Roman stellar streams (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Roman stellar streams

Caption

This series of images shows how astronomers find stellar streams by reversing the light and dark, similar to negative images, but stretched to highlight the faint streams. Color images of each of the nearby galaxies featured are superposed to scale to highlight the easily visible disk. Galaxies are surrounded by enormous halos of hot gas sprinkled with sporadic stars, seen as the shadowy regions that encase each galaxy here. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to improve on these observations by resolving individual stars to understand each stream’s stellar populations and see stellar streams of various sizes in even more galaxies.

Credit

Carlin et al. (2016), based on images from Martínez-Delgado et al. (2008, 2010)

Usage Restrictions

No restrictions.

License

Public Domain

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