The Most Distant Object Yet Discovered in the Universe

ESO's Very Large Telescope has shown that a faint gamma-ray burst detected last Thursday is the signature of the explosion of the earliest, most distant known object in the Universe (a redshift of 8.2). The explosion apparently took place more than 13 billion years ago, only about 600 million years after the Big Bang.

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The Zone

On 26 April 1986 01:23:45 a.m. reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, near Pripyat in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Bow Shock

A bow shock is created in space when two streams of gas collide. The young star LL Ori Emits a solar wind, a stream of charged particles moving rapidly outward from the star. The material in the wind collides with the gas evaporating away from the center of the Orion Nebula, creating the crescent-shaped collision area in the image.
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Duel

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Hazardous Atmosphere

Japanese night raiders are greeted with a lacework of anti-aircraft fire by the Marine defenders of Yontan airfield, on Okinawa. In the foreground are Marine Corsair fighter planes of the “Hell’s Belles’ squadron. 1945. T.Sgt. Chorlest.

Seven Sisters

M45, the Pleiades and known by the name "Subaru" in Japan

(which explains the logo on the car hood and name of the Japanese telescope on Mauna Kea)
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Moon Over Kazakhstan

Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

A Young Pulsar Shows Its Hand

A small, dense object only 12 miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand. In this image, the lowest energy X-rays that Chandra detects are red, the medium range is green, and the most energetic ones are colored blue. Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1,700 years old and it is located about 17,000 light years away. Neutron stars are created when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse. B1509 is spinning completely around almost 7 times every second and is releasing energy into its environment at a prodigious rate -- presumably because it has an intense magnetic field at its surface, estimated to be 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. The combination of rapid rotation and ultra-strong magnetic field makes B1509 one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the galaxy. This generator drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the neutron star. As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, they radiate away their energy and create the elaborate nebula seen by Chandra.

Image Credits: NASA/CXC/CfA/P. Slane et al.
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