The “lifestyles” of 75 neighboring galaxies are illuminated in this poster from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

In this composite, blue colors reveal light from an older population of stars. Tints of green represent organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, while red lumps show clouds of warm dust and gas heated by radiation from newborn stars. 

The galaxies are organized by shape, according to the Hubble-Tuning Fork. 

In this structure, elliptical galaxies sit on the left side of the poster, creating the tuning fork’s handle. They are designated by the letter “E”, and given a number from zero to seven. An “E0” galaxy looks round, while an E7 galaxy is very long and thin.

Spiral galaxies are located to the right side of the poster creating the fork’s two prongs. The top prong is made up of regular spiral galaxies, and identified by the letter “S.” Barred spiral galaxies make up the bottom prong, and are branded “SB.” Meanwhile, letters – “a”, “b”, and “c” – indicate how tightly the spiral arms are wound. An “Sa” galaxy’s arms are wound very tightly, while an “Sc” galaxy’s spiral arms are very loosely wound.

Irregular galaxies are organized on bottom-left side of the poster because they were not represented in Hubble’s original Tuning Fork.

Ring Nebula Deep Field

NGC 2623: Galaxy Merger from Hubble

Great Observatories Explore Galactic Center

Where can a telescope take you? Four hundred years ago, a telescope took Galileo to the Moon to discover craters, to Saturn to discover rings, to Jupiter to discover moons, to Venus to discover phases, and to the Sun to discover spots. Today, in celebration of Galileo’s telescopic achievements and as part of the International Year of Astronomy, NASA has used its entire fleet of Great Observatories, and the Internet, to bring the center of our Galaxy to you. Pictured above, in greater detail and in more colors than ever seen before, are the combined images of the Hubble Space Telescope in near-infrard light, the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory in X-ray light. A menagerie of vast star fields is visible, along with dense star clusters, long filaments of gas and dust, expanding supernova remnants, and the energetic surroundings of what likely is our Galaxy’s central black hole. Many of these features are labeled on a complementary annotated image. Of course, atelescope’s magnification and light-gathering ability create only an image of what a human could see if visiting these places. To actually go requires rockets.

M83’s Center from Refurbished Hubble

What’s happening at the center of spiral galaxy M83? Just about everything, from the looks of it. M83 is one of the closest spiral galaxies to our own Milky Way Galaxy and from a distance of 15 million light-years, appears to be relatively normal. Zooming in on M83’s nucleus with the latest telescopes, however, shows the center to be an energetic and busy place. Visible in the above image — from the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 pointing through the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope — are bright newly formed stars and giant lanes of dark dust. An image with similar perspectivefrom the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the region is also rich in very hot gas and small bright sources. The remnants of about 60 supernova blasts can be found in the above image.

Hubble’s Advance Camera for Surveys (ACS) recently took this image of galaxy NGC 4522 in the Virgo Cluster. Backdropped by many other more distant galaxies, the impression given by NGC 4522 is that it is flying apart. A phenomenon called ram pressure stripping is mangling the galaxy as it hurtles through a region of hot x-ray emitting gas at 10 million kilometers per hour- stripping away its own gas content. NGC 4522 is some 60 million light years away

his image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows the diverse collection of galaxies in the cluster Abell S0740 that is over 450 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. The giant elliptical ESO 325-G004 looms large at the cluster’s center. The galaxy is as massive as 100 billion of our suns. Hubble resolves thousands of globular star clusters orbiting ESO 325-G004. At the galaxy’s distance they appear as pinpoints of light contained within the diffuse halo. Other fuzzy elliptical galaxies dot the image. Some have evidence of a disk or ring structure that gives them a bow-tie shape. Several spiral galaxies are also present. The starlight in these galaxies is mainly contained in a disk and follows along spiral arms. This image was created by combining Hubble science observations taken in January 2005 with Hubble Heritage observations taken a year later to form a 3-color composite. The filters that isolate blue, red and infrared light were used with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard Hubble.

This very deep image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 along with a spectacular backdrop of more distant galaxies. It was created from a total of 80 separate pictures through yellow and near-infrared filters.

The planetary nebula, IC 4593, lies in the northern constellation Hercules, about 7,000 light-years away from Earth. Its colorful, intricate shape reveals how the glowing gas ejected by a dying Sun-like star evolved dramatically over time. Over thousands of years, the clouds of gas expand away and the nebula becomes larger. Energetic ultraviolet light from the star penetrates more deeply into the gas, causing the hydrogen and oxygen to glow more prominently. This snapshot was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in February 2007.

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300