Astronauts - Blog Posts

True colour (left) and false colour views of Uranus from Voyager 2 taken on 17th of January, 1986 from a distance of 5.7 million miles.

Credits : NASA

The Horsehead Nebula in Infrared from Hubble

Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the above gorgeously detailed image was taken in 2013 in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch. The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis . (Text adapted from APOD.NASA.GOV)

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hubble sees a more holistic view of the Butterfly Nebula or NGC 6302

Hubble was recently retrained on NGC 6302, known as the "Butterfly Nebula," to observe it across a more complete spectrum of light, from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared, helping researchers better understand the mechanics at work in its technicolor "wings" of gas. The "wings" of NGC 6302 are regions of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit that are tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour. NGC 6302 lies between 2,500 and 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

Astronauts at work in space.

Credit : Pinterest