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Messier 83 by space.by.jase
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quiltofstars · 2 months
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The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, M83 // Matthew Russell
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sitting-on-me-bum · 1 year
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“Hydra’s Pinwheel” by Peter Ward.
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille first observed what later became known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy on 23 February 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. This image, taken exactly 270 years later, combines a deep set of H-alpha exposures along with color data to highlight the ruby-like star-forming regions of this beautiful barred spiral galaxy.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest
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chibinotan · 2 years
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Snowy Spiral
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cosmicfocus · 2 years
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M83
The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, M83. #astronomy
Galaxy NGC 5236 Image exposure: 12.7 MinutesImage field of view: 39.2 x 25.9 arcminImage date: 2022-04-05 Sometimes known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, M83 in Hydra is a good target at magnitude 7.1 with a diameter of 13.6 arc-minutes. It’s a weak barred face-on spiral galaxy with a similar diameter to the Milky Way and is about 160 Milky Way diameters distant (16 million light years), with…
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Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
"The outlying regions around the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, or M83, are highlighted in this composite image from NASA Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the National Science Foundation Very Large Array in New Mexico."
Image and information from NASA.
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stardustastronomyblog · 10 months
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The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
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The Southern Pinwheel galaxy—also known as M82—is ablaze with star formation. Hundreds of thousands of stars live and die in clusters in the spiral arms. This Hubble image unveils a tapestry of the drama spread across 50,000 light-years. Credit: NASA, ESA.
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Hubble finds spiralling stars, providing window into early universe Nature likes spirals – from the whirlpool of a hurricane, to pinwheel-shaped protoplanetary disks around newborn stars, to the vast realms of spiral galaxies across our universe. Now astronomers are bemused to find young stars that are spiraling into the center of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery called NGC 346 may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars. This is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say. The Small Magellanic Cloud has a simpler chemical composition than the Milky Way, making it similar to the galaxies found in the younger universe, when heavier elements were more scarce. Because of this, the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud burn hotter and so run out of their fuel faster than in our Milky Way. Though a proxy for the early universe, at 200,000 light-years away the Small Magellanic Cloud is also one of our closest galactic neighbors. Learning how stars form in the Small Magellanic Cloud offers a new twist on how a firestorm of star birth may have occurred early in the universe's history, when it was undergoing a "baby boom" about 2 to 3 billion years after the big bang (the universe is now 13.8 billion years old). The new results find that the process of star formation there is similar to that in our own Milky Way. Only 150 light-years in diameter, NGC 346 boasts the mass of 50,000 Suns. Its intriguing shape and rapid star formation rate has puzzled astronomers. It took the combined power of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to unravel the behavior of this mysterious-looking stellar nesting ground. "Stars are the machines that sculpt the universe. We would not have life without stars, and yet we don't fully understand how they form," explained study leader Elena Sabbi of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "We have several models that make predictions, and some of these predictions are contradictory. We want to determine what is regulating the process of star formation, because these are the laws that we need to also understand what we see in the early universe." Researchers determined the motion of the stars in NGC 346 in two different ways. Using Hubble, Sabbi and her team measured the changes of the stars' positions over 11 years. The stars in this region are moving at an average velocity of 2,000 miles per hour, which means that in 11 years they move 200 million miles. This is about 2 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. But this cluster is relatively far away, inside a neighboring galaxy. This means the amount of observed motion is very small and therefore difficult to measure. These extraordinarily precise observations were possible only because of Hubble's exquisite resolution and high sensitivity. Also, Hubble's three-decade-long history of observations provides a baseline for astronomers to follow minute celestial motions over time. The second team, led by Peter Zeidler of AURA/STScI for the European Space Agency, used the ground-based VLT's Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument to measure radial velocity, which determines whether an object is approaching or receding from an observer. "What was really amazing is that we used two completely different methods with different facilities and basically came to the same conclusion, independent of each other," said Zeidler. "With Hubble, you can see the stars, but with MUSE we can also see the gas motion in the third dimension, and it confirms the theory that everything is spiraling inwards." But why a spiral? "A spiral is really the good, natural way to feed star formation from the outside toward the center of the cluster," explained Zeidler. "It's the most efficient way that stars and gas fueling more star formation can move towards the center." Half of the Hubble data for this study of NGC 346 is archival. The first observations were taken 11 years ago. They were recently repeated to trace the motion of the stars over time. Given the telescope's longevity, the Hubble data archive now contains more than 32 years of astronomical data powering unprecedented, long-term studies. "The Hubble archive is really a gold mine," said Sabbi. "There are so many interesting star-forming regions that Hubble has observed over the years. Given that Hubble is performing so well, we can actually repeat these observations. This can really advance our understanding of star formation." The teams' findings appear Sept. 8 in The Astrophysical Journal. Observations with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope should be able to resolve lower-mass stars in the cluster, giving a more holistic view of the region. Over Webb's lifespan, astronomers will be able to repeat this experiment and measure the motion of the low-mass stars. They could then compare the high-mass stars and the low-mass stars to finally learn the full extent of the dynamics of this nursery. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C. IMAGE....The massive star cluster NGC 346, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, has long intrigued astronomers with its unusual shape. Now researchers using two separate methods have determined that this shape is partly due to stars and gas spiraling into the center of this cluster in a river-like motion. The red spiral superimposed on NGC 346 traces the movement of stars and gas toward the center. Scientists say this spiraling motion is the most efficient way to feed star formation from the outside toward the center of the cluster. CREDIT ILLUSTRATION: NASA, ESA, Andi James (STScI)
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world-beauty · 1 year
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Spiral Galaxy M83: The Southern Pinwheel
Credits: Robert Gendler, Stephane Guisard
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androgynousbirdtale · 2 years
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NASA's Hubble Finds Spiraling Stars, Providing Window into Early Universe
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Nature likes spirals from the whirlpool of a hurricane, to pinwheel-shaped protoplanetary disks around newborn stars, to the vast realms of spiral galaxies across our universe.
Now astronomers are bemused to find young stars that are spiraling into the center of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery called NGC 346 may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars. This is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say.
The massive star cluster NGC 346, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, has long intrigued astronomers with its unusual shape. Now researchers using two separate methods have determined that this shape is partly due to stars and gas spiraling into the center of this cluster in a river-like motion. The red spiral superimposed on NGC 346 traces the movement of stars and gas toward the center. Scientists say this spiraling motion is the most efficient way to feed star formation from the outside toward the center of the cluster.
Credits: Illustration: NASA, ESA, Andi James (STScI)
The Small Magellanic Cloud has a simpler chemical composition than the Milky Way, making it similar to the galaxies found in the younger universe, when heavier elements were more scarce. Because of this, the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud burn hotter and so run out of their fuel faster than in our Milky Way.
Though a proxy for the early universe, at 200,000 light-years away the Small Magellanic Cloud is also one of our closest galactic neighbors.
Learning how stars form in the Small Magellanic Cloud offers a new twist on how a firestorm of star birth may have occurred early in the universe's history, when it was undergoing a "baby boom" about 2 to 3 billion years after the big bang (the universe is now 13.8 billion years old).
The new results find that the process of star formation there is similar to that in our own Milky Way.
Only 150 light-years in diameter, NGC 346 boasts the mass of 50,000 Suns. Its intriguing shape and rapid star formation rate has puzzled astronomers. It took the combined power of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to unravel the behavior of this mysterious-looking stellar nesting ground.
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mdirfanmk · 3 months
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This new Hubble image shows the scatterings of bright stars and thick dust that make up spiral galaxy Messier 83, otherwise known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. One of the largest and closest barred spirals to us, this galaxy is dramatic and mysterious; it has hosted a large number of supernova explosions, and appears to have a double nucleus lurking at its core.
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visualpoett · 3 months
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Spiral galaxy M83 or Southern Pinwheel is in the constellation Hydra (Hya).
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quiltofstars · 4 months
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The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, M83 // Tony Hallas
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risubisu · 1 year
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the spiral galaxy m83 (southern pinwheel) has got to be one of the most beautiful galaxies i’ve ever seen 🌌🌌🌌 imagine being nicolas lacaille in 1762 discovering this absolute beauty 🤯🤯🤯
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mystarypi-astronomy · 3 years
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This is the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy! 🌌🌌🌌
This galaxy is a model of a barred spiral galaxy with its prominent bars, dust lanes, and distinct spiral arms. Its arms have hydrogen gas that condenses to form new stars - making this galaxy an active region for star birth! 💫💫💫 
Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Chile Two telescope on April 3rd, 2021 at 2:42 UTC. 
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M83: Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
"The outlying regions around the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, or M83, are highlighted in this composite image from NASA Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the National Science Foundation Very Large Array in New Mexico."
Image and information from NASA.
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