Astronomy Picture of the Day
Posted By admin On February 19, 2011 @ 10:19 pm In Photo Essays | Comments Disabled
Visit the NASA/JPL website to view more Astronomy Pictures of the Day [1]
[2]
Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841 Close Up
Credit: NASA [3], ESA [4], and the Hubble Heritage [5] (STScI [6] / AURA [7]) - ESA [4] / Hubble Collaboration
Explanation: A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major [8]. This sharp view of the gorgeous island universe [9] shows off a striking yellow nucleus and galactic disk. Dust lanes, small, pink star-forming regions, and young blue star clusters are embedded in the patchy, tightly wound [10] spiral [11] arms. In contrast [12], many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms with large star-forming regions. NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own [13] Milky Way, but this close-up Hubble image [14] spans about 34,000 light-years along the galaxy’s inner region. X-ray images [15] suggest that resulting winds and stellar explosions create plumes of hot gas extending into a halo around NGC 2841.
Article printed from Recorder Online: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com
URL to article: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/2011/02/19/astronomy-picture-of-the-day-15/
URLs in this post:
[1] Astronomy Pictures of the Day: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/
[2] Image: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ngc2841c_hst_lg1200.jpg
[3] NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/
[4] ESA: http://www.spacetelescope.org/
[5] Hubble Heritage: http://heritage.stsci.edu/
[6] STScI: http://www.stsci.edu/
[7] AURA: http://www.aura-astronomy.org/
[8] Ursa Major: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070108.html
[9] island universe: http://cass.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/Galaxies.html
[10] wound: http://casa.colorado.edu/~danforth/science/spiral/
[11] spiral: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030925.html
[12] In contrast: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091017.html
[13] our own: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/galaxy.html
[14] close-up Hubble image: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/06/
[15] X-ray images: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/n2841/
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