Nasa Photos Of The Week: The Glittering Jewels Of Messier 9

Nasa Photos Of The Week: The Glittering Jewels Of Messier 9

Putting your woes into context this week are the glittering jewels of Messier 9, a shimmering image of Dubai at night, the ATREX rocket lighting up the sky and the wispy blue loops of the Cygnus Loop Nebula.

The glittering image from the Hubble Space Telescope is the most detailed so far produced of Messier 9, the globular star cluster near the center of the galaxy, 25,000 light-years from Earth.

Hubble can see over 250,000 individual stars shining in it, while here on Earth, it's too faint to see with the naked eye.

Messier 9 is a globular cluster, the kind that hold some of the oldest stars, metal-poor stars, in the galaxy. Some are around twice the age of the sun.

The very beautiful Cygnus Loop Nebula image was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The nebula is around 1,500 light-years away from earth, and is a supernova remnant, left over from a massive stellar explosion that occurred 5,000-8,000 years ago.

What we see are tendrils of hot dust and gas glowing in an ultraviolet image. In the night sky, it's next to one of the wings of the swan constellation.

Our ancestors would have clearly been able to see the supernova explode from Earth with the naked eye.

Click below for 8 great Nasa images of the week.

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