Back on May 11th of this year, the shuttle Atlantis blasted off, sending its crew on a very important two-week visit to the International Space Station. Their mission? To fix our ultimate eye-in-the-sky, the Hubble Space Telescope. This week, the first pictures from the pimped-out piece of space gear were released to the public.
Here are a few for your viewing pleasure! Clicking on the image will take you to a larger version at HubbleSite.org.
This one depicts the quite beautiful death of a star within a planetary nebula, charmingly named NGC 6302.
This deep space image was taken inside the globular star cluster Omega Centauri. Hey - wasn't that where the Last Starfighter defeated Xur? No wait, that was Rylos, my mistake.
This is galactic violence at its worst in Stephan's Quintet. I blame it on all the galactic violence in TV shows and video games these days.
This last one is of the famous star nursery, the Carina Nebula - and if you think toddlers are trouble, try looking after millions of baby stars. They are SO fussy when they start to undergo fusion.
The top image is in visible light while the bottom in infrared shows more detail of a star burst occurring withing the nebula.Find more fantastic images, including wallpapers for your desktop, at the Hubble Site gallery.
~Rheanna Sand
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment