The Week's Coolest Space Images
Where The Hot Young Stars Are (Header Image)
This image shows the star cluster RCW 38, as captured by the HAWK-I infrared imager mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. By gazing into infrared wavelengths, HAWK-I can examine dust-shrouded star clusters like RCW 38, providing an unparalleled view of the stars forming within. This cluster contains hundreds of young, hot, massive stars, and lies some 5500 light-years away in the constellation of Vela (The Sails).
The Not-Hyperbolically-Named Pillars Of Creation
The Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16, contains the young star cluster NGC 6611. It also the site of the spectacular star-forming region known as the Pillars of Creation, which is located in the southern portion of the Eagle Nebula.
This new composite image shows the region around the Pillars, which are about 5,700 light years from Earth.
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The Veins Of Madagascar
As the International Space Station flew overhead, NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold captured this photograph of a changing landscape in the heart of Madagascar, observing drainage into the sea in the Betsiboka Estuary due to decimation of rainforests and coastal mangroves.
An Asteroid That's Really Two
Near-Earth asteroid 2017 YE5 was discovered with observations provided by the Morocco Oukaimeden Sky Survey on Dec. 21, 2017, but no details about the asteroid's physical properties were known until the end of June. This is only the fourth "equal mass" binary near-Earth asteroid ever detected, consisting of two objects nearly identical in size, orbiting each other. The new observations provide the most detailed images ever obtained of this type of binary asteroid.
A Stunning View Of Shanghai
The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over Shanghai, China. One of the most populous cities in the world and home to over 24 million people, the city is visible in the lower right of the image just above the Yangtze River mouth. As a significant global financial centre it is also the site of the world's busiest container ports because of its strategic location on the Yangtze River delta.
A Barely-There Supernova
In November 2008, 14-year-old Caroline Moore from New York discovered a supernova in UGC 12682. This made her the youngest person at the time to have discovered a supernova. Follow-up observations by professional astronomers of the so-called SN 2008ha showed that it was peculiarly interesting in many different ways: its host galaxy UGC 12862 rarely produces supernovae. It is one of the faintest supernovae ever observed and after the explosion it expanded very slowly, suggesting that the explosion did not release copious amounts of energy as usually expected.
