NASA unveils ‘cosmic road trip’ that’s out of this world

By Dean Murray via SWNS

NASA has shown off jaw-dropping space sights as part of what they dub "a cosmic road trip".

The stunning galactic images include a star-forming region, a vast nebula, a spiral galaxy and a mind-boggling galaxy cluster.

The space agency said in a statement on Thursday, July 11: "It’s time to take a cosmic road trip using light as the highway and visit four stunning destinations across space.

"The vehicles for this space get-away are NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope ."

They say the "first stop on this tour" is the closest, Rho Ophiuchi , at a distance of about 390 light-years from Earth. Rho Ophiuchi is a cloud complex filled with gas and stars of different sizes and ages.

The next destination is the Orion Nebula . Still located in the Milky Way galaxy, this region is a little bit farther from our home planet at about 1,500 light-years away.

"It’s time to leave our galaxy and visit another," says NASA , and introduces NGC 3627 , which, like the Milky Way, is a spiral galaxy that we see at a slight angle.

NGC 3627 is known as a “barred” spiral galaxy because of the rectangular shape of its central region.

"Our final landing place on this trip is the farthest and the biggest," NASA says, finishing with MACS J0416, a galaxy cluster, which is among the largest objects in the Universe held together by gravity.

"Galaxy clusters like this can contain hundreds or even thousands of individual galaxies all immersed in massive amounts of superheated gas that Chandra can detect," NASA adds.

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