Astronomy Pictures

Dust in star-forming regions produces all* the really awesome pictures in astronomy. Here are some of mine. The images shown on this page are small versions. Click on an image for a large version. Warning! Some of the large versions are really large

Cloudshine (J,H,K) and outflows from young stars in L1448 in Perseus.

Cloudshine (J,H,K) with 1.2-mm contours showing dust thermal emission in L1451 in Perseus.

Cloudshine in the red-optical (r,i,z) over the whole "west-end" of Perseus, including L1448 and L1451. Very large image. Image artifacts are present around the bright stars, and several asteroids show up as colored streaks in the image.

Cloudshine (r,i,z) and young stars in B5 in Perseus. One of the young stars in B5 is forming in a string of very small dust clouds (lower-center). The most famous source in B5 is in the upper-left of this image. Also visibile is an asteroid (red streak), an imaging artifact (ripple pattern near the upper-left) and some shocked material from a protostellar outflow (blue blobs near the center of the image).

*Sometimes galaxies are pretty too. In this image showing a northern portion of B5 in Perseus, I have modified the color scale to bring out the structure in several bright galaxies. Cloudshine can still be seen in the background, including the prominent shell-structure in the north of B5 (left-hand side of this image).