Solitary Superstar
Image courtesy ESO
New studies of the Tarantula Nebula, seen in a recently released picture from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, have revealed a stellar surprise.
Among the nebula's denizens is an extraordinarily bright star dubbed VFTS 682 that's 150 times the mass of the sun. The star is an oddity because it sits alone, even though such massive stars are normally found only in crowded clusters.
Astronomers think the mysterious loner may have been ejected from a nearby cluster, R 136, which is filled with similar giants.
Stellar Time Bomb
Image courtesy NASA, Caltech, and M. Povich/Penn State
Seen in a new composite picture, the massive star Eta Carinae is surrounded by gas and dust in the Carina Nebula. Astronomers believe this star is nearing the end of its life and may soon die in a violent supernova that would be visible from Earth.
The picture was taken as part of a recent probe of the Carina Nebula, which found a new population of massive stars hidden in the dust. Infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show thick dust clouds in red, while regions seen in visible light are colored blue.
Radio Flyer
Image courtesy NASA/TANAMI/Müller et al
The giant elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 is dwarfed by two huge lobes of gas in a picture released May 20 by an international team of radio astronomers. Nine radio observatories across the Southern Hemisphere collaborated to make this new picture—the most detailed yet of this kind of galactic activity.
The galaxy is one of the closest to Earth with a supermassive black hole at its core that produces particle jets. These jets send gas shooting outward at a third the speed of light, creating the radio-bright lobes, each of which is nearly a million light-years long.
source : http://news.nationalgeographic.com
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