Tea Leaves LA

“Spitzer captured the range of activities happening in this violent cloud of stellar birth. We have evidence that the massive stars are triggering the birth of new ones in the dark filaments, in addition to the pillars, but we still have more work to do.”
                                  —Joseph Hora
                                 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a new view of an area in our galaxy called Cygnus X. It is the most active area for star formation in the Milky Way.

The lower left and right boxes on the bottom image show brand new stars, which show up as red dots due to the heat they emit that burns up the surrounding dust cloud. The lower right box also shows a luminous blue variable, visible as a blue dot within the red orb.

The European Southern Observatory recently captured the sharpest image of the Omega Nebula ever taken from the ground.

The Omega Nebula is one of the most well-known stellar nurseries, a birthplace for stars which are visible in the new image.

The first drawing of the nebula was by John Herschel in 1833.

Beautiful Time-Lapse Video of the Earth at Night, Taken from the International Space Station

Gordan Ugarkovic’s Space Portraits

Many amateur astronomers spend countless hours compiling raw photographic data from probes and satellites to create beautiful images of our solar system. Gordan Ugarkovic is a well-known space photo creator, and his Flickr account boasts hundreds of images depicting the moons of Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and our own planet. 

FIRST GLOBAL MULTICOLOR MAP OF TITAN CREATED

The Cassini Probe Mission has yielded thousands of photos of one of the most popular moon’s in our solar system. Jupiter’s Titan can now be “visited” virtually via a new map compiled from the Cassini photos. 

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich recently announced the winners of their annual Astronomer Photographer of the Year contest.

Over 800 photographs were submitted, and 24 were chosen to be part of the exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Photos of all the winners can be viewed here. 

Astrophysicists at the University of Zurich create the first realistic simulation of the creation of the Milky Way galaxy.