More stuff

Friday, August 1, 2014: This view toward the bulge at the center of our Milky Way galaxy shows a large, obscuring nebula in the foreground. This nebula opens just enough to show glimpses of the galactic central bulge, which contains no gas and where no star formation is occurring--none, in fact, for billions of years. In general, the bulge of a spiral galaxy consists of a quasi-spherical, amorphous ball of old stars. Image released July 2014.

 Friday, July 25, 2014: Astrophotographer Jeff Johnson of Las Cruces, New Mexico, sent in a photo of M64, the Black Eye Galaxy, taken April 3, 2014. He writes in an email message to Space.com: "I was hoping to collect more data, but our monsoon season is now upon us here in Las Cruces, so cloudy nights are the norm. Before this part of the season arrived, however, I collected enough data to bring out the Black Eye Galaxy …. This result is much deeper than my earlier attempt with a larger scope over 6 years ago."

 Monday, July 21, 2014: Globular cluster NGC 121 lies in the constellation of Tucana (The Toucan). Globular clusters consist of old stars organized in big spherical structures that orbit the centers of their galaxies like satellites. NGC 121, discovered in 1835 by English astronomer John Herschel, exists in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), one of our neighboring galaxies. NGC 121 measures around 10 billion years old, making it the oldest cluster in its galaxy. The other globular clusters of the SMC have an age of 8 billion years old or younger. The reason for the age discrepancy has not been discovered yet.