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Dec

The fairy of Eagle Nebula and star trails at dawn

On Thursday, December 13 , 2007 | Tags: Astronomy, Eagle Nebula, Photography

My daily browsing includes having a look at the Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD). Sunday’s one is as often with NASA’s images, absolutely fabulous.

I really appreciate this photo because of the strong contrast between the left and right parts of the image, the black colliding with the white, the dark red versus the light blue…

The Eagle is quite visible on the far left side of the image. In the second part of the post, I propose you a second mesmerizing image.

The NASA explains the image as follow :

The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts.

Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire.

The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars.

The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

This image comes from The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA.

As I did yesterday (two articles on the Chinese energy sector in one post), I propose you a second picture in the same post.

Saturday’s picture (on the right) is also very beautiful and was taken in France by a Belgian astrophotographer, Koen van Gorp.

As the NASA explains the image :

Just fix your camera to a tripod and you too can make an image of graceful trails traced by the stars as planet Earth rotates on its axis.

Made on September 14 from Montlaux, France, this wide-angle view nicely shows the stars near the celestial equator tracing nearly straight lines in projection, while stars north and south of the equator, respectively, appear to circle the north and south celestial poles.

Featured are the stars of Orion (right of center), brilliant Venus rising (left) as bright star Sirius rises in the south (bottom center), and a polar orbiting Iridium satellite (upper left).

Beautiful dawn sky colors seem painted along the horizon. This remarkable picture was constructed from 477 consecutive 30 second digital exposures recorded over 4.3 hours and later combined.