Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: This Starburst Galaxy's a Real Gas Bag
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-views-a-galaxy-fit-to-burst"> ESA/Hubble & NASA</a>01SPoW-July29-02.jpg
This Hubble image reveals the vibrant core of the galaxy NGC 3125. It’s a great example of a starburst galaxy in which unusually high numbers of new stars are forming, springing to life within intensely hot clouds of gas. Spanning 15,000 light-years, the galaxy displays massive and violent bursts of star formation, as shown by the hot, young, and blue stars scattered throughout the galaxy’s rose-tinted core.
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Scientists with NASA's Dawn mission were surprised to find that Ceres has no clear signs of truly giant impact basins. This image shows both visible (left) and topographic (right) mapping data from Dawn. One reason for the lack of large craters could be related to the activity of subsurface ice. Because ice is less dense than rock, the topography could "relax," or smooth out, more quickly if ice or another lower-density material, such as salt, dominates the subsurface composition.
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This Hubble image captures the remnants of a long-dead star DEM L316A. The explosion that formed DEM L316A was an example of an especially energetic and bright variety of supernova, known as a Type Ia. Such supernova events are thought to occur when a white dwarf star steals more material than it can handle from a nearby companion, and becomes unbalanced. The result is a spectacular release of energy in the form of a bright, violent explosion, which ejects the star’s outer layers into the surrounding space at immense speeds. As this expelled gas travels through the interstellar material, it heats up and ionizes it, producing the faint glow that Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 has captured here.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/mars-gullies-likely-not-formed-by-liquid-water">NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/JHUAPL</a>04SPoW-July29-07.jpg
Martian gullies as seen in the top image from HiRISE on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter resemble gullies on Earth that are carved by liquid water. However, when they are observed with the addition of mineralogical information from CRISM (right), no evidence for alteration by water appears. This new evidence will allow researchers to further narrow theories about how Martian gullies form, and reveal more details about Mars' recent geologic processes.
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1630a/">ESO</a>05SPoW-July29-04.jpg
This deep view of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds is actually a combination of two photos, captured from ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The clouds are shown in color as glittering blue holes while the thousands of stars are captured in black and white. Getting rid of noise from unwanted objects is a crucial aspect of astrophotography, and so a luminance exposure is sometimes used to produce richly detailed monochrome images like the one seen here.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/chorus-of-black-holes-sings-in-x-rays"> NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>06SPoW-July29-03.jpg
The blue dots in this field of galaxies, known as the COSMOS field, show galaxies that contain supermassive black holes emitting high-energy X-rays. As black holes grow, their intense gravity pulls matter toward them. The matter heats up to scorching temperatures, and particles get boosted to close to the speed of light. Together, these processes make the black hole surroundings glow with X-rays. A supermassive black hole with a copious supply of fuel, or gas, will give off more high-energy X-rays. The NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Array spotted 32 such black holes in this field. The other colored dots are galaxies that host black holes emitting lower-energy X-rays, and were spotted by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
