Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: That's a Lotta Stars, Yo
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-s-journey-to-the-center-of-our-galaxy">NASA, ESA, and Hubble Heritage Team</a>01SPoW-Mar27-April2-04.jpg
Hubble's infrared vision pierced the dusty heart of our Milky Way galaxy to reveal more than half a million stars at its core. At the very hub of our galaxy, this star cluster surrounds the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, which is about 4 million times the mass of our sun.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/earth-art-in-northwestern-australia">NASA</a>02SPoW-Mar27-April2-02.jpg
During an International Space Station flyover of Australia, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams captured a colorful image of the coast and shared it with his social media followers on March 29, 2016, writing, "The unique terrain of the northwestern Australian coast."
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/trigger-for-milky-way-s-youngest-supernova-identified.html">NASA/CXC/CfA/S. Chakraborti et al.</a>03SPoW-Mar27-April2-03.jpg
Scientists have used data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the NSF’s Jansky Very Large Array to determine the likely trigger for the most recent supernova in the Milky Way. They applied a new technique that could have implications for understanding other Type Ia supernovas, a class of stellar explosions that scientists use to determine the expansion rate of the Universe. Astronomers had previously identified G1.9+0.3 as the remnant of the most recent supernova in our Galaxy. It is estimated to have occurred about 110 years ago in a dusty region of the Galaxy that blocked visible light from reaching Earth.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-bladed-terrain-in-3-d">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a>04SPoW-Mar27-April2-05.jpg
A 3-D view of the “bladed” terrain just east of Tombaugh Regio, the informal name given to Pluto’s large heart-shaped surface feature. The blades are the dominant feature of a broad area informally named Tartarus Dorsa. They align from north to south, reach hundreds of feet high and are typically spaced a few miles apart. This remarkable landform, unlike any other seen in our solar system, is perched on a much broader set of rounded ridges that are separated by flat valley floors.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-peers-at-a-distinctly-disorganized-dwarf-galaxy"> ESA</a>05SPoW-Mar27-April2-06.jpg
This is a photo UGC 4459. It’s an irregular dwarf galaxy, one of the most common galaxies in the universe. Lacking a distinctive structure or shape, irregular dwarf galaxies are often chaotic in appearance, with neither a nuclear bulge — a huge, tightly packed central group of stars — nor any trace of spiral arms — regions of stars extending from the center of the galaxy. Astronomers suspect that some irregular dwarf galaxies were once spiral or elliptical galaxies, but were later deformed by the gravitational pull of nearby objects.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-japan-make-aster-earth-data-available-at-no-cost">NASA</a>06SPoW-Mar27-April2-07.jpg
In March 2016, ASTER captured the eruption of Nicaragua’s Momotombo volcano with its visible and thermal infrared bands. The ash plume is depicted by the visible bands in blue-gray; the thermal infrared bands show hot lava flows in yellow and the active summit crater in white. Vegetation is red.
