Alissa Phillips

This infrared view from the Herschel Space Observatory explores the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way.

# Astronomy

# Beauty

AE Aurigae is called the flaming star. The surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula.

At bottom, upper right, and lower left it covers the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Trifid Nebula (M20), and NGC 6559, in the crowded, dusty starfields of the central Milky Way.

From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle. A closer look at the Eagle Nebula, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of dust.

At the heart of the Orion Nebula, are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium. Gathered within a region about 1.5 light-years in radius, they dominate the core of the dense Orion Nebula Star Cluster.

One night in mid-September near Tromsø, Norway, high red aurora could be seen shimmering through lower green aurora in a way that created a striking and somewhat unusual violet glow.

These unusual blobs found in the Carina nebula, some of which are seen floating on the upper right, might best be described as evaporating. Ironically the blobs, otherwise known as dark molecular clouds, frequently create in their midst the very stars that later destroy them.

In the depths of the dark clouds of dust and molecular gas known as the Omega Nebula, stars continue to form. The above image from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys shows exquisite detail in the famous star-forming region. The dark dust filaments that lace the center of Omega Nebula were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris fromsupernova explosions.

Ophelia a character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and potential wife of Prince Hamlet. Painted by Alexandre Cabanel a French painter. Oil on canvas. 1883.

In the painting a group of nymphs have been surprised, while bathing in a secluded pond, by a lascivious (lustful) satyr. Some of the nymphs have retreated into the shadows on the right; others, braver than their friends, are trying to dampen the satyr’s ardor by pulling him into the cold water. Oil on Canvas. By artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1873.

30 Doradus, the red and pink gas indicates a massive emission nebula, although supernova remnants and dark nebula also exist there. The bright knot of stars left of center is called R136and contains many of the most massive, hottest, and brightest stars known.