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Join me on a Halloween astronomical tour. See a cosmic witch and cosmic ghosts, spiders and snakes, and fiery skull. But have no fear. It's a virtual tour and all these objects are a very long way away.

Cosmic Halloween Tour

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.

Cosmic Ghosts Ghouls and Vampires

For Halloween, here is the Hubble Space Telescope image of IC 63, also known as the Ghost Nebula. This stunning nebula is some 550 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. It's affected by radiation from the variable blue-white subgiant star Gamma Cassiopeiae, even though it's several light years away from it.

Ultraviolet radiation from the star energizes hydrogen in the nebula - that shows up in red. But you can also see blue light in the image - that's light from Gamma Cassiopeiae being reflected by dust particles in the nebula.

This bloodied and headless apparation would be a scary sight on Halloween (and probably any other night). However, we won't be shivering and shaking, because it's actually a nebula in the constellation Orion, and it's about 1500 light years away. We can actually only see this shape from a considerable distance. The Horsehead Nebula is around 7 light years across - that's some 40 trillion miles, give or take the odd few billion.

This image has its ethereal and rather spooky look because it was taken in infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope.

When this star R. Leporis was discovered by 19th century English astronomer John Russell Hind, he described it as "... like a drop of blood on a black field." The cool, highly-evolved red giant is what's known as a carbon star and it really looks that color. Carbon dredged up to the surface of the star strongly absorb what little blue light is left and give give it exceptionally deep red color.

"Vampire Star" image & copyright: Martin Pugh
Description: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)