Space Hubble Telescope News

Science Release: Spiralling Stars Provide a Window into the Early Universe

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Astronomers have been bemused to find young stars spiralling into the centre of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery — called NGC 346 — may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars. This is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Webb and Hubble Capture Detailed Views of DART Impact

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Two of the great observatories, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have captured views of a unique experiment to smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact observations mark the first time that Webb and Hubble were used to simultaneously observe the same celestial target.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: A Cosmic Cobweb

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Nowadays, all galaxies and galaxy clusters are thought to be dominated by dark matter — an elusive quantity whose nature astronomers are still working to determine. Abell 611, the glowing galaxy cluster shown in this Hubble image, is no exception. In fact, Abell 611 is a popular target for investigating dark matter, in part because of the numerous examples of strong gravitational lensing visible amongst the cluster’s intricate web of galaxies.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Hubble Captures Three Faces of Evolving Supernova in Early Universe

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Three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion were captured in a single snapshot by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The progenitor star exploded more than 11 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than a fifth of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: Hubble Helps Discover a New Type of Planet Largely Composed of Water

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Researchers have found evidence for the existence of a new type of planet they have called a “water world,” where water makes up a large fraction of the entire planet. These worlds, discovered in a planetary system 218 light-years away, are unlike any planets in our Solar System.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: For The First Time Hubble Directly Measures The Mass of a Lone White Dwarf

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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have for the first time directly measured the mass of a single, isolated white dwarf star – the surviving core of a burned-out sunlike star.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Hubble captures movie of DART asteroid impact debris

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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured a series of photos of rapid changes to the asteroid Dimorphos when it was deliberately hit by a 545-kilogram spacecraft on 26 September 2022. The primary objective of the NASA mission, called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), was to test our ability to alter the asteroid’s trajectory as it orbits its larger companion asteroid, Didymos. Though Dimorphos poses no threat to Earth, data from the mission could help inform researchers how to potentially change an asteroid’s path away from Earth, if ever necessary.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Hubble monitors changing weather and seasons on Jupiter and Uranus

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Ever since its launch in 1990, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been an interplanetary weather observer, keeping an eye on the ever-changing atmospheres of the largely gaseous outer planets. And it’s an unblinking eye that allows Hubble’s sharpness and sensitivity to monitor a kaleidoscope of complex activities over time. Today new images are shared of Jupiter and Uranus.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Hubble celebrates its 33rd anniversary with a peek into a nearby star-forming region

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Astronomers are celebrating the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 33rd launch anniversary with an ethereal photo of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333. The nebula is in the Perseus molecular cloud, and is located approximately 960 light-years away.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: Hubble follows shadow play around planet-forming disc

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In 2017 astronomers reported discovering a shadow sweeping across the face of a vast pancake-shaped disc of gas and dust surrounding the red dwarf star TW Hydrae. The shadow isn’t from a planet, but from an inner disc slightly inclined relative to the much larger outer disc — causing it to cast a shadow. One explanation is that an unseen planet’s gravity is pulling dust and gas into its inclined orbit. Now, a second shadow — playing a game of peek-a-boo — has emerged in just a few years between observations stored in the MAST archive of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This could be from yet another disc nestled inside the system. The two discs are likely evidence of a pair of planets under construction.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: Hubble hunts for intermediate-sized black hole close to home

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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have come up with what they say is some of their best evidence yet for the presence of a rare class of intermediate-sized black holes, having found a strong candidate lurking at the heart of the closest globular star cluster to Earth, located 6000 light-years away.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Hubble sees boulders escaping from asteroid Dimorphos

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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/ Hubble Space Telescope’s extraordinary sensitivity have discovered a swarm of boulders that were possibly shaken off the asteroid Dimorphos when NASA deliberately slammed the half-tonne DART impactor spacecraft into Dimorphos at approximately 22 500 kilometres per hour. DART intentionally impacted Dimorphos on 26 September 2022, slightly changing the trajectory of its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Hubble dispels dust to see a glittering globular cluster

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The glittering globular cluster Terzan 12 — a vast, tightly bound collection of stars — fills the frame of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The location of this globular cluster, deep in the Milky Way galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius, means that it is shrouded in gas and dust which absorb and alter the starlight emanating from Terzan 12.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: Hubble finds bizarre explosion in unexpected place

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A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger – thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn’t expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Webb, Hubble Combine to Create Most Colourful View of Universe

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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have united to study an expansive galaxy cluster known as MACS0416. The resulting panchromatic image combines visible and infrared light to assemble one of the most comprehensive views of the Universe ever obtained. Located about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth, MACS0416 is a pair of colliding galaxy clusters that will eventually combine to form an even bigger cluster.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: Hubble measures the size of the nearest transiting Earth-sized planet

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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has measured the size of the nearest Earth-sized exoplanet that passes across the face of a neighbouring star. This alignment, called a transit, opens the door to follow-on studies to see what kind of atmosphere, if any, the rocky world might have.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: A holiday globe of stars

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To celebrate the holiday season, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the galaxy known as UGC 8091, which resembles a sparkling festive snow globe. With a dazzling array of wavelengths of light captured by filters on Hubble's premier scientific instruments, the millions of stars in this galaxy are being explored in more depth than ever before.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Photo Release: Hubble watches spoke season on Saturn

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This photo of Saturn was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 22 October 2023, when the ringed planet was approximately 1365 million kilometres from Earth. Hubble's ultra-sharp vision reveals a phenomenon called ring spokes.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: Hubble observes a changing exoplanet atmosphere

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An international team of astronomers has assembled and reprocessed observations of the exoplanet WASP-121 b that were collected with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in the years 2016, 2018 and 2019. This provided them with a unique dataset that allowed them not only to analyse the atmosphere of WASP 121 b, but also to compare the state of the exoplanet’s atmosphere across several years. They found clear evidence that the observations of WASP-121 b were varying in time. The team then used sophisticated modelling techniques to demonstrate that these temporal variations could be explained by weather patterns in the exoplanet's atmosphere.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Science Release: Hubble finds weird home of farthest fast radio burst

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A Fast Radio Burst (FRB) is a fleeting blast of energy that can – for a few milliseconds – outshine an entire galaxy. Over the past few years hundreds of FRBs have been detected. They pop off all over the sky like camera flashes at a stadium event, but the sources behind these intense bursts of radiation remain uncertain.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
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