy NGC 2841 — shown here in a Hubble image — currently has a relatively low star formation rate compared to other spirals. It is one of several nearby galaxies that have been chosen for a new study, in which scientists are observing a variety of different stellar nursery environments and birth rates.
This WISE image shows dust speckling the Andromeda galaxy's spiral arms. The hot dust, heated by newborn stars, outlines the thin arms to the center of the galaxy.
Blue young stars shine in the spiral arms of galaxy NGC 5584, as shown by this Hubble Space Telescope image. Thin, dark dust lanes flow from the yellowish core, filled with older stars. The reddish dots throughout the image are largely background galaxies. Several exposures taken in visible light between January and April 2010 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 combine to make this image.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 1275, the galaxy located in the center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster. The red threadlike filaments are composed of cool gas suspended by a magnetic field.
Galaxy NGC 4214 is dominated by a huge glowing cloud of hydrogen gas in which new stars are being born. A heart-shaped hollow — possibly galaxy NGC 4214’s most eye-catching feature — can be seen at the centre of this.
The elliptical galaxy NGC 5128, host of the Centaurus A radio source, as it appears in visible light. The galaxy is located about 12 million light-years away and is one of the closest that sports an active supermassive black hole
Astronomers class UGC 9128, shown here, as a dwarf irregular galaxy, It lacks a well-defined shape, and probably contains only around one hundred million stars, far fewer than are found in a large spiral galaxy such as the Milky Way. UGC 9128 lies about 8 million light-years away, in the constellation of Boötes (The Herdsman).
Monday, May 30, 2011: Spiral galaxy Messier 90, in the constellation Virgo, displays obvious interaction with the nearby smaller gallery. The galaxy's core has moved from the center of the disk, and the spiral arms show strong disturbances in several places.
—Tom Chao
This picture of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which could be the Milky Way's twin, was taken at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Spiral galaxy NGC 634 appears to have a perfect spiral structure, as shown by this Hubble Space Telescope photograph. However, recently a type Ia supernova known as SN2008a was spotted in the galaxy, and it briefly rivalled the brilliance of its entire host galaxy. However, it can no longer be seen in this image, which was taken around a year and a half later.
Friday, June 3, 2011: This new image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3244 was taken with the help of the President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus, during his visit to ESO’s Paranal Observatory on April 6, 2011. The Czech Republic joined ESO in 2007. To the right of the galaxy, an unremarkable foreground star in our own Milky Way, TYC 7713-527-1, shines brightly. The galaxy resides at a distance of about 90 million light years, while the star lies thousands of times closer within our own galaxy.
—Tom Chao
Photo of a new supernova in the nearby galaxy M51. Researchers noticed the explosion between May 31 and June 1, 2011.
Viewed in visible light, Markarian 739 resembles a smiling face. It actually is a pair of merging galaxies which lies 425 million light-years away.
Spiral galaxy NGC 7479 displays tightly wound arms of the spiral galaxy spinning in an anticlockwise direction, in this Hubble Space Telescope photograph. However, at radio wavelengths, this galaxy (sometimes nicknamed the Propeller Galaxy) spins the other way, with a jet of radiation bending in the opposite direction of the stars and dust in the arms of the galaxy. Astronomers think that the radio jet in NGC 7479 began its bizarre backwards spin following a merger with another galaxy.
Newly released images obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in July 1997 reveal episodes of star formation that are occurring across the face of the nearby galaxy NGC 4214. Located some 13 million light-years from Earth, NGC 4214 is currently forming clusters of new stars from its interstellar gas and dust.
Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, the galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, the faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk.
NGC 3314 is actually two large spiral galaxies
Messier 101: The Pinwheel Galaxy.
The central bulge of this spiral galaxy seen almost face-on is composed of old stars giving a yellowish appearance, while the spiral amrs host younger stars denoted by their blue-light emission and star formation regions denoted by their red-light emission.
