Image from Hubble

Im glad that I was able to provide a link that you guys really like but thats all i did, HST, NASA and the scientists that work there deserve all the credit for such wonderful images.
And of course the main credit goes to who or whatever created these to begin with.
The one that looks like an eye looks like what they call the Cats Eye or Gods Eye Nebula.
A Nebula is a nursery where infant stars and possibly eventually solar systems are born
Thats the going theory anyway..
Actually, here is the Cats Eye Nebula, I hope it isnt to big
In my opinion, there is NOTHING more beautiful in the entire universe, than a Nebula.



[edit on 16-2-2007 by Kr0n0s]

Krono, that is exactly what it is. It's a nebula of Eta Carina..

Heres is another beautiful Nebula, called the Heart Nebula
This one i did have to resize and place on my server.

I love Nebula! In fact one actually reminds me of my beautiful wife... what was it now... Oh yeah.... the CRAB NEBULA!

Hee hee, I crab myself up... I mean "crack" myself up

Originally posted by Ikema
I love Nebula! In fact one actually reminds me of my beautiful wife... what was it now... Oh yeah.... the CRAB NEBULA!

Hee hee, I crab myself up... I mean "crack" myself up

LMAO Good one
Oh and here is the "Ant Nebula" for obvious reasons



[edit on 16-2-2007 by Kr0n0s]

[edit on 16-2-2007 by Kr0n0s]

These Nebula's are some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

They are just perfectly beautiful.

Thanks for sharing them. They seem to hold a message, don't you think?

What exaclty is a nebula and does it have any purpose?

They are truely breathtaking pictures though. Just wow.

Kr0n0s

nebula Mz13 totally amazing picture thabnks for sharing!

Looks like two atoms colliding? universe telling us the experiments at CERN?

StrangeVision:

Nebulae are the birthplace of stars. They are formed when very diffuse molecular clouds begin to collapse under their own gravity, often due to the influence of a nearby supernova explosion. The cloud collapses and fragments, sometimes forming hundreds of new stars. The newly-formed stars ionize the surrounding gas to produce an emission nebula. The nebula's gravity pulls the cloud inward and it starts to spin in the middle eventually gaining enough friction to be hot enough for nuclear fusion to occur.

WikiPedia

so basically a nebula (pl. nebulae) is kind of a nursery for stars .. er, star-studded nursery anyone? and i guess we should think of the possibility that some of those stars that look like little pinpricks of light occupying only a single pixel of your screen might have planets and some of those planets might be able to harbor life. keep in mind that these images we are viewing are a couple of a thousand if not hundreds of thousand yrs old by now.

[edit on 16-2-2007 by toreishi]

Yes, that is one thing that i find hard to "wrap my mind around" so to speak, knowing that these systems are so far away that by the time the light gets here that enables us to see them, they could actually look entirely different than they look right now.
Its so weird, it could completely unrecognizable now compared to what we actually see now. Since the light there left thousands of years ago and is just now arriving.

here is a small article about Planetary Nebula

The nebula, formally cataloged NGC 6543, is every bit as inscrutable as the J.R.R. Tolkien phantom character. Though the Cat's Eye Nebula was one of the first planetary nebula to be discovered, it is one of the most complex such nebulae seen in space. A planetary nebula forms when Sun-like stars gently eject their outer gaseous layers that form bright nebulae with amazing and confounding shapes.

In 1994, Hubble first revealed NGC 6543's surprisingly intricate structures, including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas, and unusual shock-induced knots of gas.

As if the Cat's Eye itself isn't spectacular enough, this new image taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) reveals the full beauty of a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat's Eye. Each 'ring' is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky -- that's why it appears bright along its outer edge.

Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun's mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible.

Until recently, it was thought that such shells around planetary nebulae were a rare phenomenon. However, Romano Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain) and collaborators, in a paper published in the European journal Astronomy and Astrophysics in April 2004, have instead shown that the formation of these rings is likely to be the rule rather than the exception.

The bull's-eye patterns seen around planetary nebulae come as a surprise to astronomers because they had no expectation that episodes of mass loss at the end of stellar lives would repeat every 1,500 years. Several explanations have been proposed, including cycles of magnetic activity somewhat similar to our own Sun's sunspot cycle, the action of companion stars orbiting around the dying star, and stellar pulsations. Another school of thought is that the material is ejected smoothly from the star, and the rings are created later on due to formation of waves in the outflowing material. It will take further observations and more theoretical studies to decide between these and other possible explanations.

Approximately 1,000 years ago the pattern of mass loss suddenly changed, and the Cat's Eye Nebula started forming inside the dusty shells. It has been expanding ever since, as discernible in comparing Hubble images taken in 1994, 1997, 2000, and 2002. The puzzle is what caused this dramatic change? Many aspects of the process that leads a star to lose its gaseous envelope are still poorly known, and the study of planetary nebulae is one of the few ways to recover information about these last few thousand years in the life of a Sun-like star.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Source Page

Let us not forget images of galaxies to.. some of those can be quite amazing as well, especially images of two galaxies colliding in space.
Like this one here
dang, it was wayyyyy to large. lemme download, resize and upload to my server.




[edit on 16-2-2007 by Kr0n0s]

This one to
I seen or read somewhere that the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy were going to collide in a few hundred BILLION years. Im sure well be long gone to somewhere by then lmao
Notice the HUGE and VERY bright light in the center of the Galaxy on the left?
I wonder wtf that can be? I was under the impression that the center of galaxies was home to super massive black holes.




This one to.. called The Mice




And here are what is supposed to be 4 galaxies nearing collision.. at first i saw only 3 of them but the 3rd and 4th have already converged on the right side of the picture.




I hope posting all these in one post is ok but i didnt want to create post after post but i wanted to show as many as i could.

[edit on 16-2-2007 by Kr0n0s]

Thanks for the info guys, those pictures of galaxies are really great aswell. Wonder what happens when two galaxies collide, do they merge and form one, or destroy each other? Or something completely different?

From what i read, they begin by rippin each other apart but usually no stars actually collide due to the great distance between them.
I suppose that they will either eventually separate and go their separate ways or maybe the two will assimilate to one.

Originally posted by StrangeVision
Thanks for the info guys, those pictures of galaxies are really great aswell. Wonder what happens when two galaxies collide, do they merge and form one, or destroy each other? Or something completely different?

Heres a link to a few examples of colliding galaxies

For all of those who have said they are amazed when they see a nebula and wonder about plantery systems around stars, have a got a site for you: Hubble's Deep Field Image

Basically it is the Hubble looking at a spot of the big dipper about the size of grapefruit held at arms distance. Almost every speck of light you see in the image is not a star, it's a galaxy. Truly in the words of Monty Pythons Meaning of Life " makes ya feel rather insiginificent, doesn't it" ?

Nice site pavil, thanks. Amazing how many galaxies are in this group.
I just wish the image wasn't so grainy looking, still a good pic though

Friends, I don't mean to sound like a sissy but I sure had tears in my eyes when I saw some of the pictures.

Because no, it shouldn't make us feel "insignificant", as WE'RE PART OF IT!



[edit on 16-2-2007 by Akareyon]

Here is another type of Galaxy that I found on my laptop tonight. Its called the Sombrero Galaxy and you can see why lol

Here's another Nebula I found on my pc. I download these all the time because I use them as backgrounds
The bottom pic is pretty self explanatory lol.. I know its only Saturn but its a very cool pic of Saturn.

Someone had mentioned The Pillars of Creation on a thread recently and it just so happens that that is the image of the day for that site yesterday, so I decided to post that pic here. I remember the first time i seen this image in the 90's, I was awestruck by its beauty.