BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Cosmic Halloween Tour . . . If you dare

Halloween falls midway between an equinox and a solstice. In the ancient Celtic world it was new year's eve and start of winter - time to prepare for survival in the darkening days. But also a time when the boundary between our world and the otherworld weakened. Who knew what might cross it?

This article also looks at the origin a few traditions that persist around the modern Halloween.

Here's a very spooky aurora photograph taken at almost exactly this time last year.

Nebulae often get names based on a shape astronomers see. Being great clouds of gas and dust, they can be all kinds of evocative shapes. This one is called the Ghost Nebula and it looks quite ghostly. It doesn't take much imagination to see two scared figures trying to run away, as well. EEK!

Take a Cosmic Halloween Tour . . . if you dare!

You'll actually be pretty safe, as the nearest object in this tour is millions of miles away. Even this really scary-looking thing turns out to be nothing more than an X-ray image of a cluster of galaxies. We have such vivid imaginations!

Seemingly, a giant ghostly hand reaching for a ring of fire. But it's actually the nebula created by a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star. It's in the constellation Circinus, and was imaged by the Chandra X-ray Observatory

Cosmic Ghosts Ghouls and Vampires

Astronomers use colorful language for cosmic objects. But unlike ghosts, ghouls and vampires in horror stories, the cosmic ones aren't scary late at night. Here are tales of the birth, evolution and death of stars, a blinking demon and a star that, at Halloween, seems like the Sun's ghost.

This is a picture of a planetary nebula. It's a nebula formed from the outer layers of a sunlike star that's nearing the end of its life. You can find out more about this in The Life and Death of the Sun.

Following the Halloween theme, I'll warn you that it does somewhat resemble a one-eyed grinning skull.

Here is ghostly, but really quite pretty, image of a reflection nebula in the Pleiades.

And you can find out more, if you like, about the beautiful Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster.

I love this carved pumpkin that shows Rosetta and Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. What fun. And how clever.