Documentos e recursos — Resultados da busca
Resultados da busca
The LDN 483 Dark Nebula
imagem
Legenda: This image shows a dark molecular cloud known as LDN 483, captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. At first glance, the patch of sky looks like a region where stars are missing, but the effect is due to interstellar extinction — dust and gas within LDN 483 absorb and scatter light from background stars, making them appear faint or invisible to telescopes that observe visible light. Interstellar extinction is the dimming of light from distant objects caused by dust and gas between the object and the observer, a common phenomenon in astronomy that must be accounted for when measuring stellar brightness and color.
Dark nebulae like LDN 483 are dense concentrations of interstellar matter located within our Milky Way Galaxy. This particular cloud lies about 700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens and contains enough material to block most visible light from stars behind it. Because dust grains preferentially scatter shorter (bluer) wavelengths of light, extinction can also make objects appear redder than they truly are — a related effect known as interstellar reddening. Understanding and correcting for extinction is essential for astronomers to reveal the true brightness, distance, and physical properties of celestial objects seen through dusty regions of space.
Crédito: ESO
Link do crédito
Termos do Glossário:
Nebulosa Escura , Meio interestelar , Extinção interestelar
Licença: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) ícones
Arquivo
( imagem
31.01 MB)
Equatorial Milky Way
imagem
Criado para o OAE
Legenda: Honourable mention in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns: Equatorial Milky Way
Taken in Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, Java Island, Indonesia, in March 2016, this image captures regions of the southern Milky Way and, at its left edge, the two planets Mars and Saturn. Mars appears orange and is similar in colour to the star Antares, whose Greek name — anti Ares — references this. Saturn is a little bit fainter than Mars, but clearly visible among the stars of Ophiuchus, above the Pipe Nebula and forming an isosceles triangle with Mars and Antares.
Mars is on the top and Saturn is vertically below. Visible to the naked eye, both planets have significance in many cultures around the world. In Roman mythology Mars is the god of war and fertility, and Saturn the god of sowing and agriculture. Its Greek equivalent, the god Kronos, is also considered the regent of completion. Indigenous Australians, including the Kamilaroi and Wailan people, associate Saturn with “wunygal”, a small bird. Mars is called Iherm-penh (something burnt in flames) by the Anmatyerre people of the Central Desert, while the Kokatha people of the Western Desert associate Mars and the star Anatres with the red-tailed black cockatoo (Kogolongo).
In the middle of this photograph, the most famous southern constellations are clearly recognisable: the Southern Cross (Crux), the pointer stars, Alpha and Beta Centauri, the dark Coalsack Nebula and the red Eta Carina Nebula, which is not visible to the unaided eye but is prominent in modern photographs. In the 19th century, the star eta Carinae had been the second-brightest star in the sky for some time, but since it varies irregularly, it has hardly been recognisable in recent decades, and its future visibility is unpredictable.
Triangulum Australe is visible between the pointer stars and the Scorpion, and in the constellation of Centaurus, the bright globular star cluster Omega Centauri is clearly displayed. It was considered a “nebulous star” since antiquity and, thus, was listed in star catalogues for at least 2000 years. Only within the last century did astronomers discover that globular star clusters are in the halo of our galaxy and that this one consists of roughly 10 million stars.
The dark regions in the Milky Way, which are cool, dense clouds of dust and gas, form the head and body of the Celestial Emu Tchingal. Together with the Southern Cross and the pointer stars, they appear in the Dreamtime stories of many Indigenous Australians. One story associated with the Djab Wurrung and the Jardwadjali people is part of a Dreamtime Story involving Tchingal, the Bram-bram-bult brothers (the pointer stars), their mother Druk (Delta Crux), and Bunya the hunter, who gets transformed into a possum (Gacrux, the red star at the top of the Southern Cross).
Crédito: Giorgia Hofer/IAU OAE
Termos do Glossário:
Poeira , Marte , Via Láctea , Saturno , Escorpião , Cruzeiro do Sul , Nuvem de poeira , Extinção interestelar , Alpha Centauri
Categorias
Via Láctea e Meio Interestelar
, Astronomia a Olho Nu
Licença: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) ícones
Este arquivo no Zenodo ( imagem 1.61 MB)
The Pillars of Creation in comparison
imagem
Legenda: The 'Pillars of Creation' are a renowned astronomical feature situated within the Eagle Nebula in the Serpens constellation. The illustration provides a direct comparison between images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), showcasing the pillars, which span several light years in diameter, in both visible light (also known as optical light) and infrared light. On the left are the pillars as seen by Hubble in visual light, taken in 2014. It displays dark pillars against an opaque background, with only a handful of visible stars. Conversely, the counterpart on the right is Webb’s near-infrared view published in 2022, penetrating the dust and revealing numerous stars of varying sizes.
Their distance from Earth is approximately 6,500 to 7,000 light years. Within these pillars, new stars are constantly forming, making them a subject of extensive study by astronomers. Composed mostly of cool molecular hydrogen and small amounts of interstellar dust, they are subject to erosion by the intense ultraviolet radiation emitted by nearby massive and newborn stars, a process known as photoevaporation.
Crédito: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Link do crédito
Termos do Glossário:
Astronomia infravermelha , Telescópio infravermelho , Astronomia Óptica , Formação estelar , Espectro visível , Nuvem de poeira
Categorias
Via Láctea e Meio Interestelar
, Estrelas
Licença: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic ícones
Arquivo
( imagem
12.03 MB)
An Encounter With Halley's Comet
imagem
Legenda: This image shows the solid core, or nucleus, of Halley’s Comet, captured in 1986 by the European Space Agency spacecraft Giotto during its flyby of the comet in the inner Solar System. The nucleus appears irregular and potato-shaped, measuring roughly 15 kilometers (about 9 miles) across, and is composed of a mixture of ice, dust, and rock. Unlike the glowing fuzzy cloud (coma) and long tail that make comets visible from Earth, the nucleus itself is dark and difficult to see until a spacecraft passes close enough to take detailed images.
Halley’s Comet is one of the best-known comets because it returns to the inner Solar System approximately every 76 years, allowing generations of astronomers to observe it repeatedly. The material that is released from the nucleus as the comet warms near the Sun forms a glowing coma and long tails of gas and dust, and over many returns leaves trails of debris that produce meteor showers on Earth, such as the Eta Aquarids in May and the Orionids in October.
Crédito: NASA/ESA/Giotto Project
Link do crédito
Termos do Glossário:
Coma cometária , Cometa , Núcleo cometário , Cometa Halley
Licença: Domínio Público Domínio Público ícones
Arquivo
( imagem
1.45 MB)
Neowise's metamorphosis, by Tomáš Slovinský and Petr Horálek, Slovakia
imagem
Criado para o OAE
Legenda: First place in the 2021 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Comets.
This image uses the chronophotography technique to capture the evolution of the comet C/2020 F3 (Neowise) over time, as it became visible in the northern skies in July 2020. Orbits of comets are extremely elliptical, which means that during part of their orbit they get close to the Sun. As a comet approaches the Sun, it gets heated, releases gas and dust creating an envelope or coma around the nucleus. The solar wind and photons (particles of electromagnetic radiation) interact with the coma producing the cometary tail, which can be seen clearly in this image. The tail of a comet always points away from the Sun, and extends as much as tens of millions of kilometres. This tail has two parts: the relatively straight bluish gas (ion or plasma) tail, which is made up of charged particles interacting with the magnetic fields of the solar wind; and the whitish dust tail compose of very small dust particles that are pushed by the radiation pressure from the Sun into a curve due to their slower speeds. Two regions in the Solar System are often associated with being “storehouses” of comets: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Comets with periods up to about two hundred years come from the Kuiper belt, a reservoir of cometary nuclei material with a disk-like shape located beyond Neptune. Longer period comets come from the Oort cloud, another huge reservoir of icy objects, with a spherical shape surrounding the Solar System. The outer limit of the Oort Cloud is not known as yet, but it could be as much as 10 thousand times the Sun-Earth distance, or even more. Due to gravitational disturbances, some of these cometary nuclei might be ejected towards the inner regions of the Solar System, sometimes approaching the Earth, offering some of the most spectacular views of a celestial body. The image also shows some prominent constellations and asterisms like the Big and Little Dippers, and also the North (Pole) Star – Polaris.
Crédito: Tomáš Slovinský and Petr Horálek/IAU OAE
Termos do Glossário:
Cometa
Categorias
Astronomia a Olho Nu
, Sistema Solar
Licença: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) ícones
Este arquivo no Zenodo ( imagem 19.53 MB)
.png){kind=link}
