NASA images: What stars and galaxies really look like | 5 amazing images from the Hubble telescope | Mint

NASA images: Stars appear twinkling when viewed from Earth with the naked eye. Have you ever wondered what these balls of gas and dust actually look like?

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is an example of how stars and many celestial objects look completely different than expected. The space observatory said Hubble has greatly changed our understanding of the universe, from analyzing the atmospheric composition of planets to unraveling the mysteries of dark energy. Here are some of the photos:

Top five images of stars and galaxies as seen from NASA’s Hubble Telescope

Spiral galaxy NGC 5668

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5668 in the constellation Virgo. Located about 90 million light-years from Earth, it is relatively nearby and easily seen with both space-based and ground-based telescopes. Although it may not look extraordinary at first glance, NGC 5668 stretches for about 90,000 light-years, is similar in size and mass to our galaxy the Milky Way, and when viewed from nearly the front, it has open spiral arms interspersed with cloudy, irregular patches.

One notable difference between NGC 5668 and the Milky Way is that NGC 5668 forms stars 60% faster than the Milky Way.

This image shows the formation of the Tarantula Nebula as seen by the Hubble telescope. According to NASA, this image was developed through the process of sonification, which converts astronomical data into sound, similar to how digital data is regularly converted into images.

These data have been mapped to various sounds, including soft, low musical tones (red areas), wind-like sounds (white areas), a piano-like synthesizer sound indicating very bright stars, and a rain-stick sound for stars in the central cluster, the space observatory said.

Thousands of stars illuminate this amazing image of the Liller 1 star cluster. NASA said that this stellar system, located 30,000 light-years from Earth, has formed stars over 11 billion years.

Explaining the formation of stars in detail, NASA said that billions of stars light up galaxies across the universe. Each glowing ball of hydrogen and helium arises from a nebula, a vast cloud of gas and dust. Inside these clouds, dense regions can develop, attracting more gas and dust until they become large enough to collapse under their own gravity. As the collapse progresses, the centre of the region heats up, forming a hot core known as a protostar.

Over millions of years, more dust and gas accumulates in the protostar, which eventually turns into a full-fledged star like the Sun. Throughout this process, the heat generated in the core creates enough outward pressure to counteract the inward gravitational force, preventing the star from collapsing.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy IC 4709, located about 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium. The Hubble telescope clearly captured its delicate halo and spinning disk, rich with stars and bands of dust. The most striking feature is probably the dense core region, which contains an active galactic nucleus.

This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the unbarred spiral galaxy NGC 5033, located about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hounds). With a diameter of a little over 100,000 light-years, NGC 5033 is similar in size to the Milky Way galaxy.

Like the Milky Way, NGC 5033’s spiral arms have blue regions, indicating active star formation. These blue regions are home to hot, young stars that are in the process of forming, while older, cooler stars concentrated in the galaxy’s center give it a reddish hue.

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