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(147 photos)
Created 6 Aug 2009 | Last updated 14 Nov 2009
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Bubble Nebu..BAY)
The Carina ..AAA)
Supernova R..AAB)
The Whirlpo..AAD)
The Helix N..AAF)
The Starbur..AAE)
One Trillio..AAC)
NGC 253 fro..AAG)
Hubble Phot..AAH)
The Majesti..AAI)
The Great O..AAJ)
The Tadpole..AAK)
Cone Nebula..AAL)
The Omega N..AAM)
"The Mice" ..AAN)
Galaxy Abel..AAO)
Comet-like ..AAP)
Young and O..AAQ)
Spiral Gala..AAR)
Spiral Gala..AAS)
Myriad of S..AAT)
Frame From ..AAU)
Hubble Ultr..AAV)
Barred Spir..AAW)
Infant Star..AAX)
![Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this monstrous object is actually an innocuous pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (NGC 2264) -- so named because, in ground-based images, it has a conical shape -- this giant pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region.<br />
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This picture, taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the nebula, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon. The entire nebula is 7 light-years long. The Cone Nebula resides 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros.<br />
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Radiation from hot, young stars [located beyond the top of the image] has slowly eroded the nebula over millions of years. Ultraviolet light heats the edges of the dark cloud, releasing gas into the relatively empty region of surrounding space. There, additional ultraviolet radiation causes the hydrogen gas to glow, which produces the red halo of light seen around the pillar. A similar process occurs on a much smaller scale to gas surrounding a single star, forming the bow-shaped arc seen near the upper left side of the Cone. This arc, seen previously with the Hubble telescope, is 65 times larger than the diameter of our solar system. The blue-white light from surrounding stars is reflected by dust. Background stars can be seen peeking through the evaporating tendrils of gas, while the turbulent base is pockmarked with stars reddened by dust.<br />
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Over time, only the densest regions of the Cone will be left. Inside these regions, stars and planets may form.<br />
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The Cone Nebula is a cousin of the M16 pillars, which the Hubble telescope imaged in 1995. Monstrous pillars of cold gas, like the Cone and M16, are common in large regions of star birth. Astronomers believe that these pillars are incubators for developing stars.<br />
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ACS made this observation on April 2, 2002.](http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000zyw5oFjLP4E/t/100/I0000zyw5oFjLP4E.jpg)
![The deepest visible-light image ever taken of the sky resolves approximately 300,000 stars in the halo of the nearest neighboring spiral galaxy, Andromeda (M31). The photo was taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Because the image captures both faint dwarf stars and bright giant stars, astronomers can estimate the age of the halo population by analyzing its distribution of color and brightness. The halo is a spherical cloud of stars around Andromeda, located 2.5 million light-years from Earth.<br />
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The surprising result is that these stars span a wide range of ages, from 6 to 13 billion years old. The age range is much wider than that of the population of stars in the halo of our own Milky Way, where 11- to 13-billion-year-old stars reside. The presence of younger stars in the Andromeda halo is probably the result of a more violent history in the galaxy, due to mergers with smaller galaxies.<br />
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In addition to the field of halo stars, a globular cluster in Andromeda falls near the bottom of the image [the white, spherical object]. Due to the great depth of the image, thousands of background galaxies also can be seen through the veil of stars in Andromeda. One particularly interesting pair of galaxies can be seen on the right-hand edge of the image, about a third of the way from the top. They are a blue and a red galaxy crashing into each other. A pinwheel-looking spiral galaxy is nearby. A handful of very bright stars [including the one at upper right] are in the foreground, in our Milky Way.<br />
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The image was made from 250 separate exposures taken from Dec. 2, 2002 to Jan. 11, 2003. The total exposure time was 3.5 days.<br />
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The members of the M31 halo science team are: T.M. Brown, H.C. Ferguson, E. Smith (STScI); R.A. Kimble, A.V. Sweigart (NASA/GSFC); A. Renzini (ESO); R.M. Rich (UCLA); and D.A. VandenBerg (U. of Victoria)](http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000mcU36TxdJ58/t/100/I0000mcU36TxdJ58.jpg)
