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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
An Infrared Galaxy Gallery
Explanation: Where do stars form in galaxies? One way to find this out it to look for glowing hydrogen , a material common to hot star-forming regions . To find large areas of glowing hydrogen , the Hubble Space Telescope 's NICMOS instrument surveyed about 100 nearby spiral galaxies . Six of these galaxies are shown above: NGC 5653, NGC 3593, NGC 891 , NGC 6946, NGC 4826 , and NGC 2903. Each galaxy is many millions of light-years distant. NICMOS was calibrated to isolate a very specific type of light emitted by hydrogen gas in the infrared . This emission is colored red in the above photograph , and is relatively free from absorption by dark dust . These photographs show that stars are forming more vigorously in some parts of galaxies than others.
| Date | March 22, 1999 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Credit: T. Boeker (STScI) et al., NICMOS, HST, NASA |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |