Pleiades Deep Field
Image Credit & Copyright: Stanislav Volskiy
Explanation: Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you
have, you probably have never seen it like this: all dusty. Perhaps the most
famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the
Pleiades can be seen without
binoculars from even the depths of a
light-polluted
city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud
surrounding the
Pleiades star
cluster
becomes very evident. The
above exposure took
about 30 hours and covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon.
Also known as the
Seven
Sisters and
M45,
the Pleiades
lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (
Taurus). A
common legend
with a
modern twist is that one
of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six stars
visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of
Pleiades stars visible,
however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the
darkness of the surrounding sky and the
clarity of the
observer's eyesight.
Arp 272
Credit: Hubble
Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing - Martin Pugh
Explanation: Linking spiral arms, two large colliding galaxies are
featured in this remarkable cosmic portrait constructed using image data from
the
Hubble Legacy Archive. Recorded in
astronomer Halton Arp's Atlas of
Peculiar
Galaxies as Arp 272, the pair is otherwise known as
NGC
6050 near center, and IC 1179 at upper right. A third galaxy, likely also a
member of the interacting system, can be spotted above and left of larger spiral
NGC 6050. They lie some 450 million light-years away in the
Hercules Galaxy Cluster. At that estimated distance,
the picture spans over 150 thousand light-years. Although this
scenario
does look peculiar,
galaxy collisions and
their eventual mergers are now understood to be common, with Arp 272
representing a stage in this inevitable process. In fact, the nearby large
spiral
Andromeda Galaxy is known to be approaching
our own galaxy and Arp 272 may offer a glimpse of the far future collision
between
Andromeda and the
Milky Way.
