Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2008

This beauty is NGC 7331, and it’s about 50 million light years away. The incredible spiral pattern is caused by gravitational traffic jams in the disk; gas and dust pile up where the gravity into those arms, forming new stars. In a sense, the arms are an illusion, they don’t have that many more stars in them than in the between-arm space, it’s just that that’s where all the massive, bright, short-lived stars are, making the arms easier to see. Those barn-burner stars don’t live long enough to leave the arms, so between the arms it looks darker… but plenty of more modest stars (like the Sun) live there.

Click to enjoy others in a collection of top ten 2008’s astronomy pictures via Discover Magazine.

@ haha.nu

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