The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released some amazing photos of space. According to NASA, the photos were taken by the NASA Webb and NASA Chandra X-ray missions.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is one of the high-resolution telescopes that continues to make observations from space, including images and extremely detailed data called spectra. Meanwhile, the Chandra X-ray Telescope was launched in 1999 and is the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope, with eight times the resolution. According to NASA, the Chandra X-ray Telescope can detect sources that are more than 20 times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope.
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The US space agency said in an Instagram post that it had released four images of Rho Opiiuti, the Orion Nebula, spiral galaxy NGC 3627 and galaxy cluster MACS J0416.
According to NASA, Lo Opuiuti is located 390 light-years away from Earth. According to NASA, Lo Opuiuti is a vast complex of clouds containing gas and stars of various sizes and ages. As one of the closest regions of star formation, it offers astronomers a unique opportunity to study stellar phenomena. In the shared image, Chandra’s X-ray data is displayed in purple, highlighting young stars that emit powerful X-rays, while the Webb telescope’s infrared data is displayed in shades of red, yellow, cyan, light blue, and dark blue, showcasing the stunning regions of gas and dust.
The next image released by NASA is of the Orion Nebula, located in the Milky Way galaxy and about 1,500 light-years from Earth. The Orion Nebula is located directly below the middle star of Orion’s “belt” and can be seen with a small telescope. In this image, Chandra captures the bright young star in X-rays in red, green and blue, while Webb highlights the surrounding gas and dust in dark red, which will contribute to future star formation.
NGC 3627 is a spiral galaxy seen from a slight angle. It’s known as a “barred” spiral galaxy because of its distinctive rectangular central section. In an Instagram post, NASA wrote, “Purple X-rays from Chandra show evidence of a supermassive black hole at its center, while Webb spotted dust, gas, and stars across the galaxy in red, green, and blue. The image also includes optical data from NASA Hubble in red, green, and blue.”
NASA said MACS J0416 is a galaxy cluster, one of the largest objects in the universe held together by gravity. They added that a cluster contains hundreds, possibly thousands, of galaxies, all bathed in vast amounts of super-hot gas. “Chandra’s purple X-rays show this reservoir of hot gas, while Hubble-Webb shows individual galaxies in red, green, and blue,” NASA said in a post about the image.
The post shared by NASA also garnered attention from internet users, with one person calling it a “beautiful AI” and another describing it as “amazing.”
“Thank you so much for this glimpse into space,” one user said.
“Absolutely breathtaking,” one person added.
“There’s so much yet to be discovered,” commented another, while one user said, “Space is so beautiful.”
