Constellation: Niyx

1. Constellation: Niyx By: Aaron C.

2. About the Constellation Star Galaxy Nebula Universe • An Constellation is when a group of stars which form a pattern and are given a name. • The Constellation formed in the picture contains stars, galaxys, universes, and nebulas. • This Constellation is highest in the sky during the winter every year.

3. Stars • An Star is self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures. • An Binary Star is a stellar system consisting of two stars orbiting about a common center of mass and often appearing as a single visual or telescopic object . • In this constellation, and every single other constellation it has stars aligned in a shape.

4. Story Behind Universe • Universe is defined as everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. • This universe in the picture is a cluster of galaxies. • A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a previously unknown small group of galaxies estimated to be three billion light-years away.* • They existed when the universe was only about 80% its present age. • This image is part of a serendipitous sky survey which has been conducted over the past two years by Prof. Richard Griffiths and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, with a team of astronomers in the U.S. and Britain. • The distance to the largest galaxy in the image has been measured by Prof. Rogier Windhorst and his group at Arizona State University, using the Multi-Mirror Telescope in Arizona, operated by the University of Arizona and the Smithsonian Institution.

5. Story Behind Galaxy • Galaxy is an a star system held together by gravitational attraction. • The galaxy in the picture is a string of ‘cosmic pearls' surrounding an Exploding Star • Two decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years. • This image shows the entire region around the supernova. The most prominent feature in the image is a ring with dozens of bright spots. • A shock wave of material unleashed by the stellar blast is slamming into regions along the ring's inner regions, heating them up, and causing them to glow. • The ring, about a light-year across, was probably shed by the star about 20,000 years before it exploded. • Astronomers detected the first bright spot in 1997, but now they see dozens of spots around the ring. • Only Hubble can see the individual bright spots. In the next few years, the entire ring will be ablaze as it absorbs the full force of the crash. • The glowing ring is expected to become bright enough to illuminate the star's surroundings, providing astronomers with new information on how the star expelled material before the explosion. • The pink object in the centre of the ring is debris from the supernova blast. • The glowing debris is being heated by radioactive elements, principally titanium 44, created in the explosion. • The debris will continue to glow for many decades.

6. Story Behind Nebula • Starry Night," Vincent van Gogh's famous painting, is renowned for its bold whorls of light sweeping across a raging night sky. Although this image of the heavens came only from the artist's restless imagination, a new picture from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope bears remarkable similarities to the van Gogh work, complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of miles of interstellar space. This image, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004, is Hubble's latest view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monochromic (V838 Mon). he illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red super giant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago. V838 Mon is located about 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monocarps, placing the star at the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy. Called a light echo, the expanding illumination of a dusty cloud around the star has been revealing remarkable structures ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002. Though Hubble has followed the light echo in several snapshots, this new image shows swirls or eddies in the dusty cloud for the first time. These eddies are probably caused by turbulence in the dust and gas around the star as they slowly expand away. The dust and gas were likely ejected from the star in a previous explosion, similar to the 2002 event, which occurred some tens of thousands of years ago. The surrounding dust remained invisible and unsuspected until suddenly illuminated by the brilliant explosion of the central star two years ago.

7. Vocabulary • Universe - All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole. • Binary star - A stellar system consisting of two stars orbiting about a common center of mass and often appearing as a single visual or telescopic object. • Constellation - An arbitrary formation of stars perceived as a figure or design, especially one of 88 recognized groups named after characters from classical mythology and various common animals and objects. • Diffuse nebula - A type of nebula ranging from huge masses presenting relatively high surface brightness down to faint, milky structures that are detectable only with long exposures and special filters; may contain both dust and gas or may be purely gaseous. • Elliptical galaxy - A galaxy whose overall shape ranges from a spheroid to an ellipsoid, without any noticeable structural features. • Irregular galaxy - A galaxy which shows no definite order or shape, except that of a general flattened appearance. • Nova - A star that suddenly becomes much brighter and then gradually returns to its original brightness over a period of weeks to years. • Planetary nebula - A nebula, such as the Ring Nebula, consisting of a hot, blue-white, central star surrounded by an envelope of expanding gas. • Spiral galaxy - A galaxy having a spiral structure. • Star - A self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures.

8. Sources • http://images.google.com • http://hubblesite.org/ • http://www.stargazing.net/David/constel/skymapindex.html