APOD 3.07

This is a picture of a polar ring galaxy. It's is very rare and it has a ring of gas, stars, and debris that orbit in a flat disk perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy. It is believed to be a chance capture; a galaxy ran into it, and the debris was captured and strung into a rotating ring. The ring of NGC 2685 is very old and very stable. In this picture of Arp 336, the rings are very easy to see, along with other odd structures.

Planetary Nebulae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_nebulae
http://www.noao.edu/jacoby/
http://www.noao.edu/jacoby/saturn_nebula.html
http://www.seds.org/messier/Jpg/m27.jpg
http://www.seds.org/messier/planetar.html
http://astro.nineplanets.org/twn/types.html
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/208/feb22/feb22.html

APOD 3.06

This cluster of galaxies is about 450 million light-years from Earth. It's catalog name is Abell S0740. The elliptical galaxy, ESO 325-G004, spans 100,000 light-years and contains 100 billion stars. This makes it similar to our own Milky Way. The picture taken by Hubble reveals a plethora of different structures, ranging from dust lands to spiral arms.

APOD 3.05 Thor's Helmet

Thor's Helmet is the awesome name for NGC 2359. It is an emission nebula, so it radiates light. The other name for Thor's Helmet is the Duck Nebula. The bubble is 30 light years across, made from a Wolf-Rayet star. A Wolf-Rayet star is a rare massive blue giant, which is a star that gives off a solar wind of a few millions of kilometers per hour.

WR stars are at the end of their lifetime, and are thought to be the stars that become supernova.