Pretty Pictures

Astronomical pictures - Click on an image for a high resolution version. The photo's may not be used for any commercial purpose. Copyright belongs to ASTRON, unless otherwise stated.

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   Galaxy Cygnus A, observed with the LOFAR telescope. Image Credits: LOFAR Radio: J. McKean (ASTRON); Chandra X‑ray: M. Wise (ASTRON).
   Galaxy M87, observed with the LOFAR telescope. Credits: F. de Gasperin on behalf of the LOFAR collaboration.
The optical emission and neutral hydrogen in the Leo Ring.
The '8 o'clock arc' is a gravitationally lensed galaxy at redshift 2.7, in which many stars are currently seen to form.
Abell 2218 is a gravitaitional lensing cluster.
This image presents a deep radio image obtained with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, superimposed on an optical (CFHT) image of an area of sky located at the centre of the massive galaxy cluster, Abell 2218. The cluster acts as a gravitational lens, greatly magnifying the intrinsically faint (microJy) radio sources that lie behind the centre of the cluster. This giant magnifying glass, permits the detection of very high-redshift starforming radio galaxies, that would otherwise only be detectable after many months (or even years) of continuous, integrated WSRT observing time.
Image from the WSRT of NGC 6946
  The HI of N891 (blue) detected in 20×12 hr of WSRT time (Oosterloo, Sancisi & Fraternali 2007, AJ, 134, 1019). A halo is detected out to 22 kpc vertically above the disk. Most of this halo is gas blown into the halo from the disk by star formation, but a small fraction is probably acretion of gas from the IGM. Such accretion is also needed to explain the lower rotation of the halo gas.
Different rendering of the halo of NGC 891
  The Crab Pulsar and the Crab Nebula are one impressive pair as seen with ASTRON's Westerbork and ESO's VLT telescopes. Only 10 miles across but 500.000 times as massive as the Earth, the pulsar, a cosmic lighthouse spinning 30 times each second, sweeps around bundles of bright radio waves. In this image we see a 1-second snapshot of these peaked waves as they reach Westerbork/PuMaII after 6000 years of interstellar travel. High-resolution version (8000x5000, 2MB). credit: ASTRON/ESO/AURA

  Images of the HI in Dwingeloo 1 and 2
  Orbit of J1903+0327 compared to the orbit of earth. Compared to earths orbit (left) the much heavier pulsar (right) moves in a very small and elliptical orbit. (NB: the sun and its companion are represented 10 times as big, the earth 1000 times and thee pulsar 100,000 times.) J1903+0327 is a speedy spinning pulsar in an elongated orbit around an apparent Sun-like star, a combination never seen before. It has us puzzled about how the strange system developed: as the Sun-like star cannot have spun up the pulsar to its current frequency it\'s unclear how the pulsar got to rotate this fast. credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/ASTRON
  Total HI (blue & contours) on top of optical image of Leo T. Leo T is a recently discovered small companion of the Milky Way, at a distance of about 400 kpc. It is the smallest galaxy (MV = -7) known to have had recent star formation. It is extremely rich in HI. From the HI profiles is it clear that Leo T has both a Cold Neutral Medium and a Warm Neutral Medium and is probably hovering around the boundary of forming stars and not forming stars. (Emma V. Ryan-Weber, Ayesha Begum, Tom Oosterloo, Sabyasachi Pal, Michael J. Irwin, Vasily Belokurov, N. Wyn Evans, and Daniel B. Zucker 2008, MNRAS, 384, 535.)
  Four images of the same nearby galaxy M 81 as observed with four different telescopes, in optical, infra red, radio and UV. Each image highlights different components of this galaxy. By analysing all these images, the processes that regulate the formation of new stars in M81 can be studied in great detail.
  An HI mosaic of the nearby starbursting dwarf galaxy IC10, made with the Westerbork telescope.
Another image of the same galaxy, IC10
  This figure shows the velocity field derived for the HI as well as those found for the stars and the ionised gas in elliptical galaxy NGC 2974. These observations show that dark mass accounts for 60 percent of all mass in the galaxy center.

 

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