Catalogue of the Cosmos
- Posted 09.01.06
- NOVA
Learn the difference between pulsars and quasars, antimatter and dark matter, brown dwarfs and white dwarfs, and many other astronomical objects.
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See amazing space telescope images of comets, asteroids, stars, galaxies, nebulas, quasars, and other cosmic wonders.
Glossary excerpted with permission from Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge, edited by Steven Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson, New York: The New Press, 2001. Definition of gamma-ray burst courtesy of Dr. Jerry Bonnell, Goddard Space Flight Center. This feature originally appeared, in slightly different form, on NOVA's Death Star Web site.
Credits
Images
- (asteroid, Earth, elliptical galaxy, globular cluster, Milky Way)
- Courtesy NASA
- (binary star system)
- Courtesy NASA, Susan Terebey/Extrasolar Research Corp.
- (black hole)
- Courtesy Karl Gebhardt/University of Michigan, Tod Lauer/NOAO
- (blue straggler)
- Courtesy NASA, Rex Saffer/Villanova University and Dave Zurek/STScI
- (comet)
- Courtesy NASA, H.A. Weaver/Applied Research Corp., P.D. Feldman/The Johns Hopkins University
- (galaxy)
- Courtesy NASA, Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA, G.R. Meurer and T.M. Heckman/The Johns Hopkins University, C. Leitherer, J. Harris and D. Calzetti/STScI, M. Sirianni/ The Johns Hopkins University
- (gamma-ray burst, nebula)
- Courtesy NASA, S.R. Kulkarni and S.G. Djorgovski/Caltech, Caltech GRB Team
- (magellanic clouds, spiral galaxy)
- Courtesy Hubble Heritage Team/AURA/STScI/NASA
- (neutron star)
- Courtesy NASA, Fred Walter/State University of New York at Stony Brook
- (Orion Nebula)
- Courtesy NASA, Hubble Heritage Team/STScI
- (planetary nebula)
- Courtesy NASA, J.P. Harrington and K.J. Borkowski/University of Maryland
- (quasar)
- Courtesy NASA, John Bahcall/Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton
- (supernova)
- Courtesy Chung Shing Jason Pun/NASA/GCFC, Robert P. Kirshner/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
- (white dwarf)
- Courtesy NASA, Harvey Richer/University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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