Composite image made by NICMOS (Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope show the collision of four galaxies located 1 billion light-years from Earth and the creation of a torrent of new stars. NICMOS can look through infrared light and can see space dust. The bright blue material surrounding the central region corresponds to the ultraviolet glow of new stars. The colliding system (yellow and blue regions) has a diameter of about 30,000 light-years, or about half the size of the Milky Way. The tail (faint blue material at left) extends out for another 20,000 light-years. Images were taken on May 13 and 14, 2002.

The revived Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has pierced the dusty disk of the edge-on galaxy NGC 4013 and peered all the way to the galactic core. To the surprise of astronomers, NICMOS found a brilliant band-like structure, that may be a ring of newly formed HB.

The revived Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has penetrated layers of dust in a star-forming cloud to uncover a dense, craggy edifice of dust and gas (image at right.) This region is called the Cone Nebula, so named because, in ground-based images, it has a conical shape. NICMOS enables the Hubble telescope to see in near-infrared wavelengths of light, so that it can penetrate the dust that obscures the nebula's inner regions. The image shows the tip of the nebula, about half a light-year long. The Cone resides in a turbulent star-forming region, located 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. Radiation from hot, young stars (located beyond the top of the image) has slowly eroded the nebula over millions of years. NICMOS has peeled away the outer layers of dust to reveal even denser dust. The denser regions give the nebula a more three-dimensional structure than can be seen in the visible-light picture at left, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the Hubble telescope. In peering through the dust to the nebula's inner regions, NICMOS has unmasked several stars (yellow dots at upper right.) Astronomers don not know whether these stars are behind the dusty nebula or embedded in it. The four bright stars lined up on the left are in front of the nebula. Images taken May 11, 2002.

Autor: Foto - Reuters/NASA