This week, the photos featured on the site Astronomy Picture of the Day they are as beautiful as ever, but here’s a spoiler: this time, the show was on account of the pictures of galaxies, which appeared in double doses around here. In one image is Andromeda, the large neighboring galaxy of the Milky Way; another brings the beauty of galaxy NGC 2841 and its spiral structure.
Among other beautiful photos is an image from the James Webb Telescope, which reveals a star nearing the end of its life. Another shows a beautiful planetary alignment over the temple of Kukulkan, in Mexico.
Check out:
Saturday (03/18) — Wolf-Rayet Star 124
This is the star Wolf-Rayet 124, as seen by the James Webb Telescope. Located 15,000 light-years from us, this star is more than 30 times the mass of the Sun and contains powerful stellar winds and expanding gaseous layers.
The star’s nebula spans about 6 light-years and signals that eventually the star will go supernova.
Sunday (19/03) — Night at the Temple of Kukulkán
This breathtaking photo captures the beauty of the Temple of Kukulkán, Mexico, along with the glow of Saturn and Jupiter in the sky, in the left and middle of the image, respectively. The pyramid is known for its structure, which can be used as a calendar and was designed to keep track of some astronomical alignments, like the one in this image.
Monday (20/03) — Crab Nebula
The video above shows the expansion of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant left by the explosion of a massive star. This debris cloud spans about 10 light-years, and the video reveals some details of it, such as the energetic emissions surrounding the pulsar at the center of the remnant.
Tuesday (21/03) — Taurus Molecular Cloud
The Taurus molecular cloud is a region full of dust and ripples, which indicate regions where interstellar gas is dense enough to undergo gravitational collapse and thus form stars. In the center of the picture is the Hind Variable Nebula and the star T Tauri, known to be quite young and massive.
Wednesday (22/03) — Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy is about two million light-years from us, making it the most distant object visible to the naked eye. It has a bright, clear core, along with bluish spiral arms and reddish emission nebulae. In a few billion years, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda and both will merge, forming a new galaxy.
Thursday (23/03) — Spiral galaxy NGC 2841
The spiral galaxy NGC 2841 is about 46 million light-years away from us and, in this photo, is accompanied by the stars of the Milky Way and more galaxies in the background. It has a bright core and arms with small star-forming regions, accompanied by young star clusters.
NGC 2841’s disk is more than 150,000 light-years across, making it larger than the Milky Way.
Friday (24/03) – Green Comet
The so-called “green comet”, the popular nickname by which C/2022E3 (ZTF) was known, delighted observers around the world as it flashed across the sky during its closest approach to Earth in February, when it came within about 2.3 minutes -light from us. Today, the comet is nearly 13.3 light-minutes from our planet.
In the image, he appears accompanied by the star Rigel, the brightest in the constellation of Orion, the Hunter. Still, there are nebulae and distant galaxies in the background.
Source: ETC
