Ten days of beautiful pictures take you to appreciate the beauty of the vast universe!

Cosmic Rose: The Rose Nebula in Unicorn.

Image provision and copyright: Jean Dean

Explanation: Rose Nebula (NGC 2237；; The Rose Nebula is not the only gas and dust cloud related to flowers in the universe, but it is one of the most famous. This cosmic rose is located 5000 light-years away, on the edge of the big molecular cloud of Unicorn, and its petals are actually the star birth area. Its beautiful and symmetrical appearance is carved by the stellar wind and radiation of the young and hot O star in the central cluster. The member stars of this active cluster with catalog number NGC 2244 are only a few million years old, and the hole in the center of the Rose Nebula is about 50 light years in diameter. You can see this nebula in the direction of the unicorn with a small telescope. This telescope image of the Rose Nebula, which looks clear and natural, uses wide-band and narrow-band filters because not all roses are red.

Nanmener and Sandkvist 169

Video supply and copyright: Roberto Colombari

Explanation: In this wide-field image of the southern sky, the brightest star near the top edge is Nanmener. However, its more widely known name may be Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to the sun. In the image, there is a huge dark nebula complex below it. These opaque interstellar dust clouds include Sandqvist (Sandkvist) 169 and 172, which appear in silhouette in front of the rich star fields in the Southern Galaxy. The south gate is only 4.37 light years away, but these dark dust clouds are located at the edge of molecular clouds in the compass of western constellations, which are forming stars, 2500 light years away. This wide-field image covers the southern sky with a width of about 12 degrees (24 full moons).

Simulation: the merger of two black holes

Simulation provider: simulating extreme space-time projects

Explanation: Please watch two black holes merge. Inspired by the first direct detection of gravity waves on 20 15, this slow-motion simulation film can only last for about a third of a second if it is played at real speed. These two black holes on the cosmic stage are located in front of stars, clouds and dust. When they hover and finally merge, their strong gravity condenses the light from the rear into Einstein rings. The invisible gravity waves generated by the rapid merger of these massive celestial bodies cause the visible light images inside and outside Einstein's ring to shake and splash, even after the black hole has been completely merged. In this case, the LIGO gravity wave detection event with catalog number GW 1509 14 is consistent with the combined signals of 36 times and 3 1 times solar mass black holes beyond1300 million light years. They merge to form a black hole with 63 times the mass of the sun, and the other four solar masses are converted into gravity wave energy. Since then, LIGO and Virgo Gravity Wave Observatory have detected several gravity wave events originating from massive systems. Last week, the event horizon telescope released the first black hole image with the same analytical scale as the event horizon.

Enhanced image of Jupiter dolphin cloud

Photo courtesy: NASA, Juno, SwRI, MSSS；; Image processing: Gerald Sister? Dt & avi solomon

Explanation: Did you see the wooden nebula that looks like a dolphin? This mass of wood was found in the orbit 16 of Juno spacecraft near Jupiter last year. The number of this orbit comes from Juno of NASA's 16 close-up passing Jupiter after he arrived at Jupiter in the middle of 20 16. Every time Juno approaches Jupiter, he passes through a slightly different area at the top of Jupiter's cloud. Although the dolphin-shaped clouds may be surprising, this shape has no scientific significance, because the clouds of Jupiter and the earth are constantly changing and occasionally become familiar shapes temporarily. This cloud is located in the south temperate zone (STB) of Jupiter, and in this dark and sinking cloud belt around Jupiter, there is also an oval BA cloud nicknamed Little Red Spot. This theme image has been digitally processed to enhance its color and contrast. At the end of May, Juno passed near Jupiter again in the 20th orbit near Jupiter.

Country of Cone Nebula

Image provision and copyright: Utkarsh Mishra

Explanation: In the cone nebula country, you can see clouds with strange shapes and textures. These strange clouds are caused by the complex reaction of fine interstellar dust to the high-energy starlight and hot gas released by young stars. In this thematic image, the brightest star on the right is Simon, and the cloud gas below it is nicknamed the Fox Skin Nebula because of its color and structure. The blue halo around a star is caused by interstellar dust reflecting starlight. The blush distributed in the whole area is not only the contribution of dust reflecting starlight, but also the red radiation of hydrogen released by starlight. Simon Star is a member of NGC 2264, a young open cluster located in the Northern Kirin constellation, about 2,500 light years away. Although the cone nebula on the left edge of the image points directly at S Mon, where its mysterious shape comes from is still a mystery to be solved.

M8 1

Image provision and copyright: Paolo de Salvatore (Dzenit Observatory)

Explanation: The huge and beautiful M8 1 is similar in size to our Milky Way, and it is also one of the brightest galaxies in the earth's sky. This magnificent spiral galaxy, located in the direction of Ursa major in the northern sky, is also named NGC 303 1, and it is also known as Bode galaxy because of its discoverer in18th century. This clear and detailed telescope image shows M8 1 bright yellow core, blue spiral arms, pink star forming region and winding dust belt. On the left side of the center of the image, we can see that some dust belts run in the opposite direction to other spiral arm structures and pass through the galaxy disk. These strange dust belts may be the remains of M8 1 and its smaller companion galaxy M82. After carefully examining the variable stars in M8 1, astronomers have completed an optimal task of locating the extragalactic galaxy, which is 1, 065,438+0.8 million light years.

Leo triple galaxy

Image provision and copyright: Markus Bauer

Explanation: These galaxies are hot objects in spring. The famous Leo triple galaxy is a collection of three magnificent galaxies in a single view. These galaxies with catalog numbers NGC 3628 (left), M66 (bottom right) and M65 (top) are thermal targets observed by small and medium-sized telescopes. They are all large spiral galaxies, but they are very different in appearance because of the different angles between the disk and our line of sight. Among them, NGC 3628, named Hamburg galaxy, is horizontal, and the dust belt passes through the expanding galaxy disk. However, the viewing angle of M66 and M65 is large enough to see their spiral arm structures. The gravitational interaction between these galaxies has created some obvious characteristic landscapes, including the tidal tail of NGC 3628, the twisted and expanded galaxy disk and the elongated spiral arm of M66. This magnificent scene covers an area of 2 degrees (the width of 4 full moons). According to the estimation of 30 million light-years from the triple galaxy of Leo, the area covered by this image is about 1 100 million light-years. Obviously, the foreground star with the star awn is very close to our galaxy.

The Milky Way in the Northern Hemisphere in Spring

Photo courtesy and copyright: TWAN

Explanation: This postcard from the earth shows the night sky landscape seen through Aladdin Lake in the Elbers Mountains this spring. In this image taken after midnight on April 17, the Milky Way rises behind the southeast horizon of the region. Its bright central disk is woven from stars and nebulae and reflected on the mirror-flat lake. The brightest object immersed in the diffuse starlight of the Milky Way is Jupiter. Saturn, which is slightly darker, is located near the lower left mountain range. The arrival of spring not only brings young leaves to the trees, but also presents the center of the Milky Way for the night in the northern hemisphere, and also brings frogs to photographers, becoming a movement echoing on the calm lake.

Falcon heavy rocket launch close-up

Image courtesy of Space Exploration Technologies.

Explanation: In this close-up image of Falcon heavy rocket launch, there are always 27 Merlin rocket engines igniting and exploding at the same time. On April 1 1, the Falcon heavy rocket developed by three Falcon-9 first-stage rockets (each with nine Merlin rocket engines) departed from the launch station 39A of the Kennedy Space Center of NASA. This is the second launch of Falcon heavy rocket, carrying Arabian 6A communication satellite into space. In February 20 18, the Falcon heavy rocket was launched for the first time. The payload on the rocket at that time was Stellar Man and a Tesla sports car. The design goal is to reuse the Falcon heavy rocket. After this launch, both the booster rocket and the central core rocket returned to Earth safely. Among them, the booster rocket returned to the landing area of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, while the core rocket landed on the unmanned airport ship "Of course I still love you" moored at sea.

Spiral aurora on the boundary of Iceland plate

Photo courtesy and copyright: Juan Carlos casado (TWAN).

Explanation: While enjoying the beautiful scenery, we should also be careful of the beasts behind us. The beauty here refers to the green aurora hovering overhead. This group of aurora, located between beautiful clouds, accompanied by the bright moon, is set off by the stars behind. Beast is this wave of charged particles that cause aurora. Perhaps one day, this wave of charged particles will hit human civilization hard. 1859 After the global aurora activity, the coronal mass ejection (CME) caused by solar flare released a group of charged particles, which violently collided with the earth's magnetosphere, resulting in the carrington event. Part of the reason why this event is so strong may be that a previous coronal mass ejection cleared a relatively direct passage between the sun and the earth. What is certain, however, is that the carrington incident severely compressed the earth's magnetic field and induced a strong current on telegraph lines, which not only caused sparks on several telegraph lines, but also shocked the telegrapher. If an incident on the scale of Carrington happened today, it may cause unprecedented catastrophic damage to the global power grid and electronic equipment. This theme picture was taken in Lake Thingvallavatn, Iceland in 20 16. This lake is located on the dividing line between the Eurasian plate and the North American plate of the earth, and its water flooded some fault lines. (solar flare = solar flare; Carrington incident carrington incident)