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.

2017 August 24
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The Eagle and The Swan
Image Credit & Copyright: Josep Drudis

Explanation: The Eagle Nebula and the Swan Nebula span this broad starscape, a telescopic view toward the Sagittarius spiral arm and the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The Eagle, also known as M16, is at top and M17, the Swan, at bottom of the frame showing the cosmic clouds as brighter regions of active star-formation. They lie along the spiral arm suffused with reddish emission charactistic of atomic hydrogen gas, and dusty dark nebulae. M17, also called the Omega Nebula, is about 5500 light-years away, while M16 is some 6500 light-years distant. The centre of both nebulae are locations of well-known close-up images of star formation from the Hubble Space Telescope. In this mosaic image that extends about 3 degrees across the sky, narrowband, high-resultion image data has been used to enhance the central regions of the Eagle and Swan. The extended wings of the Eagle Nebula spread almost 120 light-years. The Swan is over 30 light-years across.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space


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