Image of the Day: The Pinwheel Galaxy’s "No Life" Zone

  The Pinwheel galaxy, 27 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, otherwise known as Messier 101, is gilded by bright reddish edges in this new infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. M101 is nearly twice the size of the Milky Way with huge and extremely bright H II regions, which usually accompany enormous clouds of high density molecular hydrogen gas contracting under their own gravitational force where stars form.  Research from Spitzer has revealed that this outer red zone lacks organic molecules present in the rest of the galaxy. The red and blue spots outside of the spiral galaxy are either foreground stars or more distant galaxies

Super Voyager from the Oort Cloud

Comet Siding Spring streaks across the sky like a cosmic superman this new infrared image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE taken on Jan. 10, 2010.The comet, also known as C/2007 Q3, was discovered in 2007 by observers in Australia. In this view, longer wavelengths of infrared light are red and shorter wavelengths are blue

Super Voyager from the Oort Cloud

Comet Siding Spring streaks across the sky like a cosmic superman this new infrared image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE taken on Jan. 10, 2010.The comet, also known as C/2007 Q3, was discovered in 2007 by observers in Australia. In this view, longer wavelengths of infrared light are red and shorter wavelengths are blue.

"Einstein’s Telescope": Zooming In On the Dark Side of the Universe

“Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature.” ~ Leonidas Moustakas, Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string.

Einstein’s Telescope: Searching for Dark Matter and the Future of the Universe

“Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature.” ~ Leonidas Moustakas, Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string