In about four or five billion years, it will grow into a much bigger star, a star called a red giant. And that outer atmosphere of gases will be held so loosely by the sun at that time that the gases will be blown away gently in what I call a cosmic...
We are at a foundry here, and they are pouring molten iron from all machinery. And they are going to make parts for new machines out of that iron, so they are recycling yet, but all that iron was created and ejected into the cosmos by gigantic stars...
Once theyve caught the light of a dying star with their state of our telescopes. The detective work can begin. We collect that light and we analyze it in great detail in order to determine whats going on, whats the chemical makeup of the star, whats...
To understand how these calamities occur, astronomers need to catch a massive star in its death throes. Astronomers are like detectives. We have to figure out what's going on in the universe, sometimes based on a minimum number of clues. And in the c...
Like nebulae which spawn stars, it is made of gas and dust. But that's where most similarities end. For Alex Filippenko, it represents an intriguing industrial zone within our galaxy where the elements from which our world is made or manufactured. Wh...
Like nebulae which spawn stars, it is made of gas and dust. But that's where most similarities end. For Alex Filippenko, it represents an intriguing industrial zone within our galaxy where the elements from which our world is made or manufactured. Wh...
This is a picture of the Orion Nebula in visible light. We can see all of the gas here located in front of what we know are stars in the background, and we want to be able to look inside this nebula/ and see the stars. In infrared light in this image...
Look closer and there is something strange about this gas and dust. There're patches where it appears to glow. These bright glowing clouds are called nebulae. And along with the Orion Nebula, our Milky Way has some spectacular examples, the Eagle Neb...
We are taking a ride through the Milky Way. First, we are traveling to a place where stars are born. Even at the speed of light, 196,000 miles a second, the journey lasts for 1,500 years. We've arrived at the vast glowing cloud of gas and dust, the g...
By comparing the detailed images, Hubble has taken another spiral galaxy. With the best images of our own taken from the ground, and by using satellites to measure the distance and density of stars in different directions, astronomers have been able...