Tuesday, August 4, 2020

SKY JEWELS

From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day archive. This galaxy is designated NGC2442 in the southern skies. Sometimes if I can't come up with something I go looking for jewels in the skies.


The galaxy can be found in the constellation Volans, the Flying Fish. Like most constellations a fair amount of imagination to actually "see" that fish. A distorted spiral the center glows with older stars withi the bright blue is that of younger white hot stars. The reddish glows in the arms may be clouds of gas where new stars are being born. This is a combined image from the Hubble telescope and the Europaen Southern Observatory. The light captured in this image started towards us about fifty million years ago.

Fifty million years. The surviving dinosaurs were testing their wings, mammals were on the up and coming and Oregon barely existed.

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