Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: A Star Like Rainbow Brite, Only a Bit Bigger
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-and-a-stellar-fingerprint">ESA/Hubble & NASA</a>01SPoW-Feb28-Mar4-04.jpg
This is a gorgeous emission-line star called IRAS 12196-6300. The emission lines are a spectrum of dispersed light, which appear as rainbow streaks with dark and bright lines. The wispy clouds are reflection nebulae, when dust and other material reflects the light of nearby stars.
<a href="http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/news/pressrelease/20160303alma_spots_baby_stars_growing_blanket.html">ALMA </a>02SPoW-Feb28-Mar4-01.jpg
Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have made the first direct observations delineating the gas disk around a baby star from the infalling gas envelope. This finding fills an important missing piece in our understanding of the early phases of stellar evolution.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/versatile-instrument-to-scout-for-kuiper-belt-objects">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>03SPoW-Feb28-Mar4-08.jpg
This image of the Crab Pulsar was taken with CHIMERA, an instrument on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory This pulsar is the end result of a star whose mass collapsed at the end of its life. It weighs as much as our sun, but spins 32 times per second. The instrument focused on the pulsar for a 300-second exposure to produce a color image. CHIMERA zoomed in on the pulsar and imaged it very fast, then imaged the rest of the scene slowly to create this image.
<a href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1604/">NASA, ESA, and P. Oesch (Yale University)</a>04SPoW-Feb28-Mar4-03.jpg
By pushing the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to its limits astronomers have shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the distance to the most remote galaxy ever seen in the Universe. This galaxy existed just 400 million years after the Big Bang and provides new insights into the first generation of galaxies. This is the first time that the distance of an object so far away has been measured from its spectrum, which makes the measurement extremely reliable.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/last-sunrise-from-a-year-in-space">NASA</a>05SPoW-Feb28-Mar4-05.jpg
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shares a few final photos of the sunrise from the International Space Station just before his return to Earth on March 1. Kelly spent 340 days in orbit, a US record for time spent in space. To celebrate his return, NASA posted a [gallery](http://www.nasa.gov/content/best-year-in-space-photographs-from-scott-kelly) of his best images shared while on board the ISS.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia20021/mystery-feature-evolves-in-titans-ligeia-mare">NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell</a>06SPoW-Feb28-Mar4-07.jpg
These images from the Radar instrument aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft show the evolution of a transient feature in the large hydrocarbon sea named Ligeia Mare on Saturn's moon Titan. Analysis by Cassini scientists indicates that the bright features, informally known as the "magic island," are a phenomenon that changes over time. They conclude that the brightening is due to either waves, solids at or beneath the surface or bubbles, with waves thought to be the most likely explanation. They think tides, sea level and seafloor changes are unlikely to be responsible for the brightening.
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1607/?lang">ESO</a>07SPoW-Feb28-Mar4-02.jpg
ESO spots rare, enormous stars swimming in a thick cloud of crimson gas. The stars are in their infancy, burning incredibly hot and were born in a vast nebula known as RCW 106, located some 12,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Norma. Such massive stars’ origins are still a mystery, having masses many times the size of the sun with seemingly little gas to maintain them.
