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The Fiery Afterlife of a Sun-Like Star

In brilliant shades of blue and green, NGC 2371 reveals the stunning remains of a Sun-like star that has reached the end of its life. This planetary nebula is the glowing shell of gas cast off when the star shed its outer layers, leaving behind a blazing core that now lights up the surrounding cloud.

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At the heart of NGC 2371 lies the exposed core of the former red giant, now a super-heated stellar remnant with a surface temperature of about 240,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Located roughly 4,300 light-years away in the constellation Gemini, this nebula showcases the dramatic final chapter of a star similar to our own Sun. The vibrant glow we see is energized by the intense radiation from the central core, illuminating the expanding gas in a breathtaking display of stellar recycling.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/AURA/STScI

19 hours ago | [YT] | 2

SpaceInfo Club

A Cosmic Valentine: The Heart of the Cocoon Nebula

Behold the heart-shaped Cocoon Nebula—a reminder that even the universe has a flair for drama. Glowing majestically about 2,650 light-years from Earth, this vast cloud of hot gas and dust forms a luminous heart set against the densely star-studded backdrop of the Milky Way.

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At the center of the nebula, warm reds, oranges, and golds blend into a radiant cocoon with soft, uneven edges that fade into surrounding darkness. Embedded within are numerous young stars, some shining brightly in white and blue. Others remain hidden in visible light, revealed instead through X-rays captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory—evidence of a highly active cluster of newly formed stars concentrated near the core.

The nebula’s glow comes from both the energetic light emitted by these young stars and the reflection of starlight off surrounding dust. Combined optical and infrared observations add remarkable depth and texture, uncovering thick, dusty structures where future generations of stars are still taking shape. In this celestial heart, stellar birth and brilliance intertwine.

Credits: NASA Chandra

2 days ago | [YT] | 8

SpaceInfo Club

Beauty in the Chaos: The Curious Case of NGC 4459

NGC 4459 may look scattered and unstructured, but this distinctly disorganized system is classified as an irregular dwarf galaxy—one of the most common types of galaxies in the universe. Unlike graceful spirals or smooth ellipticals, irregular dwarfs lack a defined shape, often appearing as loose gatherings of stars and gas.

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Astronomers suspect that some irregular dwarf galaxies were once spirals or ellipticals, later distorted by the gravitational pull of nearby cosmic neighbors. Located about 11 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, NGC 4459 contains several billion stars—a vast number by human standards, yet modest compared to the Milky Way’s estimated 200 to 400 billion.

In this view, the galaxy appears faint against the blackness of space, its scattered stars interwoven with soft pink nebulosity. Though lacking symmetry, NGC 4459 offers a powerful reminder that even cosmic disorder has a story shaped by gravity and time.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt

3 days ago | [YT] | 7

SpaceInfo Club

A Milky Way Look-Alike in the Local Universe

NGC 6744 is one of the closest matches to our own Milky Way found in the nearby universe. Like our galaxy, it features a bright, elongated core filled with older stars and sweeping, dusty spiral arms where new stars are actively forming. It even hosts a small, distorted companion galaxy—NGC 6744A—visible as a blob along an outer spiral arm in the upper right, reminiscent of the Milky Way’s companion, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

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There is one notable difference: NGC 6744 is larger, stretching about 175,000 light-years across, compared to the Milky Way’s impressive 100,000 light-year span. This ultraviolet view, captured by NASA’s retired GALEX telescope and released in 2013, highlights regions of active star formation. The galaxy glows in bright white and pale yellow tones against a dark backdrop dotted with distant sources. Its hazy central glow is encircled by a subtle oval, while clusters of bright stars trace elegant spiral patterns that wind outward into faint outer arms.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

4 days ago | [YT] | 8

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The Dark-Laned Giant of Centaurus

Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, stands out as one of the most dramatic galaxies in the sky, famous for its sweeping, dark dust lanes slicing across its bright core. Captured by NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope using the Wide Field Camera 3, this view was the most detailed image of the galaxy at the time of its release in 2011.

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To create this image, astronomers combined observations across visible light, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths. The visible spectrum highlights the galaxy’s overall structure, ultraviolet light traces young, hot stars, and near-infrared reveals features hidden behind thick curtains of dust. Together, these layers expose the complexity of Centaurus A—an active galaxy shaped by past interactions and rich with dynamic processes unfolding within its core.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgment: R. O’Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

5 days ago | [YT] | 6

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A Multicolored Window Into Orion’s Stellar Nursery

The Orion Nebula is one of the closest and most spectacular star-forming regions to Earth, visible with a telescope just below the three stars of Orion’s famous belt. This image brings us deep into that familiar patch of sky, revealing a giant cloud where stars are actively being born.

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In this composite view, multiple observatories combine their strengths. Chandra highlights young, energetic stars glowing in X-rays, shown in vivid reds, greens, and blues. Webb reveals the colder gas and dust in darker red tones—raw material that will one day collapse into new stars. Together, they offer a layered look into the heart of the Orion Nebula, where dusty rose clouds weave through thousands of golden, white, and blue stars. Brighter concentrations at the distant core and shadowed layers along the edges give the scene a striking sense of depth, capturing a stellar nursery in full activity.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/E. Feigelson; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and J. Major

1 week ago | [YT] | 8

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A Star-Forming Factory in Motion

NGC 346 is a remarkable star cluster nestled within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 200,000 light-years from Earth. While Hubble has observed this region before, this image is the first to merge infrared, optical, and ultraviolet data—offering an exceptionally detailed look inside one of our neighboring galaxy’s most active stellar nurseries.

At the center of this turbulent cloud are more than 2,500 newborn stars. The most massive among them blaze with intense blue light, flooding the surrounding nebula with energy. By comparing observations taken 11 years apart, astronomers discovered that many of these stars are spiraling inward toward the cluster’s core, drawn by streams of gas flowing in from outside and fueling ongoing star formation.

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Visually, the scene is rich and layered: pale blue wisps of gas fill the background, overlaid with denser pink clouds. Arcs of reddish-brown dust curve around the cluster, sculpted by intense radiation from the young stars. Behind it all, faint orange stars shimmer through the haze, adding depth to this dynamic snapshot of stars being born in motion.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Nota, P. Massey, E. Sabbi, C. Murray, M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)

1 week ago | [YT] | 10

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New Space Mission Training Launching at Space Park Leicester 🚀

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Space Park Leicester is launching an exciting new professional development programme this March: The Executive Guide to Space.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 2

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A Galaxy That Refuses to Be Labeled

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Captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 2775 has left astronomers scratching their heads. Galaxies are usually sorted into neat categories based on their shape and structure—spirals with graceful arms, ellipticals with smooth profiles, and more. But NGC 2775 doesn’t play by the rules.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 10

SpaceInfo Club

Title: A Galaxy Marked by an Ancient Encounter

For space lovers eager to trace the hidden histories written across the cosmos, join the SpaceInfo Club free newsletter for space opportunities and engaging discussions about the frontiers of space—where galaxies tell their stories.

This is Hubble’s sharpest view yet of NGC 7722, a disk-shaped galaxy located about 187 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Coiling through its outer disk and halo are dramatic lanes of dark red dust, twisting and breaking apart as they cross the galaxy’s glowing face. These striking features aren’t just beautiful—they’re clues.

Astronomers believe these dust lanes are the lingering scars of a past merger with another galaxy, an ancient interaction that reshaped NGC 7722’s structure. Against the black backdrop of space, nearby stars and distant galaxies frame the scene, while the galaxy’s bright core and layered dust rings reveal a system still bearing the marks of a cosmic collision.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz), Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Acknowledgment: Mehmet Yüksek

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 8