Incredible pictures of galaxies and stars released by Nasa
- Published
Nasa has released these amazing pictures to celebrate the International Year of Light. Astronomers use different types of light to see stars and galaxies that are really far away, like this picture of a galaxy, nicknamed the Whirlpool, which is 30 million light years away. This beautiful picture was made by pulling together four different types of light, from x-ray, to ultraviolet, visible and infrared.
All of these pictures were taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a special space telescope that orbits the Earth. This picture shows a cloud of debris left behind after a star exploded. The blue bits in the middle are a gas seen in x-ray light, and are very hot indeed, at temperatures of millions of degrees C.
This amazing picture shows what is left behind after a massive star explodes. It combines three different types of light to get the full picture, including blue x-ray light, yellow visible light, and pink radio light.
This brightly coloured galaxy is around 700 million light years away from Earth. The giant blue bubble is super-hot gas giving off x-ray light, and the distance from the centre of the galaxy to the two red-blobs is around 300,000 light years.
The leftovers of this supernova are what's left of an exploding star that Chinese astronomers first spotted around 2,000 years ago. The United Nations' International Year of Light runs throughout 2015 and celebrates the importance of light and light-based technologies to our daily lives.