|
|
NOAO Optical Image of SN 197
…
| Name |
NOAO Optical Image of SN 1970G |
|
Hubble's Largest Galaxy Port
…
| Title |
Hubble's Largest Galaxy Portrait Offers a New High-Definition View |
| General Information |
What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. Giant galaxies weren?t assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101). It is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever been released from Hubble. The galaxy?s portrait is actually composed of 51 individual exposures taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in March 1994, September 1994, June 1999, November 2002, and January 2003. The newly composed image also includes elements from images from ground-based photos. |
|
Hubble's Largest Galaxy Port
…
| Title |
Hubble's Largest Galaxy Portrait Offers a New High-Definition View |
| General Information |
What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. Giant galaxies weren?t assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101). It is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever been released from Hubble. The galaxy?s portrait is actually composed of 51 individual exposures taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in March 1994, September 1994, June 1999, November 2002, and January 2003. The newly composed image also includes elements from images from ground-based photos. |
|
Happy Sweet Sixteen, Hubble
…
| Title |
Happy Sweet Sixteen, Hubble Telescope! |
|
Messier 101
| Title |
Messier 101 |
| Explanation |
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last entries in Charles Messier's [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000311.html ] famous catalog, but definitely not one [ http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m102d.html ] of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae [ http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m101_rosse.html ] observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan [ http://www.birrcastle.com/telescopeHistory.htm ] of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic of M101 [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2006/10/ ] is touted as the largest, most detailed spiral galaxy [ http://heritage.stsci.edu/2006/10/index.html ] view ever released from Hubble. The sharp image [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2006/10/fastfacts/ ] shows stunning features [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2006/10/image/a+zoom ] along the galaxy's face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 [ http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m101.html ] lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursa_Major ], about 25 million light-years away. |
|
M101: An Ultraviolet View
| Title |
M101: An Ultraviolet View |
| Explanation |
This picture of giant spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101) [ http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m101.html ] was taken by the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope [ http://hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/uit/uit.html ] (UIT). UIT [ http://hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/uit/uitcutaway.html ] flew into orbit as part of the Astro 2 mission [ http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-67/mission-sts-67.html ] on-board the Space Shuttle Endeavour in March 1995. The image has been processed [ http://trifle.gsfc.nasa.gov/UIT/Astro2/Astro2_pictures.html ] so that the colors (dark purple through white) represent an increasing intensity of ultraviolet light [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/introduction/ emspectrum.html ]. Pictures of galaxies like this one show mainly clouds of gas containing newly formed stars many times more massive than the sun, which glow strongly in the ultraviolet. In contrast, visible light pictures of galaxies [ http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m101_more.html ] tend to be dominated by the yellow and red light of older stars. Ultraviolet light [ http://titan.srrb.noaa.gov/UV/ ], invisible to the human eye, is blocked by ozone in the atmosphere [ http://jwocky.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] so ultraviolet pictures of celestial objects must be taken from space. M101 is a mere 22 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major [ http://www.seds.org/Maps/Stars_en/Fig/ursamajor.html ]. Its popular moniker is the Pinwheel Galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970805.html ]. |
|
|
