Sample
Photos from the Exhibit
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The Cone Nebula juts like a
dark mountain peak against the softly glowing background
light of an emission nebula. This pillar of gas is a region
of star birth, like the Eagle Nebula pillars seen elsewhere
in this exhibit. This close-up Hubble image shows the top
portion of the Cone Nebula. The entire nebula is seven light
years long.
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This small region within the Carina
Nebula, named the Keyhole Nebula by astronomer Sir
John Herschel in the 19th century, is a rich breeding ground
for some of the hottest and most massive stars known, each
about 10 times as hot and 100 times as hefty as our Sun.
This region is about 8,000 light years from Earth. The Carnia
Nebula is about 200 light years in diameter, while the Keyhole
structure is about 7 light years across.
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Undersea corral? Enchanted
castles? Space serpents? These eerie, dark pillar-like
structures are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen
gas and dust that are incubators for new stars. The pillars
protrude from the interior wall of a dark cloud of gas like
stalagmites from the floor of a cavern. They are part of
the "Eagle Nebula" (also called M16), a nearby
star-forming region 6,500 light-years away in the constellation
Serpens.
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When galaxies are close enough to one another, gravity pulls
them into a collision, such as The Tadpole
Galaxy. A small, compact blue galaxy, visible in the
upper left hand corner of the Tadpole, created the galactic
crash. The gravitational forces tore stars, gas and dust out
of the main body into a 280,0000 light-year-long tail. |
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It doesn’t look like it, but this picture shows two
spiral galaxies or what used to be spiral galaxies.
About 160 million years has passed since their closest encounter,
and gravity has severely distorted their shapes, pulling stars,
dust and gas out into space in long "tidal tails."
The pair will eventually merge, forming a large, nearly spherical
galaxy called an elliptical. The stars, gas and luminous clumps
of stars in the tidal tails will either fall back into the
merged galaxies or orbit the newly formed elliptical. |
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In 1987, the brightest supernova in 400 years appeared in
the southern sky. A star had exploded in the nearby Large
Magellanic Cloud galaxy. In 1994, the
Hubble Space Telescope discovered these strange rings around
the supernova remnant, their origin still a mystery.
Measurements show they expand slowly, at 70,000 to 100,000
miles per hour. The slow speed and the rings’ nitrogen-rich
composition show that they were expelled from the star when
it was a red supergiant, more than 20,00 years before the
supernova explosion. |
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Sagittarius Star Cloud - These
are among the stars that pack our Milky Way’s hub. Red stars
are either small stars or old, dying red giants. Both have
low temperatures and burn their fuel slowly, giving them the
longest lives. The blue stars are young and hot, consuming
their fuel quickly and dying fast. Yellow stars like our sun
are in the middle of that temperature range. |
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The Hubble Deep Field shows about 2,000
galaxies in an area of the sky that is about the same
size as President Roosevelt’s eye on a dime held at arm’s
length. The nearest galaxies seen in the Hubble Deep Field
are about 2.5 billion light years away. This image was taken
by focusing the Hubble Space Telescope on a seemingly empty
patch of the sky for 10 straight days. |
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Saturn is the solar system’s second largest
planet, surpassed only by Jupiter. As one of the four
large gaseous planets, a category that includes Jupiter, Neptune
and Uranus, Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.
You could fit 750 planet Earths into Saturn, but because it
consists primarily of gas, it is less dense than water. |
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The Ring Nebula, one of the most
famous "planetary nebula," isn’t the fl at oval
it appears to be. Actually, this view is like standing at
the mouth of a tunnel and staring inside. The "ring"
is really an elongated cylinder of gas cast off by a dying
star. |
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Birth and death, youth and age, all vie for attention in this
striking photograph that shows the entire life cycle of the
stars taking place in one image. In the forefront, clouds
of molecular hydrogen serve as the birthplace of new
stars. Young, hot, blue stars burn in the center of the image.
And in the background, an aging star nears an explosive death.
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Galaxy NGC 4414 is what’s called
a "flocculent" spiral galaxy a spiral without
well-defined arms. Flocculent means fluffy or wooly. These
galaxies are quite common. Spiral galaxy NGC 4414 is also
home to many "Cepheid variable stars," stars that
astronomers use as markers in attempts to measure distances.
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Globular clusters, like the one
in this picture, are dense, tightly packed groups of stars
believed to form in one simultaneous collapse of a giant cloud
of molecular hydrogen. Many globular clusters are quite old,
possibly dating back to the early formation of the galaxy.
The stars attract one another gravitationally, the heavier
stars sinking to the center of the cluster and the lighter
stars drifting to the outer edges. The lighter stars can sometimes
be kicked out of the cluster by a grazing encounter with another
star. |
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The Tarantula Nebula, located
some 165,000 light years away in the southern constellation
Dorado, is a huge star-forming region in the nearby galaxy
we call the Large Magellanic Cloud. The massive stars in the
cluster at the right hand corner, Hodge 301, are quickly exhausting
their fuel and exploding as supernovae. The blasts may help
form more stars by compressing the clouds of gas and dust
in the nebula. |
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Vibrant.
Radiant. Miraculous.
This exhibition is available for display at
your venue.
Email Bruce Winslow, Museum
Director
or call (989) 631-5930 ext. 1403 for more information
on bringing this exhibition to your venue.
Ready to bring this exhibition
to your venue?
Open and print the 26-page template and the 7-page contract
for submission.
Facility
Report (180k PDF)
Exhibition Contract (110k
PDF)
"Heavens Above"
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