The US space agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has unveiled a breathtaking collection of images from space, showcasing celestial bodies, planets, nebulae, the Moon, star clusters, and interacting galaxies. These images offer a glimpse into the vastness and wonder of the universe, highlighting NASA’s ongoing exploration and discoveries.
One of the most captivating images is that of Eta Carinae, a stellar system located about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Carina. Eta Carinae is a massive star system, containing at least two stars with a combined luminosity exceeding five million times that of our Sun. Its mass is estimated to be around 100 times greater than the Sun. Scientists believe that Eta Carinae may be on the verge of exploding, although the exact timing remains uncertain. About 170 years ago, Eta Carinae experienced an unusual outburst, propelling it to become one of the brightest stars in the southern sky.
In a significant milestone, NASA released the first close-up image of the Moon, captured by the United States’ Ranger 7 spacecraft on July 31, 1964. The spacecraft captured 4,316 images in a mere 17 minutes before crashing into the lunar surface on the northern rim of the Sea of Clouds. These images played a crucial role in identifying safe landing sites for the Apollo astronauts, as prior to this, no close-up images of the lunar surface existed.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a detailed image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3430, located approximately 100 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor. NGC 3430’s distinct shape is attributed to the gravitational interaction with a nearby galaxy, which has triggered star formation within NGC 3430, visible as bright-blue patches outside the galaxy’s main spiral structure. Edwin Hubble, the renowned astronomer, used NGC 3430 as a reference point to define his classification system for galaxies, categorizing them based on their appearance as spiral, barred spiral, lenticular, elliptical, or irregular.
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Chandra team released a never-before-seen image of NGC 6872, a spiral galaxy in the Pavo (Peacock) constellation. This image reveals a remarkable corner of the universe. NGC 6872 is an immense galaxy, spanning 522,000 light-years across, more than five times the size of our Milky Way galaxy. In 2013, astronomers from the United States, Chile, and Brazil identified NGC 6872 as the largest-known spiral galaxy based on archival data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. However, this record was later surpassed by NGC 262, a galaxy measuring 1.3 million light-years in diameter, according to NASA.
As a celebration of the second science anniversary of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the team released a near- and mid-infrared image of two interacting galaxies, nicknamed ‘The Penguin and the Egg’. The ongoing interaction between these galaxies spans a period from 25 to 75 million years ago, marking their first pass. These galaxies will continue to interact, making several additional loops before merging into a single galaxy hundreds of millions of years from now. Webb’s ability to capture infrared light, beyond the range of human vision, allows us to explore and understand these celestial events in greater detail.
