Space Image of the Day Gallery (June 2015)

News
By
published

Dances Overhead

Matt Milone

Monday, June 29, 2015: Astrophotographer Matt Milone caught an aurora in the White Mountains of New Hampshire on June 23, 2015. He writes in an email message to Space.com: “Such an incredible night [...] watching the aurora pulse overhead. Never before have I seen the aurora so clearly dancing, not only in front of me, but right overhead as well!”

— Tom Chao

Winds of Change Are Blowing Hard

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Tuesday, June 30, 2015: Galaxy SBS 1415+437 or SDSS CGB 12067.1 floats roughly 45 million light-years away from Earth. Astronomers consider SBS 1415+437 a Wolf–Rayet galaxy, a type of starbursting galaxy filled with an remarkably large number of extremely hot and massive stars known as Wolf–Rayet stars. These stars can measure around 20 times as massive as the sun, but are depleting themselves as fast as possible, spewing forth winds of particles. A typical star of this type can lose a mass equal to that of our sun in 100,000 years. Wolf-Rayet stars have short lifetimes, therefore galaxies usually contain few of these stars, except in Wolf–Rayet galaxies.

— Tom Chao

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

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+.