Hubble sends dramatic image of distant star not unlike Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

Yahoo! News ^ | 3/4/04 | AFP - Washington

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (AFP) -

The Hubble space telescope captured an image of a distant star that bears resemblance to the famous Vincent van Gogh painting "Starry Night", NASA (news - web sites) and the European Space Agency announced.

The spectacular image taken February 8 showed the star, V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon), surrounded by an expanding halo of light "complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of kilometers of interstellar space", a statement from the agencies said.

"The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago," the statement added, describing the image as "nature's own piece of performance art".

The outburst event from V838 Mon, located 20,000 light years away from Earth, is probably the source of the dust haze which it illuminates.

The image can be seen at www.spacetelescope.org.

Van Gogh painted "Starry Night" while at the Saint-Remy-de-Provence asylum in southern France, some 13 months before he committed suicide at the age of 37 at Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, in 1890.

[NormsRevenge]

This image released by NASA (news - web sites), captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites), shows spirals of dust swirling across trillions of kilometres of interstellar space.

This image is Hubble's latest view of a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon)(AFP/NASA/HHT)

[RichInOC]

...oooohhhh...ahhhhhh...

[Rabid Dog]

Beautiful!

[nwrep]

Starry Night by Van Gogh:

[GeronL]

why do those stars look like that?

[knarf]

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks very much Norm.  I think folks will also enjoy this sequence of the event.  I know I did.
This is the largest version of the sequence I am aware of.

Link to larger version of the original single

[The Louiswu]

why do those stars look like that?

Generally the Hubbel team enhances the pictures to make them look better. Many of the pictures the Hubbel takes are not in frequencies humans can generally see or see well. While I am not saying that THIS picture has been "photoshoped" many of the pictures the release have been.

[skr]

What wonders God has wrought!

[jpsb]

Wow, what a beautiful pic. NASA, Save Hubble!

I have a number of hubble threads at RadioCity.dynip.com in the forum if yall come accross good pics and articles please post them there too. thanks.

[FairOpinion]

Beautiful!

[NormsRevenge]

[BykrBayb]

Oh my! God paints the most beautiful pictures!

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for that larger version. I've bookmarked a new site.

[The Radical Capitalist]

Great pictures, but the news story is terrible. It fails to give a clear idea of what's going on. I guess the burst of light is illuminating dust further and further out from the star, as opposed to flinging the dust out from a recent explosion. If it's trillions of miles, only light could travel that fast in 2 years. So we're seeing already-present dust being lit up progressively further and further away. But the article fails to make that clear, and a dozen other things as well, such as why the star is giving off a pulse of light in the first place. I guess vague resemblences to Van Gogh are more important than actual facts.

[NormsRevenge]

Some pretty good stuff, indeed.

Makes politicians and activists agendas look mighty small in the scheme of things cosmically. There is some comfort in that thought, at least. ;-)

[DoughtyOne]

True Norm. Thanks again.

[KevinDavis]

When you see these pictures, there is no way in heck that we are the only intelligent life forms in this known universe.

[DoughtyOne]

Here's an animation using the available series of photos.