Seven Dusty Sisters
28.05.2018

Is this really the famous Pleaides star cluster? Known for its iconic blue stars, the Pleaides is shown here in infrared light where the surrounding dust outshines the stars. Here three infrared colors have been mapped into visual colors (R=24, G=12, B=4.6 microns).

Messier 43
10.07.2015

Often imaged but rarely mentioned, Messier 43 is a large star forming region in its own right. It's just part of the star forming complex of gas and dust that includes the larger, more famous neighboring Messier 42, the Great Orion Nebula.

The Orion Bullets
10.01.2013

Cosmic bullets pierce the outskirts of the Orion Nebula some 1500 light-years distant in this sharp infrared close-up. Blasted out by energetic massive star formation the bullets, relatively dense, hot gas clouds about ten times the size of Pluto's orbit, are blue in the false color image.

RCW 86: Historical Supernova Remnant
10.11.2011

In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism - a part of the sky identified with Alpha and Beta Centauri on modern star charts. The new star was visible for months and is thought to be the earliest recorded supernova.

Herschel s Cocoon
19.08.2011

In this remarkable infrared skyscape of interstellar clouds adrift in the high flying constellation Cygnus, the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula. Also known as IC5146, the dusty star forming region is shown...

The Coldest Brown Dwarf
30.08.2011

This cosmic snapshot composed with image data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite captures a multitude of faint stars and distant galaxies toward the constellation Lyra at wavelengths longer than visible light. But the object circled at the center is not quite a star.

The Whirlpool Galaxy in Infrared Dust
26.01.2011

How do spiral galaxies form stars? To help find out, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the nearby photogenic spiral M51 in infrared light to highlight the dust that traces the dense gas that best forms stars. To further isolate the dust, much of the optical light from stars has also been digitally removed.

The Galactic Center in Infrared from 2MASS
30.05.2010

The center of our Galaxy is a busy place. In visible light, much of the Galactic Center is obscured by opaque dust. In infrared light, however, dust glows more and obscures less, allowing nearly one million stars to be recorded in the above image.

The Once and Future Stars of Andromeda
20.01.2011

The big, beautiful Andromeda Galaxy, aka M31, is a spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years away. Two space-based observatories have combined to produce this intriguing composite image of Andromeda, at wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. The remarkable view follows the locations of this galaxy's once and future stars.

MWC 922: The Red Square Nebula
23.03.2011

What could cause a nebula to appear square? No one is quite sure. The hot star system known as MWC 922, however, appears to be embedded in a nebula with just such a shape. The above image combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt.