Do Telescopes Actually Take Colorful Photographs Or Are The Pretty Colorful Photographs Of Galaxies That

Just Another Milky Way Shot Taken From Death Valley, CA

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What forms lurk in the mists of the Carina Nebula? The dark ominous figures are actually molecular clouds, knots of molecular gas and dust so thick they have become opaque. In comparison, however, these clouds are typically much less dense than Earth’s atmosphere. Featured here is a detailed image of the core of the Carina Nebula, a part where both dark and colorful clouds of gas and dust are particularly prominent. The image was captured last month from Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Although the nebula is predominantly composed of hydrogen gas – here colored green, the image was assigned colors so that light emitted by trace amounts of sulfur and oxygen appear red and blue, respectively. The entire Carina Nebula, cataloged as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically.

Object Names: Carina Nebula

Image Type: Astronomical

Credit: John Ebersole

Time And Space

 Solar filaments a.k.a. prominences – when observed at the solar limb (above), are long clouds of partially ionized plasma suspended above the Sun’s surface by strongly sheared magnetic structures, called filament channels, that can support the dense plasma against solar gravity. Filaments may form at various locations on the Sun, however, they are always found within preexisting filament channels above polarity inversion lines which separate areas of opposite magnetic polarity regions.

Credit: NASA/SDO/LMSAL

Crab Pulsar at the core of the Crab Nebula

Just so you know, you can always watch the Earth live from the ISS. Its really relaxing to me

Sh2-119 Sharpless 119,emission nebular in Narrowband by Paul C. Swift on Flickr.

ESO 378-1

Spiral galaxy NGC 4911 in the Coma Cluster

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