http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/
Tons of pictures around there, find which ones you like best and share! :number1
:wow
I was at the inauguration, I was in the huge clump of people on the very bottom left corner to the left of the monument, we were looking at a Jumbo-Tron:
look at all those brown specks …lol
:rofl
From my perspective it was 50/50 white/black.
Oh my god the capital is being attacked by …beees!!!
That volcanic eruption looks like hell has been unleased on earth :eek3
Actually I forgot about this site, but I’m glad I found the old thread.
Time to bump.
A plume of ashes spewed by the Chaiten volcano as seen from the city of Chaiten, 1,200km south from Santiago, Chile on May 5, 2008. (ALVARO VIDAL/AFP/Getty Images)
A huge tornado funnel cloud touches down in Orchard, Iowa, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:04 p.m. The Globe Gazette and Mitchell County Press News reported that Lori Mehmen of Orchard, took the photo from outside her front door. Mehmen said the funnel cloud came near the ground and then went back up into the clouds. Besides tree and crop damage, no human injuries were reported. (AP Photo/Lori Mehmen)
Elsie, one of two Stensgard family dogs, sands on the earthen and sandbag dike surrounding the Stensgard home, not pictured, which overlooks a flooded outbuilding as the Red River continues to rise, Wednesday, March 25, 2009 in Fargo, N.D. Due to the flooding, the Stensgard home can only be reached by boat. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
A motorist abandons her flooded vehicle on I-85 South near Lilburn, Ga., as part of the highway becomes covered with water during rush hour on Monday, Sept. 21, 2009. (AP Photo/The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, Curtis Compton)
Cars lie overturned after the highway they were travelling on was destroyed in an earthquake in Santiago February 27, 2010. (REUTERS/Marco Fredes)
A boat lies marooned on a street in Talcahuano, Chile, Monday, March 1, 2010. An 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday triggering a tsunami that hit coastal communities. (AP Photo/ Natacha Pisarenko)
It would suck to get the middle one out :lol
Red vans awaiting shipment, parked on disused aerodrome at Upper Heyford Oxfordshire, UK. [google map] (© Jason Hawkes)
5
Apartment blocks, Hong Kong mainland. China. (© Jason Hawkes) #
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Roar Rollercoaster, Six Flags America, Maryland. [google map] (© Jason Hawkes) #
25
Newly built housing and new housing plots on edge of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
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The Maunsell Sea Forts. Fortified towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom. [google map] (© Jason Hawkes) #
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A red-tailed hawk uses its talons to to grab a meal of Brazilian free-tailed bat as a cloud of the bats emerges from Frio Cave near Uvalde, Texas, during an evening hunt for insects. (Mark Wilson/Globe Staff) #
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Russian Emergency Ministry staff watch a blast ripping through the ice covering the Kan river in the town of Kansk some 220 km (136.7 miles) from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk April 4, 2009. Explosive experts used dynamite to break the ice cover to ease pressure that could cause floods as melting snow increases the river’s water volume. (REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin) #
7
A stone’s-eye-view of two tracks made by the sailing stones of Death Valley’s Racetrack playa. The dried clay surface has a beautiful texture, and there is a palpable aura of mystery over the entire three-square-mile playa. The Racetrack was not entirely free of human influence though: several weeks before this taken many of the stones were stolen, leaving long trails without a traveler at the end. (Photo and caption by Tucker Sylvestro) #
14
The edge of an iceberg floating just off the coast of Antarctica. (Photo and caption by Mike Matas) #
18
When the wave conditions are right a wave appears, infrequently, as a result of the splash back off the cliff connecting with an incoming wave. This causes the incoming wave to pop up, creating fan-like shapes. On this particular day, over the two hours I spent on the rocks, this wave only appeared once. This is that shot. (Photo and caption by Aaron Feinberg) #’
20
Even during the Arirang Mass Games in North Korea, the ultimate expression of the state ideology, an individual can still sometimes stand out from the crowd and break free of the collective. If only just for a moment. (Photo and caption by Brendyn Zachary) #
14
Romain Grosjean (left) and Adam Khan (right) test Renault F1 cars in the desert in Dubai, April 9, 2009. The testing was part of the Renault F1 Roadshow taking place in Dubai. (REUTERS/ Eric Vargiolu) #
19
People sunbathe as Ferrari Brazilian’s driver Felipe Massa drives at the Monaco racetrack on May 21, 2009 in Monte Carlo, during the second free practice session of the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix. (PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images) #
20
An old car dropped in an industrial trash bin advertising the Cash for Clunkers program at Battlefield Ford in Culpepper, Virginia, August 1, 2009. “Cash for Clunkers”, or the Car Allowance Rebate System was a $3 billion U.S. federal scrappage program to allow U.S. residents to trade in older cars for newer, more fuel-efficient models. Nearly 700,000 cars were traded under the program. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst) #
27
Palestinian civilians and medics run to safety during an Israeli strike over a UN school in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip early on January 17, 2009. A woman and a child were killed early today in the Israeli strike on the UN-run school in northern Gaza where civilians were sheltering from the fighting, medics and witnesses said. (MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images) #
4
Supporters of ousted Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya clash with soldiers near the presidential residency Tegucigalpa, Monday, June 29. 2009. Police fired tear gas to hold back thousands of Hondurans outside the occupied presidential residency as world leaders from Barack Obama to Hugo Chavez appealed to Honduras to reinstate Zelaya as president. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix) #
9
Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) employees work on the last-pre cast segments (rings) of the Phase-II underground tunneling project between neighborhoods Jangpura and Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi on October 12, 2009, part of a larger project to have metro lines to cover the entire National Capital Region for the 2010 Commonwealth Games (MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images) #
^Armory had a car just like that on Central :lol
EDIT: 2 posts up, with the car in the dumpster for Cash for Clunkers
some great pics in here!!
Love the F1 + sunbathers pic. And pretty much every other one in this thread.
Riot police are attacked by anti-government protesters in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on April 7, 2010. (REUTERS/Vladimir Pirogov)
4
Kyrgyz riot police block a road during an anti-government protest in Bishkek on April 7, 2010. (VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Kyrgyz riot policemen come under a hail of stones thrown by anti-government protesters in Bishkek on April 7, 2010. (VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Kyrgyz riot police try to protect themselves as they fall back from stone-throwers in Bishkek on April 7, 2010. (VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images) #
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A riot policeman fires teargas toward demonstrators in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday, April 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev) #
43
Protesters break through an entrance of Kyrgyz government headquarters on the central square in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Thursday, April 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev) #
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Protesters pose in Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s cabinet room inside Kyrgyz government headquarters on central square in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Thursday, April 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) #
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People stand in the vandalized parliament hall in Bishkek April 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Vladimir Pirogov) #
^ :lol
20
People sift through earthquake devastation in Gyegu, China on April 17, 2010. (LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images) #
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A young Buddhist monk makes a face while he cooks food for quake survivors at Gyegu town in west China’s Qinghai province on April 17, 2010. (AP Photo) #
5
Thick smoke rises above the burning Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) #
6
A spreading plume of smoke (lower right) from the burning Deepwater Horizon oil rig is visible in this image of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 21. The distance from the rig to the shore is approximately 80 km (50 mi). (NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/University of Wisconsin SSEC)#
8
A boat makes its way through crude oil that has leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico on April 28, 2010 near New Orleans, Louisiana. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images) #
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Weathered oil from a leaking pipeline that resulted from last week’s explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig is seen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana Tuesday, April 27, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) #
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Oil, bottom right, is seen approaching the Louisiana Coast, top left, in this aerial photo taken 8 miles from shore, Wednesday, April 28, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) #
21
A Hurricane Katrina-damaged car still sits half-submerged near cypress trees in Venice, Louisiana on Thursday, April 29, 2010. A region still recovering from the 2005 hurricane season is bracing for a growing oil spill that resulted from last week’s explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) #
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The growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is captured in this image from NASA’s (MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra satellite. This natural-color image acquired April 29, 2010 shows a twisting patch of oil nearly 125 km (78 mi) wide. (NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/University of Wisconsin SSEC) #
2
This composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope survey to make the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. The core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. At this distance - 26,000 light-years away - Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own solar system. (NASA, ESA, Q.D. Wang (UMass, Amherst), JPL, and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)) More (see this on Google Sky) # 6
Stars burst to life in the chaotic Carina Nebula in this image of a huge pillar taken in visible and in infrared light by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Composed of gas and dust, the nebula resides 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. This image, taken in visible light, shows the tip of the 3-light-year-long pillar, bathed in the glow of light from hot, massive stars off the top of the image. Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from these stars are sculpting the pillar and causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of gas and dust can be seen flowing off the top of the structure. Nestled inside this dense structure are fledgling stars. They cannot be seen in this image because they are hidden by a wall of gas and dust. Although the stars themselves are invisible, one of them is providing evidence of its existence. Thin puffs of material can be seen traveling to the left and to the right of a dark notch in the center of the pillar. The matter is part of a jet produced by a young star. Farther away, on the left, the jet is visible as a grouping of small, wispy clouds. A few small clouds are visible at a similar distance on the right side of the jet. Astronomers estimate that the jet is moving at speeds of up to 850,000 miles an hour. The jet’s total length is about 10 light-years. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) # 8
The core of the spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri glitters with the combined light of 2 million stars. The entire cluster contains 10 million stars, and is among the biggest and most massive of some 200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy. Omega Centauri lies 17,000 light-years from Earth. Image acquired in June of 2002. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 9
Messier 104 (M104), the Sombrero galaxy. has a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth. X-ray emission suggests that there is material falling into the compact core, where a 1-billion-solar-mass black hole resides. In the 19th century, some astronomers speculated that M104 was simply an edge-on disk of luminous gas surrounding a young star, which is prototypical of the genesis of our solar system. But in 1912, astronomer V. M. Slipher discovered that the hat-like object appeared to be rushing away from us at 700 miles per second. This enormous velocity offered some of the earliest clues that the Sombrero was really another galaxy, and that the universe was expanding in all directions. (NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 11
What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour - fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes! A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, which lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. NGC 6302 was imaged on July 27, 2009, with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur from the planetary nebula were used to create this composite image. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) # 15
This image shows the edge of a giant gaseous cavity within the star-forming region called NGC 3324. The glowing nebula has been carved out by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from several hot, young stars. A cluster of extremely massive stars, located well outside this image in the center of the nebula, is responsible for the ionization of the nebula and excavation of the cavity. The image also reveals dramatic dark towers of cool gas and dust that rise above the glowing wall of gas. The dense gas at the top resists the blistering ultraviolet radiation from the central stars, and creates a tower that points in the direction of the energy flow. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot, young stars in NGC 3324 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Located in the Southern Hemisphere, NGC 3324 is at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), home of the Keyhole Nebula and the active, outbursting star Eta Carinae. The entire Carina Nebula complex is located at a distance of roughly 7,200 light-years, and lies in the constellation Carina. (NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 17
This very deep image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 along with a spectacular backdrop of more distant galaxies. It was created from a total of 80 separate pictures through yellow and near-infrared filters. (NASA, ESA and K. Cook, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 19
A small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri which boasts nearly 10 million stars. The stars in Omega Centauri are about about 16,000 light-years from Earth, and are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The majority of the stars in the image are yellow-white, like our Sun. These are adult stars that are shining by hydrogen fusion. Toward the end of their normal lives, the stars become cooler and larger. These late-life stars are the orange dots in the image. Even later in their life cycles, the stars continue to cool down and expand in size, becoming red giants. These bright red stars swell to many times larger than our Sun’s size and begin to shed their gaseous envelopes. After ejecting most of their mass and exhausting much of their hydrogen fuel, the stars appear brilliant blue. Only a thin layer of material covers their super-hot cores. These stars are desperately trying to extend their lives by fusing helium in their cores. At this stage, they emit much of their light at ultraviolet wavelengths. When the helium runs out, the stars reach the end of their lives. Only their burned-out cores remain, and they are called white dwarfs (the faint blue dots in the image). White dwarfs are no longer generating energy through nuclear fusion and have gravitationally contracted to the size of Earth. They will continue to cool and grow dimmer for many billions of years until they become dark cinders. All of the stars in the image are cozy neighbors. The average distance between any two stars in the cluster’s crowded core is only about a third of a light-year, roughly 13 times closer than our Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Although the stars are close together, WFC3’s sharpness can resolve each of them as individual stars. If anyone lived in this globular cluster, they would behold a star-saturated sky that is roughly 100 times brighter than Earth’s sky. Hubble observed Omega Centauri on July 15, 2009, in ultraviolet and visible light. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) # 21
This portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way located some 170,000 light-years away. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. The image, taken by Hubble on October 20-27, 2009, spans about 100 light-years across. (NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce, R. O’Connell, and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee) More # 22
Hubble’s Advance Camera for Surveys (ACS) recently took this image of galaxy NGC 4522 in the Virgo Cluster. Backdropped by many other more distant galaxies, the impression given by NGC 4522 is that it is flying apart. A phenomenon called ram pressure stripping is mangling the galaxy as it hurtles through a region of hot x-ray emitting gas at 10 million kilometers per hour- stripping away its own gas content. NGC 4522 is some 60 million light years away. More # 23
The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357 that extends one degree on the sky in the direction of the Scorpius constellation. Part of the nebula is ionised by the youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The presence of these surrounding gas clouds makes probing into the region even harder. One of the top candidates for the title of “Milky Way stellar heavyweight champion” was, until now, Pismis 24-1, a bright young star that lies in the core of the small open star cluster Pismis 24 (the bright stars in the Hubble image) about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Pismis 24-1 was thought to have an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses. New NASA/ESA Hubble measurements of the star, have, however, resolved Pismis 24-1 into two separate stars, and, in doing so, have “halved” its mass to around 100 solar masses. (NASA, ESA and Jesoes Maz Apellyniz, Instituto de astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain, Davide De Martin, ESA/Hubble) More (see this on Google Sky) #
This composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope survey to make the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. The core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. At this distance - 26,000 light-years away - Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own solar system. (NASA, ESA, Q.D. Wang (UMass, Amherst), JPL, and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)) More (see this on Google Sky) # 6
Stars burst to life in the chaotic Carina Nebula in this image of a huge pillar taken in visible and in infrared light by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Composed of gas and dust, the nebula resides 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. This image, taken in visible light, shows the tip of the 3-light-year-long pillar, bathed in the glow of light from hot, massive stars off the top of the image. Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from these stars are sculpting the pillar and causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of gas and dust can be seen flowing off the top of the structure. Nestled inside this dense structure are fledgling stars. They cannot be seen in this image because they are hidden by a wall of gas and dust. Although the stars themselves are invisible, one of them is providing evidence of its existence. Thin puffs of material can be seen traveling to the left and to the right of a dark notch in the center of the pillar. The matter is part of a jet produced by a young star. Farther away, on the left, the jet is visible as a grouping of small, wispy clouds. A few small clouds are visible at a similar distance on the right side of the jet. Astronomers estimate that the jet is moving at speeds of up to 850,000 miles an hour. The jet’s total length is about 10 light-years. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) # 8
The core of the spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri glitters with the combined light of 2 million stars. The entire cluster contains 10 million stars, and is among the biggest and most massive of some 200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy. Omega Centauri lies 17,000 light-years from Earth. Image acquired in June of 2002. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 9
Messier 104 (M104), the Sombrero galaxy. has a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth. X-ray emission suggests that there is material falling into the compact core, where a 1-billion-solar-mass black hole resides. In the 19th century, some astronomers speculated that M104 was simply an edge-on disk of luminous gas surrounding a young star, which is prototypical of the genesis of our solar system. But in 1912, astronomer V. M. Slipher discovered that the hat-like object appeared to be rushing away from us at 700 miles per second. This enormous velocity offered some of the earliest clues that the Sombrero was really another galaxy, and that the universe was expanding in all directions. (NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 11
What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour - fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes! A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, which lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. NGC 6302 was imaged on July 27, 2009, with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur from the planetary nebula were used to create this composite image. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) # 15
This image shows the edge of a giant gaseous cavity within the star-forming region called NGC 3324. The glowing nebula has been carved out by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from several hot, young stars. A cluster of extremely massive stars, located well outside this image in the center of the nebula, is responsible for the ionization of the nebula and excavation of the cavity. The image also reveals dramatic dark towers of cool gas and dust that rise above the glowing wall of gas. The dense gas at the top resists the blistering ultraviolet radiation from the central stars, and creates a tower that points in the direction of the energy flow. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot, young stars in NGC 3324 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Located in the Southern Hemisphere, NGC 3324 is at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), home of the Keyhole Nebula and the active, outbursting star Eta Carinae. The entire Carina Nebula complex is located at a distance of roughly 7,200 light-years, and lies in the constellation Carina. (NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 17
This very deep image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 along with a spectacular backdrop of more distant galaxies. It was created from a total of 80 separate pictures through yellow and near-infrared filters. (NASA, ESA and K. Cook, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA) More (see this on Google Sky) # 19
A small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri which boasts nearly 10 million stars. The stars in Omega Centauri are about about 16,000 light-years from Earth, and are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The majority of the stars in the image are yellow-white, like our Sun. These are adult stars that are shining by hydrogen fusion. Toward the end of their normal lives, the stars become cooler and larger. These late-life stars are the orange dots in the image. Even later in their life cycles, the stars continue to cool down and expand in size, becoming red giants. These bright red stars swell to many times larger than our Sun’s size and begin to shed their gaseous envelopes. After ejecting most of their mass and exhausting much of their hydrogen fuel, the stars appear brilliant blue. Only a thin layer of material covers their super-hot cores. These stars are desperately trying to extend their lives by fusing helium in their cores. At this stage, they emit much of their light at ultraviolet wavelengths. When the helium runs out, the stars reach the end of their lives. Only their burned-out cores remain, and they are called white dwarfs (the faint blue dots in the image). White dwarfs are no longer generating energy through nuclear fusion and have gravitationally contracted to the size of Earth. They will continue to cool and grow dimmer for many billions of years until they become dark cinders. All of the stars in the image are cozy neighbors. The average distance between any two stars in the cluster’s crowded core is only about a third of a light-year, roughly 13 times closer than our Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Although the stars are close together, WFC3’s sharpness can resolve each of them as individual stars. If anyone lived in this globular cluster, they would behold a star-saturated sky that is roughly 100 times brighter than Earth’s sky. Hubble observed Omega Centauri on July 15, 2009, in ultraviolet and visible light. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team) More (see this on Google Sky) # 21
This portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way located some 170,000 light-years away. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. The image, taken by Hubble on October 20-27, 2009, spans about 100 light-years across. (NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce, R. O’Connell, and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee) More # 22
Hubble’s Advance Camera for Surveys (ACS) recently took this image of galaxy NGC 4522 in the Virgo Cluster. Backdropped by many other more distant galaxies, the impression given by NGC 4522 is that it is flying apart. A phenomenon called ram pressure stripping is mangling the galaxy as it hurtles through a region of hot x-ray emitting gas at 10 million kilometers per hour- stripping away its own gas content. NGC 4522 is some 60 million light years away. More # 23
The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357 that extends one degree on the sky in the direction of the Scorpius constellation. Part of the nebula is ionised by the youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The presence of these surrounding gas clouds makes probing into the region even harder. One of the top candidates for the title of “Milky Way stellar heavyweight champion” was, until now, Pismis 24-1, a bright young star that lies in the core of the small open star cluster Pismis 24 (the bright stars in the Hubble image) about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Pismis 24-1 was thought to have an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses. New NASA/ESA Hubble measurements of the star, have, however, resolved Pismis 24-1 into two separate stars, and, in doing so, have “halved” its mass to around 100 solar masses. (NASA, ESA and Jesoes Maz Apellyniz, Instituto de astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain, Davide De Martin, ESA/Hubble) More (see this on Google Sky) #
Intersecting swirling trails left by the earlier passage of dust devils across sand dunes, as they lifted lighter reddish-pink dust and exposed the darker material below. Also visible are darker slope streaks along dune edges, formed by a process which is still under investigation. More, or see location on Google Mars. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
2
An eroded crater in a larger plain with a scalloped appearance near Pavonis Mons. More, or see location on Google Mars. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) #
3
Part of the Abalos Undae dune field. The sands appear blueish because of their basaltic composition, while the lighter areas are probably covered in dust. More, or see location on Google Mars. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) #
8
Victoria Crater at Meridiani Planum. The crater is approximately 800 meters (about half a mile) in diameter. Layered sedimentary rocks are exposed along the inner wall of the crater, and boulders that have fallen from the crater wall are visible on the crater floor. NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity explored this crater and its walls in 2006. More, or see location on Google Mars. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) #