Starburst galaxy illustration: Starburst galaxy illustration

Name: Starburst galaxy
Type: Unspecified : Galaxy : Activity : Starburst
Category: Illustrations
Release date: 2 June 1992, 06:00
Credit: NASA & ESA

Blue galaxy: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with what may be their first direct view of an immense ring of dust which fuels a massive black hole at the heart of the spiral galaxy M51, located 20 million light-years away. Surprisingly, they found that the ring is standing almost perpendicularly to the relatively flat spiral galaxy, like a top spinning on its side with respect to the floor. Even more surprising is the discovery of a secondary ring or dust lane which is contrary to all expectations.

Name: IRAS 13277+4727, M 51, Messier 51, NGC 5194, Whirlpool Galaxy
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : SpiralLocal Universe : Galaxy : Component : Center/Core
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Canes Venatici
Distance: 25 million light years
Release date: 8 June 1992, 15:30
Credit: H. Ford (JHU/STScI), the Faint Object Spectrograph IDT, and NASA/ESA

X structure at core of M51 whirlpool galaxy: (four-frame comparison) Hubble Space Telescope provides a detailed look at the core of the giant spiral galaxy M51. These images, taken at different wavelengths of light, reveal complex structure and detail in the galaxy's core, which is thought to hide a massive black hole.

Name: IRAS 13277+4727, M 51, Messier 51, NGC 5194, Whirlpool Galaxy
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : SpiralLocal Universe : Galaxy : Size : Giant
Category: Galaxies
Distance: 25 million light years
Release date: 8 June 1992, 15:30
Credit: H. Ford (JHU/STScI), the Faint Object Spectrograph IDT, and NASA/ESA

Merger of two white dwarf stars: This artist's illustration shows three steps in the merger of a pair of white dwarf stars. The illustration depicts how planets may form around massive white dwarfs and is based upon theoretical studies by astronomers Mario Livio, Jim Pringle, and Rex Saffer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD. At least half of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy are double star systems. During their evolution such systems may undergo a phase in which the cores of the two stars revolve inside a tenuous common envelope. The end product of such a phase can be a close pair of very compact objects known as white dwarfs (white dwarfs are stars late in their evolution, which have contracted to the size of Earth but retain as much mass as the Sun).

Name: White dwarf merger
Type: Unspecified : Star : Evolutionary Stage : White DwarfUnspecified : Star : Grouping : Binary
Category: Stars
Release date: 24 June 1992, 06:00
Credit: Dana Berry, ST ScI Astronomy Visualization Laboratory

Hubble Space Telescope deep-sky survey reveals embryonic galaxies: This is a selection of images of unusual galaxies discovered during a serendipitous sky survey with the Wide Field Camera onboard NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (Ht1). This is a colour composite of two images taken at different wavelengths: visible light (yellow) and near infrared (red). The individual galaxies are estimated to be between three and ten billion light-years away. HST's high resolution reveals that they have unusual irregular shapes which are not like the familiar spiral and elliptical galaxies in the nearby universe. One idea is that the fragmentary galaxies are interacting, as evident in some of the images which show apparent mergers. The objects resolved by HST may be the "building blocks" for today's large galaxies.

Name: Galaxies
Type: Early Universe : GalaxyEarly Universe : Cosmology : Morphology : Deep Field
Category: Galaxies
Release date: 29 June 1992, 06:00
Credit: R. Griffiths (STSCI/ JHU), and NASA/ESA

Cepheid variables in IC 4182: Using NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), an international team of astronomers has taken a major first step in redetermining the expansion rate of the universe. This rate, known as the Hubble Constant, is one of two critical numbers needed for making a precise determination of the size and age of the universe.

Name: Cepheid, IC 4182, IRAS F13035+3752
Type: Early Universe : Star : Type : VariableEarly Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Stars
Distance: 15 million light years
Release date: 29 June 1992, 06:00
Credit: NASA/ESA

Radio galaxy 53W002: This is a small portion of an image taken with NASAESA Hubble Space Telescope href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/about/index.html">HST) Wide Field Planetary camera (WFPC) in WF mode a near-infrared (F785LP) filter, showing the distant radio galaxy 53W002 at lower left. The region shown is a subimage 100 WFC pixels (10.16 arcseconds) on a side. The bright object is a foreground galaxy approximately four times closer. The inset the at upper left shows how a nearby galaxy (M87) believed to be similar to 53W002 would appear at the same distance. The distant galaxy is much brighter, showing the time evolution of the stellar population in these galaxies. It is also almost as compact as M87, suggesting that it has nearly completed its collapse under self-gravity while forming stars. The outer regions of 53W002, faintly visible in this reproduction, have a structure remarkably similar to that of nearby, more dynamically resolved galaxies as well. Together with ground-based spectra and theoretical models, this image suggests that we are seeing a galaxy near the end of its formation phase, and that the galaxies initial collapse coincided with its initial round of star formation. This has long been expected theoretically but has been difficult to show. Less expected is timing; 53W002 started the process much later than many galaxies seen at higher redshift, so that the period of galaxy formation must have been drawn out over several billion years.

Name: 53W 002, Hercules 5
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=2.392 (redshift)
Release date: 1 July 1992, 06:00
Credit: Rogier Windorst (Arizona State University) William Keel (University of Alabama) and NASA/ESA

Gravitational lens in galaxy cluster AC 114: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope photograph (left) shows a pair of L-shaped images with striking mirror-symmetry. These are thought to arise from a very distant galaxy seen through a cluster of foreground galaxies (right). The gravity of the galaxy cluster acts as a natural magnifying glass, bending and focusing the light of the more distant Source into several images, each of which is apparently larger and brighter than would otherwise be the case. This rare combination of Hubble's powerful telescope mirrors and the natural telephoto lens gives astronomers unprecedented information on the nature of very distant galaxies, and on the distribution and nature of matter in the foreground cluster. The two compact objects in the center of the HST image are thought to be unrelated galaxies in the foreground cluster. The observations were made with Hubble's Wide Field Camera in one of the first long exposures (six hours) with the orbiting observatory.

Name: AC 114
Type: Unspecified : Galaxy : Type : Gravitationally Lensed
Category: CosmologyGalaxies
Release date: 8 October 1992, 05:00
Credit: NASA & ESA

Radio galaxy 4C41.17: Using NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope an international team of astronomers is uncovering intriguing new details about the most distant galaxy known, located more than ten billion light-years away.

Name: 4C 41.17
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=3.792 (redshift)
Release date: 13 November 1992, 06:00
Credit: Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research, the  Space Telescope Science Institute, the European Space Agency, NASA/ESA, the European Economic Community, NATO, and the U.S. Department of Energy.