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Spooky sights in the night sky

Halloween as we know it is rooted in the observations of the stars.

Posted 2023-10-31T23:52:42+00:00 - Updated 2023-10-31T23:52:42+00:00

As the name implies, this reflection nebula associated with the star Rigel looks suspiciously like a fairytale crone. Formally known as IC 2118 in the constellation Orion, the Witch Head Nebula glows primarily by light reflected from the star. The color of this very blue nebula is caused not only by blue color of its star, but also because the dust grains reflect blue light more efficiently than red. A similar physical process causes Earth’s daytime sky to appear blue.Image Credit: NASA/STScI Digitized Sky Survey/Noel Carboni

Tony Rice

, NASA Ambassador

Halloween as we know it today has its roots in Samhain, when ancient Celts and Druids in the British Isles marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of longer, darker nights.

The last day of October was chosen for its position midway between the September equinox and the December solstice, a cross-quarter day

Other cross-quarter days include Groundhog Day (February 2), May Day (May 1), and Lammas (August 1), or Loaf Mass Day where some Christian sects celebrate the first fruits of the harvest.

Above tonight's gloomy weather there you'll find some spooky sights.

The Witch Head Nebula in the constellation Orion glows an eerie blue not just because of the blue color of its star, Rigel, but also because the dust grains reflect blue light more efficiently than red. This is the same physics at work in space that creates the Caroline blue skies back here on Earth.

The Ghost Head Nebula, or NGC 2080, is a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The nebula spans about 50 light-years and this image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is shown in representative colors.Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris) et al.

The Ghost Head Nebula, known to astronomers as NGC 2080, is part of a chain of star-forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It has been a popular target for the Hubble Space Telescope through the years. Red and blue in the image are regions of hydrogen gas heated by nearby stars. The comes from oxygen glowing from energy provided by stellar wind, a high-speed stream of particles, supplied by a nearby star.

A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation.

It may look like the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is watching you but the truth is actually spookier. This dying star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core, 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius.

Our own Sun will suffer this same fate, turning into a planetary nebula, in about five billion years.

The colors represent variations in the intensity not temperature-- of the X rays, with white being the most intense, to red being the least. The red and orange show X-ray emitting gas in the cluster. The more intense yellow and white regions are in and around the supergiant galaxy, Perseus A. A small dark patch located at two o'clock from the center of the image is a galaxy with "only" about 20 billion stars that is falling into Perseus A. Another larger hole seen further out is thought to be due to a bubble of high energy particles ejected in an explosion from Perseus A hundreds of millions of years ago. The central region is discussed at Perseus A Photo Album.

Astronomers have to come up with ways to visualize energy outside of the visible spectrum. A skull appears in this image captured by the Chandra Observatory of X-rays emitted by the Perseus cluster of galaxies.