• The rotation of the halo which surrounds most galaxies is less pronounced than predicted and
• fewer dwarf galaxies have been observed orbiting larger companion galaxies than expected by the theory.

http://www.cosmotography.com/images/ngc5907_def.pdf

One of the team members prepared and animation that depicts the formation of the structures that surround this galaxy. Please select the following link to review this presentation:

http://www.cosmotography.com/images/ngc5907_animation.html

This image, representing over 13 hours of total exposure, was photographed by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) between June and August 2006 through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory is located high in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico..


Minimum credit:

• David Martínez-Delgado  ( IAC, MPIA ),
  
  Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC): http://www.iac.es/index.php?lang=en
  Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie: http://www.mpia.de/Public/menu_q2.php
• Jorge Peñarrubia  ( Univ.Victoria ),
  
  University of Victoria, Canada web site: http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~jorpega/
• PHOTO CREDIT: R. J. GaBany  ( Cosmotography ),
  
  Cosmotography: http://www.cosmotograpy.com
• Ignacio Trujillo  ( IAC ),
  
  Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC): http://www.iac.es/index.php?lang=en
• Steven R. Majewski  ( Univ. Virginia ),
  
  University of Virginia: http://www.astro.virginia.edu/
• Michael Pohlen  ( Cardiff )
  
  Cardiff University: http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/

David and his international team of astronomers are fascinated with the evolution of galaxies. They are interested in the way island universes grow and evolve by disrupting and absorbing smaller satellite galaxies. When a small galaxy is captured by the gravitational pull of a large spiral, for example, it usually leaves a thin, faint trail of dust, gas and stars as its orbit decays. Because my New Mexico telescope is more readily available than most professional instruments, I have been able to take extremely long exposures with relatively high resolution that sometimes capture these ghostly tale-tale remains.

During a period that stretched from late November to late December, 2006, David asked me to capture a deep exposure of NGC 4013. A few months following these sessions, I finalized an unremarkable image of this galaxy based on the data I collected. However, that image did not reveal all that it contained- it suppressed an extremely faint surrounding structure that the team wanted to investigate and independently verify. Since that time, deep images of this galaxy, taken with the Kitt Peak National Observatory .9 meter and the 2.5 meter Isaac Newton Telescopes, have corroborated the existence of this large, dim ring.

Therefore, as described in a paper that was recently submitted to the Astrophysical Journal for review and publication, the team has asked me to share with you the discovery of a giant, low surface-brightness loop-like stellar structure around the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4013. The detection of this loop-like structure has been independently confirmed in three separate data sets from three different telescopes. Color comparisons of the stream material to the outer parts of the galaxy's disk suggests that this loop did not originate from the disk itself, but rather is the tidal stream of a dwarf galaxy being destroyed in NGC 4013's gravitational potential. Although its true three-dimensional geometry is unknown, the projected tidal loop displays a very good overall match with the external edge-on perspective of the Monoceros tidal stream in the Milky Way predicted by recent N-body simulations (Peñarrubia et al. 2005).

The team's results demonstrate that NGC 4013, previously considered an isolated disk galaxy, is in fact undergoing a tidal encounter with a low-mass satellite. The discovery of this giant stellar stream also demonstrates that the outskirts of nearby spiral galaxies may still contain the fossils from their hierarchical galaxy formation. This is in agreement with cosmological models found in the Cold Dark Matter paradigm- galaxies are built up, inside-out, by accreting smaller subsystems.

Although the origin of galactic warps is still unknown, it was initially proposed that the gravitational perturbations induced by satellite galaxies may cause their formation. Mathematical modeling called this interpretation into question, so other explanations have subsequently been offered over the years. For example, warps may arise from the interaction between a stellar disk and its dark matter halo, bending instabilities, intergalactic accretion flows onto the disk, or cosmic infall. Significantly, the absence of tidal material has often been invoked as a reason to dismiss the tidal origin of galactic warps. NGC 4013, with its prominent, and rather symmetrical warp, along with a really unassailable indication of a past merger event, provides an important counter-example to the above arguments; indeed, NGC 4013 may well be the Rosetta Stone for warp theories, since, morphologically, the warp and the merger debris seem so closely aligned. Interestingly, the existence of warped galaxies that have experienced the recent accretion of one or more satellites suggests that these kind of events may influence the formation of warps more efficiently than the perturbations from satellite galaxies moving in highly eccentric, near polar orbits.

For a complete description of the team's investigations please download and review the following PDF document:

http://www.cosmotography.com/images/ngc4013_ms.pdf

This image was photographed by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) between November and December 2006 and represents almost 15 hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory is located high in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico.


Minimum credit:

• D. Martínez-Delgado ( IAC, MPIA ),
  
  Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias: http://www.iac.es/index.php?lang=en
  Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie: http://www.mpia.de/Public/menu_q2.php
• M. Pohlen ( Cardiff ),
  
  Cardiff University: http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/
• PHOTO CREDIT: R. J. GaBany ( Cosmotography ),
  
  Cosmotography: http://www.cosmotograpy.com
• S. R. Majewski ( Univ. Virginia ),
  
  University of Virginia: http://www.astro.virginia.edu/
• J. Peñarrubia ( Univ.Vitoria ),
  
  University of Vitoria, Canada website: http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~jorpega/
• C. Palma ( Penn State )
  Pennsylvania State University: http://www.psu.edu/

This picture depicts the center of the Great Nebula in Carina- one of the Milky Way's brightest and most prolific star forming regions. Over its estimated three million year history, this nebula has spawned several clusters of gigantic, hot, blue-white stars that litter the image like confetti at a New Year's celebration. The bizarre structure near the center of this view is actually a cooler cloud of dust and bright filaments of hot, fluorescing gas that is partially silhouetted against a background of brighter, even more energized material. Even though I imagine its distorted shape to resemble a partially melted hour glass, it is commonly known as the Keyhole Nebula. The size of the objects that have been captured in this picture are off our human scale for easy comparison. For example, it takes light, traveling at 681 million miles per hour, seven years to travel from one side of the Keyhole Nebula's spherical head to the other!

The bright star near the bottom of the image, however, was the inspirational germ for this project. It is the most massive nearby star that can be studied in great detail and many astronomers consider it to be one of the most massive stars in the universe! The star is named Eta Carinae (pronounced /ke 'rain i/), and some believe it may also pose a threat to our planet!

Eta Carinae is over one hundred times more massive than our Sun and it's over a million times more brilliant. In fact, this star releases so much energy that its gravity can barely hold it together- the outward flow of radiation from its interior is unbelievably strong. Vast portions of its outer layers are being blown off into space forming an ever expanding wispy shroud in a slow, non-stop eruption of incredible violence. Stars like this are extremely rare- only a few dozen exist within any island universe. Because of their high luminosity, very large stars, like Eta, burn through their fuel rather quickly and end their lives as a super or hyper nova explosions that out-shine the combined light of all the stars in their host galaxy. Where the luminous life of a star like our Sun will span about ten billion years , super massive stars, like Eta Carinae, only shine for a few million, at most.

Because of its prodigious mass, Eta Carinae is highly unstable and prone to violent outbursts that seem to occur in irregular, unpredictable cycles. This behavior first caught the attention of astronomers back in the 18th century.

Edmond Halley, who first predicted the return of a bright comet, cataloged Eta Carinae as a fourth magnitude star in 1677. That's about the same brightness as the star that's located at the position where the handle meets the ladle in the northern sky's constellation of the Big Dipper. Interestingly, over the next hundred years, observers reported that Eta brightened considerably before mysteriously returning to the same relative obscurity that Halley had previously noted. Around 1820, Eta again started to increase in brightness and by 1842, it had become the second brightest star in the sky- only Sirius, the brightest star seen from Earth, displayed more brilliance to earth bound eyes. To provide some perspective, Sirius is much closer to our planet, only 9 light-years away compared to Eta's 8,000 light-year distance. However, if both stars were located side-by-side, Sirius could be represented as a single candle flame with the combined output of over eight 100-watt light bulbs substituting for Eta! Over the next 100 years, Eta again faded until it was totally invisible to the naked eye by the 1920's. At the end of the 20th century and again, early in 2007, Eta's luminosity cycled through a period of increased brilliance. All of these episodes were unexpected, by the way.

Most astronomers concur that this star is a ticking time bomb already triggered to explode. Unfortunately, no one can confidently predict how much time remains until the countdown reaches zero- maybe, in a million years, possibly only a thousand. A few have suggested that Eta Carinae will self-destruct during our lifetime. But, nobody knows for sure.

Perhaps it's already been annihilated and the concussion, limited to traveling at the speed of light, has simply not reached us, yet. Remember, even though this picture is very recent, it portrays a view that dates back to the mankind's prehistory! Even the Sun's rays take eight minutes to traverse the Earth's distance. Distance and time are woven into a cloth that blankets the Cosmos. Very little we observe beyond the horizon is in real time. Regardless, sequestered at the bottom of our atmosphere, we would be safe from Eta's fury were it to strike us, say, tomorrow evening. Our orbiting satellites, our upper ozone layer and astronauts in the International Space Station, of course, would most likely be less fortunate.

Recent, high resolution images produced through the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed this star's immediate surroundings in jaw-dropping detail. Two gigantic lobes of material are expanding like giant balloons from both poles and its equator is ringed by an ever-broadening disc of far flung material. These structures are the suspected artifacts of the brightening observed during the 1800's.

One of the motivations for this image, was a desire to see if the lobes surrounding Eta Carinae could be glimpsed with a modest telescope and commercially available astronomical camera. Chief among the challenges was the requirement to tame the brightness of Eta Carinae so that the surrounding lobes would not be lost in the star's glare.

Several filters were used to produce this picture, for example, red, green and blue captured the hues needed to reproduce the natural colors of the scene. I use these for all of my projects, so their inclusion is nothing noteworthy. But, for the first time, I also used a set of special astronomical filters that are tuned to limit the light reaching the camera to those wave lengths associated with the natural glow emitted by atoms of hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur which are abundant in most interstellar nebulae. By carefully combining separate images produced with each of these six filters, I was been able to produce an picture that not only displays how this scene appears, but the colors also give an indication of what the scene is made of! Exaggerated blue hues indicates the presence of oxygen, red represents sulfur and turquoise reveals the signature of hydrogen atoms.

As a side benefit, the sulfur filter enabled me to control the glare from Eta. Thus, the surrounding lobes were successfully resolved.

This picture as produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) through 12.5 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope located in Scoresby, Victoria, Australia- about 50 miles east of Melbourne- and a SBIG STL-11000 camera. The equipment was remote controlled via the Internet from the photographer's home in San Jose, California, USA between April and June 2007.

Slowly, perhaps, you'll begin to notice new stars peeking over the roof or tree tops where, minutes ago, dark sky existed. Although the ancients mistakenly assumed that the sky was in motion, we now take for granted the fact that it is we that are on the go. For example, over the course of about four minutes, the Moon will seem to pass through a distance equal to its diameter. The minute hand on a clock appears to move much faster than the parade of stars marching through the sky at night. Yet, all of this is an illusion- even now all of humankind is traveling at an unimaginable speed although none of us have any sensation of this epic journey!

For example, since the circumference of the Earth is about 25,000 miles and because it rotates once every twenty-four hours, a person standing at the equator is actually moving at about 1,000 miles per hour, which is considerably faster than the speed of sound. Since the Earth rotates from West to East, it would take a jet flying at Mach 1.6 towards the West to counteract this effect and keep the Sun stationary in the sky. For half the day we travel closer to the distant stars and for the other half, farther away. Of course, distance north or south relative to the equator has the effect of reducing your actual speed. For instance, people in Calgary, Alberta, Canada are moving at the sub-sonic speed of only 650 miles per hour.

The Earth and Moon spins around a common center of gravity which is located about three-fourths from the center of our planet. This imparts a small increase in speed of about twenty-five miles an hour. But, this is a comparatively trivial amount of motion.

Of course, the Earth is in orbit about the Sun- a 585 million mile journey that takes a year to navigate. During a given day, the Earth will move slightly over two hundred times its diameter. This translates to about 67.000 miles per hour or over ninety times the speed of sound!

The Sun is also in motion about the middle of our Galaxy. Located approximately two-thirds from the Milky Way's center, our Star makes one revolution about every 250 million years. This means our solar system has completed an estimated eighteen orbits during the Milky Way's 4.5 billion year history! To accomplish this feat requires a tremendous amount of speed- about 450 thousand miles per hour! This is almost seven times the speed of our planet's movement around the Sun and about 430 times the speed of the Earth's rotation at the equator!

But, the Milky Way is not stationary, either. For example, our Galaxy and the Great Galaxy in Andromeda (M31) are approaching each other at about 900 thousand miles per hour! The Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies are both members of the Local Group of galaxies. The Local Group contains over thirty (relatively) nearby island universes of various shapes and sizes. This group is one of several (also relatively nearby) galactic gatherings that, in combination, form the Local Supercluster of galaxies. Interestingly, our Supercluster is moving toward something called the Great Attractor- a source of gravity with incredible strength equivalent to the mass of tens of thousands of island universes. There are other galactic superclusters and each are racing from each other at an increasing rate due to the expansion of the Universe!

It would be possible to summarize the effect of all of these motions if their speed could be compared with something stationary- this is similar to measuring an automobile's speed relative to a static road beneath its tires. Such a ruler exists and it's called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. This is the residual noise from the Big Bang- the event that most scientists now regard as the origin of our Universe. Highly sensitive satellites have been able to detect a slight variance in their measurements of the CMB using the Doppler shift imparted by the Earth's relative movement. The enormous distance of the CMB makes it an essentially immovable stake. Therefore, we are now able to estimate that our local group of galaxies (which contains the Milky Way, our Sun, our planet and all of its inhabitants) is moving with the expanding Universe at a speed of about 1.3 million miles per hour!

Travelers on commercial jet aircraft have little sense of movement as they stretch their legs to, say, visit the restroom- yet, their seat seems where they left it upon return even though it has moved tens of miles during the time that intervened during their absence. We, too, are unaware of our planet's motion- each morning we awake in familiar surroundings unsuspecting that we are more than 31 million miles from where we arose the day before!

In one of the groups of galaxies that share our Local Supercluster, there lies a spiral galaxy that is tilted towards our line of sight so that we can only glimpse its profile. It's a favorite target for visual stargazers because its relative brightness allows views of its disk's central dust lane through modest telescopes. Known as NGC 891, this galaxy can be spotted towards the constellation of Andromeda during the northern hemisphere's fall season.

It's wracked by furious new star production as evidenced by the jets of dust and gas that gush like geysers vertically above and below the dust engorged edge of its broad, flattened disk. Eventually, these streams slow their vertical ascent, shift to a horizontal orientation high above the galaxy's plane and, over time, rain inward to serve as material for future stellar births. This new image displays these trails of dust quite clearly. Located about 30 million light years from Earth, NGC 891 is one of the most photographed edge-on spiral galaxies in the northern skies.

This image was photographed by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) and represents slightly over twenty hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory is located high in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico.

The ISM consists of about 99% gas (of which 90% is hydrogen and almost 10% is helium) and 1% dust created by the explosion of ancient stars. However, the density of the Interstellar Medium is extremely tenuous- on average, it contains only a handful of atoms per cubic centimeter. By comparison, a cubic centimeter of air contains almost a billion trillion molecules of oxygen and nitrogen at sea level. Here's another way to think about this: an "empty" coffee cup filled with the Interstellar Medium would only contain about 500 molecules whereas the same "empty" coffee mug, placed on your desk or kitchen counter, contains about 1,500 quintillion. The dust in the ISM is made of very tiny irregularly shaped particles of silicates, carbon, ice and iron. This dust, by the way, is not the same as those bunnies seen under a couch or bed. It's extremely small and rarely exceeds a few molecules in diameter- cigarette smoke particles are boulders by comparison.

The Interstellar Medium is not a static place- it is filled with tremendous turbulence and waves. Some of this comes from stellar wind- material released from the surface of stars along with visible light and other forms of radiation. The ISM is also stirred by expanding shock waves from supernova explosions when massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and collapse in a swift act of violence that tears them into shreds. As a result there are areas within the ISM of lesser and greater density.

In areas where the ISM is thin, dust can cause light from more distant stars to become reddened as it tries to pass through. In a process that also colors our sunsets, the dust is large enough to reflect blue light but small enough to let red wavelengths simply pass around it. This is called stellar extinction and it causes stars to appear redder than their true color.

In areas where the ISM is dense, great quantities of gas and dust can be herded together to form a cloud that spans hundreds of light-years from end to end. Interestingly, if you were inside such a cloud, you probably would not know it without a sensitive measuring device because the distribution of gas and dust is still very thin. However, despite the small amount of material in any given area, these clouds are so vast that they contain substantial mass, often hundreds or thousands of times that of our Sun. Their great size can also make them optically opaque, so that light from more distant stars is completely absorbed and cause the cloud's exterior to appear dark when seen against a backdrop of suns or brighter clouds located much farther away.

The same forces that give rise to the ISM's turbulence can also trigger a dense cloud to start collapsing inward under its own weight- but this can also be initiated when two clouds meet and start to merge. Regardless, once the gravitational collapse of a dense interstellar cloud commences, pockets of denser material within the cloud start to grow in size and temperature under tremendous pressure. It is significant to note that dense interstellar clouds rarely produce a single star. They contain such a huge amount of material that, more often, stars are created in batches when the cloud starts to collapse.Seen from the outside, a collapsed cloud can appear dark and foreboding. But, inside they are full of light from the hot, newly formed stars that have been incubated. Over time, the cloud will part or dissipate to reveal a group of new stars.

Newly formed stars begin their existence in a gravitational embrace. They huddle together in a close but (somewhat) random formation that is called an open star cluster. Over time, the immense radiation produced by the cluster will blow back the clouds in which they formed and, at the same time, they will start to wander out of the cloud and from each other. Many star clusters are still enshrouded in faint whiffs of the cloud material that spawned them. For example, long exposure images of the Pleiades reveal faint nebulosity- the remains of the amniotic material present at their birth. The number of constituents within a star cluster is based on the size of the cloud and the amount of time that has passed since the group was formed. This can range from as few as ten to over several thousand but many are numbered in the hundreds. Our view of open star clusters, therefore, is just a snapshot. Over time, the cluster will seem to diminish in size as each star begins to go its own way or meet its own fate.

But even as they part company, each star continues to travel more or less in the same general direction. Widely dispersed former star clusters are called stellar associations. These groups are more difficult to identify because the distance separating each star can become very large. Perhaps that's why the first association was not identified until 1947, but today, several associations are now known. For example, most of the stars in the northern sky's Big Dipper are actually former members of an open star cluster that have spread out to form an association of suns moving roughly in the same direction.

The image is of a young cluster of stars located in the direction of the constellation named Scutum. This tight gathering of stars, known as the Wild Duck Cluster or M11, features about 2,900 individual members- most of them are approximately 250 million years old- the newest stars appear white-blue, the older ones have a yellowed appearance. This group of stars hangs in space about 5,000 light-years from Earth. This stellar collection seems to have more structure than many other open star clusters. Its central area suggests a (somewhat) spherical star ball with a band of stars encircling it. Additional strings of stars cascade outward across the entire image.

Behind the open cluster shines about 17,000 much more distant stars that represent a fraction of the sprawling star clouds lining the Milky Way's galactic plane. Located thousands of light years farther away, their hue has been altered by various shades of red from dust in the ISM filling the space between our vantage point and their position in the Milky Way. Deeper reddening indicates denser areas of dust. Note the dark threads that meander throughout the entire scene. These are areas where the Interstellar Medium has sufficient density to block more distant star light.

Four very bright stars are also visible in this picture- they are located between Earth and the star cluster.

This picture, taken by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com), resulted when separate images, exposed during August 2007, were digitally combined to create a single image equivalent to slightly more than four hours of total duration. This picture was produced with a 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope using an eleven mega-pixel camera located in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

The amount of activity in this view is extraordinarily powerful and furious! Enormous jets of energetic dust and gas, hundreds of light years in length, can be seen arcing upward from the bright, towering, central star producing factory. The orientation of this view reinforces the perspective that our Earth-bound glimpse places us above one end of a deep oblong valley of gas and dust hollowed out by the stellar winds blowing from the star nursery that is hanging above.

Interestingly, although the Lagoon Nebula is located about 5,000 light years from Earth (which is an enormous distance!), it can be glimpsed with unaided vision from a dark south-facing site during mid-summer in the northern hemisphere. Southern hemispheric observers can spot it by looking overhead during mid-winter.

R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) produced this composite image by combining exposures from two different telescopes located in separate remotely controlled observatories in the south central mountains of New Mexico. Luminance exposures were obtained with a 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope using an eleven mega-pixel SBIG STL-11000 camera while color exposures were gathered with a 4-inch astrographic refractor and a SBIG STL-6303 six mega-pixel astronomical camera. The luminance pictures were exposed during June of 2006 while the color pictures were taken one year later at the end of June 2007.

So, was Carl correct?

First, consider how many grains of sands cover the earth's beaches. Researchers at the University of Hawaii have actually taken a mathematical stab at this number by dividing the volume of an average sand grain by the volume of sand covering the Earth's shorelines. The volume of sand was obtained by multiplying the length of the world's beaches by their average width and depth. The number they calculated was seven quintillion five quadrillion (that's 7.5 followed by seventeen zeros or 7.5 billion billion) sand grains!

Next, consider how many stars fill the Universe. Well, if you were located at or very near the Earth's equator, you would be able to observe about 6,000 individual stars over the period of a year with unaided vision. Of course, there are far more than this visible with binoculars or a small telescope. But, the vast majority that can be seen through small optical instruments would be confined within our own Galaxy because the huge distance to even the nearest galactic neighbor makes spotting their individual stars almost impossible, even through the largest telescopes. So, the best way to count the total number of stars in the Universe is to reckon the population of stars in our own Galaxy and multiply that by the number of galaxies that exist throughout space.

To derive an estimate of the stars in our own galaxy, astronomers have to consider both the number of stars we can see at great distance and the number of fainter stars, such as dwarf stars, which are difficult to observe. Red dwarf stars, as an example, are believed to be the most numerous type of star but they are also very dim. It is also estimated that there are about 200 red dwarf stars for every Sun-like star. Anyway, by taking star counts in relatively small-sized samples of the sky, factoring for dwarf stars and extrapolating the apparent area encompassed by the samples, recent computations have placed the number of stars in the Milky Way at around 400 billion, plus or minus 200 billion- hey, what's a few billion between friends :>)

But, the Milky Way is just one galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope is capable of detecting about 80 billion galaxies based on analysis of its pictures. For example, where ever the Hubble points, in all directions, thousands of never before seen galaxies are seen extending far into the distance.

So, if we assume that our Galaxy is more or less typical and use the lower estimate, 200 billion, for its total stellar population then multiply that by the number of galaxies within reach of the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have concluded that there are at least 70 sextillion (that's 7 followed by twenty-two zeros or 70 thousand million million million) stars in the observable universe- this is the latest number as proposed in mid-2003.

To put it another way, there are 10 stars for every grain of sand, eleven times the number of cups of water in all the Earth's oceans, ten thousand times the number of wheat kernels that have ever been produced on Earth and ten billion times the number of cells in a human being!

This is a staggering number- and it's most likely a very, very low estimate because the number of galaxies filling the Universe is thought to be much larger than those the Hubble can see!

All of this is pertinent to the image that depicts two star forming regions, both about 5,000 light years distant, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius- looking towards the heart of our Galaxy.

The picture displays the Trifid Nebula, on the right, and on the left, M8, which is also known as the Lagoon. The picture is very wide; in fact you could fit several moons across its width. Between the two nebulae is a portion of the Milky Way's vast star clouds- most of the distant stars are about three times further away than the nebulae. An application used to prepare these images reported that this picture contains slightly over 29,000 individual stars, by the way!

Earth is not located near the center of our Galaxy- we are positioned about half-way to the edge of the Milky Way's flattened, spiral shape and therefore any view of the its central region is occluded by vast clouds of dust that hang along the spiral arms we must look through. Thus, a large proportion of the stars in this picture appear reddened. Many of the bright blue stars are newly formed, most likely, from the two nebulae seen in this image and are thus much closer to us.

R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) produced this composite image by combining exposures from two different telescopes located in separate remotely controlled observatories in the south central mountains of New Mexico. Luminance exposures for the central Lagoon Nebula and both color and luminance information for the Trifid area of the image were obtained with a 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope using an eleven mega-pixel SBIG STL-11000 camera. Exposures for the stellar background were gathered with a 4-inch astrographic refractor and a SBIG six mega-pixel STL-6303 camera.

The principal material comprising a nebular cloud is molecular hydrogen- the simplest and most abundant material in the Universe. In addition, other gases, such as helium, are also present as are great smatterings of atoms that have been ionized by stellar radiation. The final significant constituent in a nebula is copious amounts of dust formed from the remnants of previous stars that have either exploded or thrown off their outer layers during old age. Interestingly, the term dust is broadly applied astronomically- it's not your household variety but grains of material that are only fractions of a micron in diameter. Cigarette or cigar smoke, for example, contains boulder sized particles compared to the dust within these clouds.

Nebulae are found throughout the Universe and, other than stars, are the most prominent features visible in a galaxy, In fact, images of distant galaxies are essentially pictures of their nebula, often, arranged into a lovely spiral pattern. Individual stars in far away galaxies, except a handful that are located nearby, are simply too small and dim to be discerned by even our largest telescopic instruments therefore a picture of a galaxy is actually an image of its nebulae.

Although nebulae occur in an unlimited number of shapes and sizes, they can be grouped into three broad categories based upon their interaction with light.

For example, the dust in a nebula will scatter light shining from one or more nearby stars and cause the cloud to appear blue using the same process that causes our skies to take on a similar hue- dust reflects blue light while red wavelengths are too large and pass around it. These are therefore called reflection nebulae.

If the dust within the cloud is in great abundance, it will act like a sponge and prevent light from passing through. Known as absorption nebulae, these take on a dark and somewhat sinister appearance when seen from the outside however, quite often, their interior is filled with the light of hot, newly formed stars that have incubated within.

Young, hot stars that release large amounts of ultraviolet radiation can cause the hydrogen gas within a nebular cloud to glow red thus giving rise to the term emission nebulae.

This picture features each type of nebula- in fact, it overflows with this stuff!

It depicts a scene that is about 5,000 light-years in the distance towards the heart of our galaxy in constellation of Sagittarius. It represents a three panel mosaic of images that were digitally stitched together to form a single picture of two very energetic star forming regions. In addition to nebulae, the image contains several thousand of the over 400 billion stars that fill our galaxy. So, to understand the scale of the cloud formations in the image, consider that each bright point represents a star, most likely, as large or considerably larger than our own sun. Of course, the actual size of the stars that are visible in the picture would appear as pin-points were it not for the bloating brought on by our planet's atmosphere and a photographic artifact that causes brighter stars to seem larger.

This image was captured by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) over six successive nights between June 15 and 20, 2007 while testing repairs to his telescope and mount. It represents almost 17 hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. His observatory is located near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

The speed of a star as it circles the central region of a galaxy is usually not the same as that of the spiral pattern. This is because the orbital speed of the gas molecules, dust grains and stars is relative to their distance from the middle of the galaxy- material in the outskirts travels much slower than the matter situated near the center. If this were not true then, over time, the spiral pattern would slowly tighten upon itself and eventually disappear. However, this does not match the measurements that have been made of spiral structures. Instead, the spiral pattern is the physical manifestation of gravitational density waves that wind outward from the inner region. These waves travel at a different speed than the stars and other elements that make up a galaxy.

When a density wave encounters molecules of gas and granules of dust, it herds and compresses them into vast, dense clouds as it ripples past. These billows can become exceptionally enormous and often span hundreds of light-years. They are incubators that spawn hot, bright blue-white stars- these then illuminate the wave and make it visible. Because these stars are massive, they have relatively short lives- most ignite and burn through their nuclear fuel before completing a single revolution around the galaxy. In fact, their stellar existence is often limited to as little as five percent of their first orbit. As a result, the trailing edge of the wave appears darker because the stars have already been extinguished when the wave fully moves beyond their location. Therefore, even though stars do not remain in a fixed location, they also do not follow the arms. The arms simply appear to pass through the stars as they travel in their orbits.

For example, the Sun has been in and out of a spiral arm during the roughly twenty times it has orbited the Milky Way's center. Even though there is no sensation of the Sun's velocity, it is traveling at about half a million miles per hour through our Galaxy with the solar system, and Earth, in tow. On average, the Sun and its planets spend about forty million years inside a spiral arm and approximately eighty million years on the outside. About ten million years ago, we emerged from our last encounter with a spiral arm.

The source of the density waves is still being investigated- some astronomers believe they arise from the gravitational tug of nearby galaxies or are given a push from supernova explosions while other researchers are now pointing their fingers to the newly discovered presence of a super massive black holes at the heart of most galaxies. Most likely, it is due to all of these and other, yet, unrecognized reasons.

About two-thirds of all spiral galaxies have a river of gas, dust and stars running through their inner most area that bridges the spiral arms located on either side. These are called barred spiral galaxies and even our Milky Way is now thought to possess one. The bar is also thought to be caused by a density wave- one that extends laterally from the galaxy's center. At first, the wave changes the orbits of interior stars but, over time, it affects stars farther out. As more time passes, it enlarges and creates this unusual, bright structure. Bars cause the motions of interstellar dust clouds and a large number of stars within the galaxy to become chaotic. Collisions between the clouds become frequent and violent and this causes the clouds to move all over the galaxy's disk thus radially redistributing the gas and dust within an Island Universe. In particular, a large quantity of gas will fall along the bar and eventually reach the galaxy's central region. This is why it is believed that bars could be an important source of material that feeds the supermassive black hole found at the heart of most galaxies.

This picture is of a barred spiral galaxy located about 25 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Leo. It is only known as NGC 2903 because Charles Messier overlooked it when preparing his list of bright, comet-like objects- this one is bright enough for him to have spotted. It shines at approximately magnitude 10, thus making it an easy target to glimpse with a modest telescope under a relatively dark sky. The width of the galaxy is roughly 80,000 light years from edge to edge and this makes it slightly smaller than our own Galaxy.

Exceptional atmospheric conditions enabled the exposure of unusually clear images used to construct this picture. Looking through a curtain of stars that are actually in our own Galaxy, this new image shows amazing, cataclysmic activity as we peer down into the bar and across the disc of this much more distant galaxy! NGC 2903 has been known to contain numerous hot spots of violent stellar activity and this image clearly shows the results of that description: spectacular jets, looping and arching dust lanes and huge winding partial rings of gas and dust clouds rising up from the galaxy's plane. In short, this galaxy is experiencing multiple, simultaneous, explosive events on an unimaginable scale! This galaxy has been described as being similar to our own, but I believe this picture casts some doubts on taking that analogy too literally.

This image was captured by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) over a two week period spanning mid to late February 2007. The picture represents almost 21 hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory that houses his remotely controlled instruments is located near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

M-77 has captured the imagination of scientists for many decades because of the unusually high amount of energy pouring from its central region. Following years of intensive investigation, observations with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes confirmed the presence of a powerful jet pouring copious amounts of material into inter-galactic space at enormous speed. It is now believed that the source of this commotion is a super-massive black hole, ten million times more massive than our Sun, in the process of absorbing material that has ventured too close.

Over time, the orbits of gas, dust and stars near a black hole will slowly decay thus causing the stellar objects and material to grow closer to the event horizon. As they approach, the speed of their orbit will increase until it reaches incredible velocity. Instead of being drawn beyond the point of no return, some material will, instead, be flung outward far away from the black hole in a massive jet of matter and energy.

The radiation emitting from the center of M-77 is constantly changing- it can be observed to brighten and dim over a period that spans just a few days. This picture cannot show the jet because it is not detectable in visible light. However, the material that is shot from the center eventually falls back onto the galaxy's broad circular plane- and that is something you can see.

On the right, (I believe) copious amounts of dust falling from the central jet create enormous, ruddy colored clouds and dust lanes encircling the galaxy. On the left, furious star formation give the outer arms a bluer cast as the light from the new, hot, bright suns is reflected off the nearby clouds of dust.

R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) took this 17.5 hour exposure over several nights throughout December 2006 from an remotely controlled observatory, almost 8,000 feet above sea level in the south central mountains of New Mexico. The image was taken with a 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope and an eleven-mega pixel SBIG astronomical camera.

Two of the Milky Way's small galactic companions can be seen with unaided vision from a dark site near the equator or anywhere in the southern hemisphere that does not have nighttime light pollution. They are called the Magellanic Clouds because of their misty appearance to the crew on one of Magellan's early voyages of discovery that followed a route through the southern seas to Australia. The larger of the two is located about 150,000 light years from Earth (remember that a light year represents about ten trillion miles or six trillion kilometers) and it contains one of the most beautifully bizarre regions where new stars are forming. Known as the Tarantula Nebula, this stellar nursery is about 1,000 light years in diameter!

R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) combined fifty, fifteen minute photographs to create this picture, with a total exposure time of almost thirteen hours. The images were taken with a 12 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope and an eleven mega-pixel camera at f/8 from a remotely controlled observatory located fifty miles east of Melbourne, Australia.

The galaxies that surround us are arrayed so they are seen from all angles- no two are identical in the perspective presented to our line of sight. Those that only present their profile allow us a compelling view of a facet that would otherwise be undetectable- many are not flat but are slightly twisted!

The scale of the Universe is vast beyond comprehension. For example, galaxies are often called Island Universes because the distance that separates one from the other essentially makes travel between them, even at the speed of light, utterly impossible- even within the life span of an entire species. But these distances are superceded because, on its grandest scale, the Universe is organized into huge areas that, remarkably, resemble soap bubbles. Their interiors are seemingly void of material but at the juncture where the bubbles meet, we often find a group of galaxies huddling together. Most galaxies belong to one of these celestial congregations.

The gravity of one galaxy can have an effect on its neighbor in the group and it is believed that some of the warping observed in galaxies, when seen from their edge, is caused by this interaction. Additionally, many galaxies are attended by much smaller companions- each one a galaxy unto itself, but caught by the gravational embrace and forced into an orbit around a larger galactic entity. Over time, even small galaxies, under such circumstances, will tug and affect the shape of their partner.

Investigating these and other explanations stoke the fires that motivate many professional astronomers. Thus, the subject of the image I am sharing with you ignited a desire to understand why it, too, is slightly warped.

The large galaxy that you will see in this picture is located in the direction of the northern constellation named Ursa Major which is also known as the Great Bear or the Big Dipper. It is 55 million light years in the distance which is very, very far if you remember that one light year is about 10 trillion kilometers! Because we live inside a galaxy, the view beyond our island in space is always through a curtain of stars that is much closer to us. Thus, although the galaxy in this image has the barely memorable designation of NGC 4013, because of a coincidence, one of the Milky Way's suns is superimposed on it so that many say it resembles something more familiar- a diamond solitaire ring!

This image presents the galaxy's edge-on appearance so that, horizontally along its central axis, there runs a dark irregular line that resembles craquelé in a old painting. This is actually an enormous amount of material- vast lanes of dust that are the remains of stars previously exploded. Because the dust is light absorbent, it blocks our view of what lies behind. However, it also provides a clue about this galaxy's true nature- notice that the line is curved- dipping at the left and rising at the extreme right.

The reason for this deviation remains a mystery to astronomers. Because the project was conducted with a team of professional astronomers, hopefully, this picture may shed some new light when the raw data is analyzed.

This image was captured by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) between November 20 and December 28, 2006. It represents almost 15 hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory that houses it is located near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

China was the world's leading ocean going nation by the eleventh century- their shipwrights had been building large sea worthy junks for decades. Some were three hundred feet long with a capacity of over a thousand tons and capable of holding five hundred to one thousand people. This was the time of the Sung Dynasty and the Chinese had made major advances in their knowledge of geography, mapmaking and astronomy. They had invented the compass which radically improved their ability to navigate- every ship carried one along with highly accurate marine charts, tide schedules and precision star maps. So, the appearance of a bright new star, four times as brilliant as Venus, caught the immediate attention of the general population- that it remained visible in broad daylight for almost a month and was seen in the night sky for almost two years made it all the more fantastic!

What they saw and recorded for posterity on July 4, 1054 was a rare, near-by supernova- the death of a star in the constellation of Taurus which had exhausted its nuclear fuel, could no longer support it's own enormous weight and therefore imploded. The internal shock from the inward rushing material was sufficient to tear the star into shreds and left only it's rapidly spinning central core enshrouded by an ever expanding cloud filled with fantastic hydrogen filaments, dust and other material from the it's outer layers.

The new star was also noted by the Japanese and native-American Anastazi Indians. Interestingly, the Europeans did not pay enough attention to make any note that modern researchers have been able to locate.

We now recognize the remains of this event, almost one thousand years later, as the Crab Nebula or M1, as designated by the famous French comet-hunter, Charles Messier.

The Crab Nebula, shown here, was photographed by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) between November and December 2006 and represents almost 24 hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory is located high in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico.

The nebula is expanding at a rate of about 2,000 kilometers per second- the cloud has grown to over ten light years in diameter since the time of its explosion! At the center of the cloud are a pair of small, equally bright stars- the star on the right is the source of the explosion! It's incredibly dense, essentially comprised of atomic neutrons and is estimated to weigh something like several mountains per teaspoon full! It's also spinning at about 30 times per second! This rapid motion creates a large magnetic field that causes the blue-white gas and dust filling the interior to rotate around the exploded star in a donut shaped torus with jets spitting laterally from the center.

Protruding up from the red mass of filaments, is a towering dark-teal jet of material that was first seen in 1970 through long-exposure photographs due to its extreme faintness. Interestingly, this remarkable jet has been overlooked by astrophotographers for decades until now- you are also seeing it in its natural color for the first time.

Like expanding, concentric waves that result from throwing a rock into water, vast, powerful ripples of energy move outward from the site of a supernova's conflagration. Eventually these start to squeeze the gas and dust that drifts thorough out space and begins to compress them into enormous dark clouds that can span hundreds of light years in width (one light year is about ten trillion kilometers or six trillion miles). If enough material is affected, it will start to condense inward due to its own weight. Overtime, the pressure (and resulting heat) within the cloud will become so great that a thermonuclear explosion will be triggered. The outward force of this explosion will stop the cloud's collapse and as the energy reaches its exterior surface, it will escape as heat and light and thus transform the cloud into a star.

The clouds that create stars are known as interstellar nurseries- these hold significant fascination since our solar system was also created within one. When we see the birthplace of stars we glimpse the forces at work during our planet's origin- an event that also led to our being.

This picture depicts a place that is 1,500 lights years from Earth in the direction of the constellation called Orion. It features a nearby star factory called the Foxface Nebula- also known as NGC 1788, based on J.L.E. Dreyer's 19th century catalog of deep space locations.

The elongated, darker cloud that hangs in front of the larger, brighter nebula (the fox's snout) is an active star forming region. Waves of new star energy, pouring out from within the dark globule, are significantly disturbing the surrounding area- you can see the effect of these blasts on the cloud patterns. The blue, teal and yellow hues are from light reflecting off dust that engulfs this area. The brighter red material, that loops and curls, represents hydrogen gas that has been excited to glow by the energy released from newly formed stars.

This picture was produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) from his remotely controlled southern New Mexico observatory that houses a 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope. All images were produced with a SBIG STL-11000 astronomical camera.

NGC 1097, pictured here, lies about 45 million light-years from Earth and features four remarkable jets emanating from a super massive black hole that purrs within its central region. These jets were discovered, optically, back in 1975 with the then new 4-meter reflector at Cerro Tololo in Chile. Two of those jets can be seen in this image, the other two, located approximately 35 or so degrees from these, were lost in the sky glow noise of this cumulative 14 hour exposure. A cropped, extremely stretched view of the unprocessed luminance data can be seen here.

Also noticeable is one of this galaxy's two small companions- an small elliptical galaxy that orbits about 42,000 light-years from the larger galaxy's center. Despite the great distance that separates the two, the smaller galaxy's presence is being felt by the larger spiral as evidenced by the disruption of its closer spiral arm.

This picture was produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) using two telescopes located almost on opposite sides of the Earth. About half of the exposures were taken from an observatory near Melbourne, Australia using a 12-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope while the other half were obtained from his southern New Mexico observatory with a 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien instrument. All images were produced with a SBIG STL-11000 astronomical camera.

The scene in the picture lies in this general direction. This photograph was produced from images taken during the early morning hours of June and July, just a few months ago. The middle of our Galaxy is about 30,000 lights years in the distance, but the place in the picture lies much closer- only about 5,500 light years from Earth.

This is a picture of a nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius. This image depicts a scene filled with gas and dust that has partially collapsed under its own weight to form a cluster of bright new stars. The stars that provide most of the illumination cannot be seen, however. They are still buried deep behind very dense clouds which appear as the dark areas toward the right side of the picture. You can see evidence of the winds being produced by the stars that are still hidden inside the Omega Nebula when you notice the amazing windswept and winding patterns that are apparent in the clouds.

You may notice several lumpy shapes in the upper purplish-blue colored area. These are globules of dust and gas that are in the process of collapsing and may already hold stars inside that are newly formed or well on their way to becoming new stars.

The curious area in the lower middle of the picture is also a star forming region, New stars have formed in the narrow region between the bright pink cup-shaped object and the tails of gas and dust that extend leftward.

One last comment about this picture- if you have seen images of this subject previously, you may recall that they were colored, almost entirely, red. This area is full of glowing hydrogen gas and copious amounts of interstellar dust. This material has a natural tendency to glow in a ruddy light. However, it is possible to moderate the amount of reddening so that the other colors, which actually exist, can be seen. Therefore, you are viewing this nebula, possibly for one of the first times, in its natural true hues.

This image was photographed by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) and represents almost nineteen hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory is located high in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico.

The scene in the picture lies in this general direction. This photograph was produced from images taken during the early morning hours of June and July, just a few months ago. The middle of our Galaxy is about 30,000 lights years in the distance, but the place in the picture lies much closer- only about 5,500 light years from Earth.

This is a picture of a nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius. This image depicts a scene filled with gas and dust that has partially collapsed under its own weight to form a cluster of bright new stars. The stars that provide most of the illumination cannot be seen, however. They are still buried deep behind very dense clouds which appear as the dark areas toward the right side of the picture. You can see evidence of the winds being produced by the stars that are still hidden inside the Omega Nebula when you notice the amazing windswept and winding patterns that are apparent in the clouds.

You may notice several lumpy shapes in the upper purplish-blue colored area. These are globules of dust and gas that are in the process of collapsing and may already hold stars inside that are newly formed or well on their way to becoming new stars.

The curious area in the lower middle of the picture is also a star forming region, New stars have formed in the narrow region between the bright pink cup-shaped object and the tails of gas and dust that extend leftward.

One last comment about this picture- if you have seen images of this subject previously, you may recall that they were colored, almost entirely, red. This area is full of glowing hydrogen gas and copious amounts of interstellar dust. This material has a natural tendency to glow in a ruddy light. However, it is possible to moderate the amount of reddening so that the other colors, which actually exist, can be seen. Therefore, you are viewing this nebula, possibly for one of the first times, in its natural true hues.

This image was photographed by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) and represents almost nineteen hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory is located high in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico.

There is a lot about this galaxy that we cannot observe.

However, if we could only view this galaxy face on then we would probably never realize things that are visible in this image. For example, notice that it is not flat. There is slight curve along it's length. This is called a warp and it is caused by a small satellite galaxy visible toward the lower right in this picture.

The gravity of each has distorted the form of the other. Many large galaxies have small satellite galaxies that are in orbit around their larger companion and these other galaxies are, often, also warped.

Also notice the faint partial ring that extends above, just below and surrounds this galaxy. It's brightness has been exaggerated to make it more easily visible when, in fact, it is about one hundred times more dim than it appears here. It is shaped like an ellipse and one of its foci is at the center of the big galaxy. Like the smaller galaxy, it may also be partially responsible for the big spiral's warp.

This picture was taken with a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope and an 11 mega-pixel astronomical camera located under dark skies in the south central mountains of New Mexico. Over thirteen hours of exposures were required. This image was prepared by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) from data captured during the month of June 2006.

There is a lot about this galaxy that we cannot observe.

However, if we could only view this galaxy face on then we would probably never realize things that are visible in this image. For example, notice that it is not flat. There is slight curve along it's length. This is called a warp and it is caused by a small satellite galaxy visible toward the lower right in this picture.

The gravity of each has distorted the form of the other. Many large galaxies have small satellite galaxies that are in orbit around their larger companion and these other galaxies are, often, also warped.

Also notice the faint partial ring that extends above, just below and surrounds this galaxy. It's brightness has been exaggerated to make it more easily visible when, in fact, it is about one hundred times more dim than it appears here. It is shaped like an ellipse and one of its foci is at the center of the big galaxy. Like the smaller galaxy, it may also be partially responsible for the big spiral's warp.

This picture was taken with a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope and an 11 mega-pixel astronomical camera located under dark skies in the south central mountains of New Mexico. Over thirteen hours of exposures were required. This image was prepared by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) from data captured during the month of June 2006.

M83 is also known as the Southern Pinwheel because of the three principal spiral arms that wind about the galaxy's center. Look closely, and you will also see one or two arm fragments extending downward and a kink in one arm that is gravationally interacting with fainter material outside the main galaxy. Each arm is actually a wave of denser material and the size of each wave is partially due to the gravational interaction of the other galaxies in M83's group. The crest of each wave appears brighter than the trough. The waves in this galaxy are enormous.

Also note the central region is elongated and forms a shape that is referred to as a bar. Our galaxy is also a barred spiral like M83. The blue hues in the spiral arms are colored by millions of bright, young massive stars and the dark tendrils extending across this galaxy's face like a web are made of dust remnants from earlier star generations that exploded or shed their outer layers. The spaces between the arms are also filled with stars but these are dimmer and shine with a reddened light.

This image was captured by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) over a period that extended about a month beginning May 27, 2006 and represents almost twelve hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory that houses it is located near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

M83 is also known as the Southern Pinwheel because of the three principal spiral arms that wind about the galaxy's center. Look closely, and you will also see one or two arm fragments extending downward and a kink in one arm that is gravationally interacting with fainter material outside the main galaxy. Each arm is actually a wave of denser material and the size of each wave is partially due to the gravational interaction of the other galaxies in M83's group. The crest of each wave appears brighter than the trough. The waves in this galaxy are enormous.

Also note the central region is elongated and forms a shape that is referred to as a bar. Our galaxy is also a barred spiral like M83. The blue hues in the spiral arms are colored by millions of bright, young massive stars and the dark tendrils extending across this galaxy's face like a web are made of dust remnants from earlier star generations that exploded or shed their outer layers. The spaces between the arms are also filled with stars but these are dimmer and shine with a reddened light.

This image was captured by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) over a period that extended about a month beginning May 27, 2006 and represents almost twelve hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory that houses it is located near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

M83 is also known as the Southern Pinwheel because of the three principal spiral arms that wind about the galaxy's center. Look closely, and you will also see one or two arm fragments extending downward and a kink in one arm that is gravationally interacting with fainter material outside the main galaxy. Each arm is actually a wave of denser material and the size of each wave is partially due to the gravational interaction of the other galaxies in M83's group. The crest of each wave appears brighter than the trough. The waves in this galaxy are enormous.

Also note the central region is elongated and forms a shape that is referred to as a bar. Our galaxy is also a barred spiral like M83. The blue hues in the spiral arms are colored by millions of bright, young massive stars and the dark tendrils extending across this galaxy's face like a web are made of dust remnants from earlier star generations that exploded or shed their outer layers. The spaces between the arms are also filled with stars but these are dimmer and shine with a reddened light.

This image was captured by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) over a period that extended about a month beginning May 27, 2006 and represents almost twelve hours of total exposure through a twenty inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a SBIG STL-11000 eleven mega-pixel camera. The observatory that houses it is located near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

At the center of Centaurus A resides a black hole that is over a billion times more massive than our sun and it is slowly devouring the central area of this unusual galaxy! As material is drawn into the black hole, it is shot out at either of its poles as twin jets of energy. This image cannot show the two jets that are shooting from the top and the bottom of Centaurus A because the jets are only visible infrared, X-ray and radio waves.

This picture as produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) through 12.5 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope located in Scoresby, Victoria, Australia- about 50 miles east of Melbourne- and a SBIG ST-2000XM camera. The equipment was remote controlled via the Internet from the photographer's home in San Jose, California, USA on May 30, 2006.

This picture shows a place in deep space where these kinds of events have occurred. The brilliant star near the center of the picture is young and very hot- in relative terms, it was only recently created. The cloud from which it formed still surrounds this young Sun but is being blown away by the push of star's massive radiation. This brand new picture shows the way it looked 1,300 years ago due to the distance that separates it from Earth and the speed that light travels.

This is the first light image from new remotely controlled 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope located in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico at an elevation of about 7,300 feet (2,225 meters) above sea-level. This picture as produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) during the final days of May 2006. The image was taken with an eleven mega-pixel SBIG camera and is the equivalent of a 20 hour exposure.

This picture shows a place in deep space where these kinds of events have occurred. The brilliant star near the center of the picture is young and very hot- in relative terms, it was only recently created. The cloud from which it formed still surrounds this young Sun but is being blown away by the push of star's massive radiation. This brand new picture shows the way it looked 1,300 years ago due to the distance that separates it from Earth and the speed that light travels.

This is the first light image from new remotely controlled 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope located in the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico at an elevation of about 7,300 feet (2,225 meters) above sea-level. This picture as produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) during the final days of May 2006. The image was taken with an eleven mega-pixel SBIG camera and is the equivalent of a 20 hour exposure.

Lit by a very bright, young star that is several times more massive the Sun, the tendrils of dust that extend throughout this nebula give it a strong resemblance to the more popularly known Trifid Nebula.

This picture was produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) during the month of January 2006. A total of sixty fifteen-minute images were digitally combined to create this final result with an exposure length equivalent to 15 hours. This picture was taken from the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico with a remotely controlled 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope and an eleven mega-pixel camera.

Lit by a very bright, young star that is several times more massive the Sun, the tendrils of dust that extend throughout this nebula give it a strong resemblance to the more popularly known Trifid Nebula.

This picture was produced by R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) during the month of January 2006. A total of sixty fifteen-minute images were digitally combined to create this final result with an exposure length equivalent to 15 hours. This picture was taken from the Sacramento Mountains of south central New Mexico with a remotely controlled 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope and an eleven mega-pixel camera.

Approximately two-thirds of all spiral galaxies contain a bar including our own Milky Way galaxy- but it's bar is barely visible. The current hypothesis is that the bar structure acts as a stellar nursery which actively creates new stars near the center. The thin reddish lines that are also visible throughout the galaxy are actually dust lanes where stars are created. Their presence within the bar helps corroborate this opinion. The bar is generally thought to be caused by a density wave that extends from the galaxy's center. At first, it changes the orbits of inner stars then, after billions of years, affects stars farther out and, over millions of millennia, elongates as it grows- thus creating this unusual structure.

R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) took this nine hour exposure between late November and the first days of December 2005 from over seven thousand feet above sea level in the mountains of south central New Mexico. The image was taken through a remote controlled 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope using an eleven mega-pixel camera.

M-82 was hugely altered, it's outer arms stripped off, it's star clouds excited into producing stars and exploding others at a rate so dizzying that matter was ejected and continues pouring in spectacular particle wind driven jets. These have a red, flame-like appearance and are estimated to be ten thousand light-years long. As a result, astronomers refer to M-82 as a starburst galaxy. It's exposed core is also a powerful source of x-rays- evidencing it's runaway star activity.

Clouds of debris from this runaway stellar activity can be seen rising 20,000 light years above the horizontal plane of this galaxy. A mid-March 2006 image released from the Spitzer Space Telescope, taken in inferred light, much more fully reveals the extensive nature of these perpendicular spikes.

R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) took this fourteen hour exposure between late January and early March of 2006 from an observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico in that state's south central mountains. The image was taken through a remotely controlled 20 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope using a large format SBIG STL-11000 camera.