Space Reality Show -- Part II

ESO's Very Large Telescope

The binary star system called AB7 packs a punch. A combined "wind" of charged particles is perhaps a billion times more powerful than what our Sun produces. The wind pressurizes interstellar gas to create the bubble shape

The galaxy Centaurus A was first identified by radio telescopes. It's between 10 million and 13 million light-years away and is thought to contain a black hole about 100 times as massive as the Sun

The sky is strange near the Chamaeleon I complex of bright nebulae and hot stars in the constellation of the same name, close to the southern celestial pole

The Dumbbell Nebula is about 1,200 light years away and packed with rarified gas that's being ejected by the hot central star and lit by its intense ultraviolet radiation

Cosmic collision: Two opposite jets from a developing star ram into interstellar matter about 1,500 light-years away in Orion, a region of intense star formation. The enigmatic "waterfall" to the upper left is unexplained

The famous Horsehead Nebula sits amid the Orion molecular cloud complex. Stars behind the cosmic dust light its fringes

This remnant of a supernova explosion is about 6,000 light-years from Earth. It contains a neutron star near its center that spins 30 times per second. Green light is mostly hydrogen, and the blue light comes from electrons moving at significant fractions of light-speed

NGC 6872, the larger galaxy, has many bluish objects that are regions of heavy star formation. They may have been triggered by the recent passage of smaller galaxy, IC 4970, just above the center. The bright object to the lower right is a foreground star in our own Milky Way

Galaxy NGC 1232, about 100 million light years away, has older reddish stars near the center while the spiral arms are populated by young blue stars. Note the distorted companion galaxy on the left side

NGC 3627, also known as Messier 66, is about 35 million light years away in the constellation Leo. Like many spiral galaxies, it has a bulge of stars at the center swirling wound a supermassive black hole