Space Image of the Day Gallery (July 2013)

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Blazing Star

ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine

Tuesday, July 30, 2013: Spiral galaxy NGC 4517 looms in space with a size slightly bigger than our Milky Way. From Hubble Space Telescope’s vantage point orbiting Earth, the galaxy appears edge-on, crowned by a very bright star. The star actually lies much closer to us than the galaxy making it appear large and dazzling in the photo. Visible and infrared light gathered by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope combines in this image. Contestant Gilles Chapdelaine entered a version of this image into the Hubble’s Hidden treasures image processing competition. Image released July 29, 2013.

— Tom Chao

Rip It Up

Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/Coelum

Wednesday, July 31, 2013: Intriuging structures mark galaxy NGC 474’s unusual appearance. Astronomer call it a shell galaxy owing to stars creating the well-defined structures through some as-yet-not-understood process. Researchers do know, however, that galaxies collide over hundreds of millions of years in interactions called tidal stripping, as galaxies rip each other apart.

— Tom Chao

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Tom Chao
Tom Chao
Tom Chao has contributed to SPACE.com as a producer and writer since 2000. As a writer and editor, he has worked for the Voyager Company, Time Inc. New Media, HarperCollins and Worth Publishers. He has a bachelor’s degree in Cinema Production from the University of Southern California, and a master’s degree from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Tom on Google+.