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![The Whirlpool Galaxy](https://boldly-going.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/WhirlpoolDrizzled3-768x509.png)
The Whirlpool Galaxy
The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) appears to be sucking the life out of its companion, NGC 5195. While these galaxies are interacting, they’re not actually connected right now – it just looks that way.
![The “Silver Sliver” Galaxy](https://boldly-going.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SilverSliverClose-768x591.png)
The “Silver Sliver” Galaxy
Try saying that three times fast! Fortunately, the “Silver Sliver Galaxy” has a formal name that’s easier to pronounce: NGC 891. It’s about 30 million light-years away, and is thought to be very similar to what our own Milky Way galaxy would look like when viewed edge-on. Explore the wider-field image; click on it for…
![The “Bubble Nebula”](https://boldly-going.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Bubble-768x794.png)
The “Bubble Nebula”
Here’s my latest image of the “Bubble Nebula”, one of my favorite objects in our galaxy. That blue “bubble” is a shell of gas pushed out by the stellar wind of the bright star just right of its center. It’s a big star, 10-20 times larger than our sun. Its radiation is also illuminating and…
![Here’s our solar system in a few billion years.](https://boldly-going.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/M27-768x768.png)
Here’s our solar system in a few billion years.
This is M27, the “Dumbbell Nebula,” about 1600 light-years away. It’s what’s called a planetary nebula – not because it has anything to do with planets, but because early observers confused them for planets. In reality it’s far more interesting. This is what’s left over when a medium-sized star runs out of Hydrogen to fuse,…
![Hickson 44 Galaxy Group](https://boldly-going.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Hickson44-768x699.png)
The Hickson 44 Galaxy Group
This is a weird little cluster of galaxies – there are four in all, and each one is completely different. There’s a weird, S-shaped one that must have been messed up by its neighbors in the past, a somewhat normal-looking spiral galaxy, and elliptical, and another one that’s viewed edge-on. Galaxies that have interacted with…
![M17 doesn’t look like a swan to me.](https://boldly-going.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/M17-768x908.png)
M17 doesn’t look like a swan to me.
M17 is commonly known as the Swan Nebula or the Omega Nebula. From this angle, I think it looks more like a crab – but “Crab Nebula” was taken! Shot over a hazy summer night, with narrowband filters for the gases of the nebula itself, and RGB natural-color filters for the stars. Presented processed with…