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Bird of Prey
Fast stellar winds, blowing at 1,700 km/s (3.8 million mph) from this star, create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of the star's evolution.
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Flight of the Navigator
Fast stellar winds, blowing at 1,700 km/s (3.8 million mph) from this star, create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of the star's evolution.
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The Space Jockey
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Arachnophobia
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Lobster Fra Diavolo!
The intricate patterns are caused by complex interactions between interstellar winds, radiation pressures, magnetic fields, and gravity.
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Gabriella Revealed!
The edge of the wall of gas and dust at the right bears a strong resemblance to a human face in profile, with the "bump" in the centre corresponding to a nose.
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The Butterfly Nebula
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Flames of Carina
Resembling a Burning tree in a raging Australian bushfire, the hydrogen "flames" of Carina appear to burn brightly in the Southern portion of the Great Carina Nebula.
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Colours of Carina
"The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina."
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Do the Funky Chicken
To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place.
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Strange Bedfellows
This emission nebula was cataloged by Karl Henize while spending 1948-1951 in South Africa doing research for his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Michigan. Henize later became a NASA astronaut and, at age 59, became the oldest rookie to fly on the Space Shuttle during an eight-day flight of the Challenger in 1985. He died just short of his 67th birthday in 1993 while attempting to climb the north face of Mount Everest, the world's highest peak.
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Fire in the Sky
Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away.
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Tarantula Twist
The largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies, the cosmic arachnid sprawls across this spectacular view composed with narrowband data centred on emission from ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
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A Cosmic Bubble – Redux
Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon.
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Twists of the Tarantula
About 180 thousand light-years away, it's the largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of Galaxies.