Sets itself the task of re-envisioning spatial assignments.
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. NGC 3718 is the twisted spiral galaxy in the upper-right corner of the image. Its distinctive shape is likely the result of gravitational interactions with the smaller spiral galaxy, NGC 3729, to the left. Below and to the right of NGC 3718 is the Hickson Compact Group 56, which consists of five interacting galaxies. These galaxies aren't smaller. Instead, they are about eight times further away than NGC 3718 and NGC 3729. The image was generated with observations in the U (violet), B (blue), V (green), I (orange) and Hydrogen-Alpha (red) filters. This image is rotated 35 degrees counterclockwise from North is up, East is left.
Caption
The image from the Blanco 4-meter telescope was taken in four filters, three of which are for blue, green and near-infrared light. The fourth is designed to isolate a specific color of red, known as hydrogen-alpha, which is produced by warm hydrogen gas.
NGC 253 is a nearby galaxy at a distance of approximately 8 million light years away. The galaxy is some 60,000 light years in diameter- and its full disk extends beyond the field of view shown here. However, at this resolution (click on image) you can make out many features of this galaxy including: clumpy and dark clouds of gas, bright blue and white star clouds, and pink HII (clouds of molecular hydrogen) regions which are tremendous stellar nurseries. Also note the small galaxy just "above" the disk at the top left of the image. This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing Program (AOP) program at Kitt Peak Visitor Center during 2014.
A runaway star, called CW Leo, plowing through the depths of space and piling up interstellar material. Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Known as the N44 superbubble complex, this cloudy tempest is dominated by a vast bubble about 325 by 250 light-years across. A cluster of massive stars inside the cavern has cleared away gas to form a distinctive mouth-shaped hollow shell. While astronomers do not agree on exactly how this bubble has evolved, for as long as 10 million years, they do know that the central cluster of massive stars is responsible for the cloud’s unusual appearance. It is likely that the explosive death of one or more of the cluster’s most massive and short-lived stars played a key role in the formation of the large bubble. The image provides one of the most detailed views ever obtained of this relatively large region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, located some 150,000 light-years away and visible from the Southern Hemisphere. The image captures light of specific colors that reveal the compression of material and the presence of gases (primarily excited hydrogen gas and lesser amounts of oxygen and “shocked” sulfur) in the cloud. Multiple smaller bubbles appear in the image as bulbous growths clinging to the central superbubble. Most of these regions were probably formed as part of the same process that shaped the central cluster. Their formation could also have been “sparked” by compression as the central stars pushed the surrounding gas outward. Our view into this cavern is believed to be like looking through an elongated tube, which gives the object its monstrous mouth-like appearance.
In this illustration, stars are seen to be in close orbit around the supermassive black hole that lurks at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Using Gemini North of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab and ESO’s VLT, astronomers have measured more precisely than ever before the position and velocity of four of these stars, called S2, S29, S38, and S55, and found them to be moving in a way that shows that the mass in the center of the Milky Way is almost entirely due to the Sgr A* black hole, leaving very little room for anything else.