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The Milky Way, it turns out, is no ordinary spiral galaxy. According to a
massive new survey of stars at the heart of the galaxy by Wisconsin
astronomers, including professor of astronomy Edward Churchwell and professor of physics Robert Benjamin, the Milky Way has a definitive bar feature, some 27,000 light years in length, that distinguishes it from pedestrian spiral galaxies, as shown in this artist's rendering. The survey, conducted using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, sampled light from an estimated 30 million stars in the plane of the galaxy in an effort to build a detailed portrait of the inner regions of the Milky Way.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech) |
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| Spitzer's infrared view of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The blue color, seen most prominently in the central bar, represents starlight from older stars. The chaotic, bright regions outside this bar are filled with hot, massive stars buried in thick blankets of dust. The red color around these bright regions is from dust heated by stars, while the red dots scattered throughout the picture are either dusty, old stars or more distant galaxies. The greenish clouds contain cooler interstellar gas and molecular-sized dust grains illuminated by ambient starlight. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI |
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| NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has made the first measurements of the day and night temperatures of a planet outside our solar system. The infrared observatory revealed that the Jupiter-like gas giant planet circling very close to Upsilon Andromedae is always as hot as fire on one side, and potentially as cold as ice on the other. Credit: Spitzer |
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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was recently used to capture spectra, or molecular
fingerprints, of two "hot Jupiter" worlds like the one depicted here. This is the first time a spectrum has ever been obtained for an exoplanet, or a planet beyond our solar system. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
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This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope -- called a spectrum -- tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 209458b, might be smothered with high clouds.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC
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Spitzer Space Telescope, the fourth and final element in NASA's family of Great Observatories.
Credit: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., 2003 |
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This false-color composite from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra
X-ray Observatory shows the remnant of a supernova explosion.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA |
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Artist's conception of the binary star system HD 113766, where astronomers suspect a rocky Earth-like planet is forming around one of the stars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL |
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| Image Credit: George Rossman of Caltech |
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| PlutoSeasons_Hubble |
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| PlutoSurface_Hubble |
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| Pluto_Hubble_Fullseasons |
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| PlutoFacesScale_Hubble |
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