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Hubble Captures Galaxy Blowing Bubbles (VIDEO)

The Huffington Post UK     First Posted: 29/09/11 12:28 BST   Updated: 29/09/11 14:46 BST

The Hubble telescope has captured pictures of the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II blowing huge bubbles of glowing gas.

The bubbles are the lingering remnants of a star formation.

Many of the smaller galaxies, such as Holmberg II, have strange shapes that are hard to identify. Unlike larger galaxies, Holmberg II doesn't have the familiar spiral arms of galaxies like the Milky Way or the dense centre of an elliptical galaxy.

Nasa says that the intricate patterns were created by stars at the end of their lifecycles.

At the end of a star's life it explodes as a supernova. Shock waves then rip through less dense regions, blowing out and heating the gas, forming the delicate shells pictured here.

Can't get enough of strangely-shaped galaxies? Check out Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, 400 pages of weird, beautiful and hard to classify galaxies.

See more gorgeous Hubble photos on Huffington Post.


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The Hubble telescope has captured pictures of the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II blowing huge bubbles of glowing gas. The bubbles are the lingering remnants of a star formation. Many of the...
The Hubble telescope has captured pictures of the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II blowing huge bubbles of glowing gas. The bubbles are the lingering remnants of a star formation. Many of the...
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
SiriusMrE
"I wouldn't have seen it if I didn't believe it."
41 Fans
04:16 PM on 09/29/2011
These images truly are stunningly beautiful.

I am just not completely sold on the interpretation, though. Despite what hardcore acolytes of the "big bang" would loudly aver, there is another way to see things that is based on concepts that we can actually test in Earth labs and that does not require a menagerie of exotic (purely mathematical) entities.

Halton Arp--a former assistant to Edwin Hubble--is a true pioneer. He did compile that Atlas, and the establishment was so threatened by what his observations implied about the redshift=distance paradigm, which underpins the "big bang"/expanding universe model, that they took away his telescope time and refused to publish his papers.

Modern scientists are no more immune from the kind of self-serving adherence to what turns out to be misguided dogma that characterized the early generations of their predecessors. What happened to Arp is clear evidence of that.

"Halton Arp is to the 21st century what Galileo was to the 17th. Both were respected scientists, popular leaders in their field. Both made observations which contradicted the accepted theories. Seventeenth century academics felt threatened by Galileo's observations and so, backed by ecclesiastical authority, they ordered him to stop looking. Twentieth century astronomers felt threatened by Arp's observations and so, backed by institutional authority, they ordered him to stop looking."
Halton Arp: A Modern Day Galileo: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051102arp-galileo.htm
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Don Matthysen
3 Fans
08:51 AM on 10/03/2011
I don't claim to have any authority on this topic and this is purely an observation… If history is any indication of how we as humans react to new ideas that destroy what the masses embrace. What else can be expected of us in all our so called wisdom? All of our knowledge was and still is being extracted from the universe, yet we only value and respect what the majority hold onto at a specific point in time. I am convinced your will be vindicated one day Mr. Arp. Sadly, if history has its way. Not in his lifetime though.
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