NASA Announces 2009 Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellows
NASA has selected fellows in three areas of astronomy and astrophysics for its Einstein, Hubble, and Sagan Fellowships. The recipients of this year's postdoctoral fellowships will conduct independent research at institutions around the country.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md. has selected 17 new candidates for the 2010 Hubble Fellowship Program. The fellows may pursue their research at any host university or research center of their choosing in the United States and will begin their programs in the fall of 2010. Each fellowship provides support to the awardees for three years. The awardees pursue research broadly related to NASA's Cosmic Origins Program. The missions in this program examine the origins of galaxies, stars, and planetary systems, and the evolution of these structures with cosmic time, and presently include: the Herschel Space Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Inaugurated in 1990, the Hubble Fellowship Program funds research opportunities for outstanding candidates selected in 2010 from more than 230 applicants.
Wide Field Camera 3 Anomaly on Hubble Space Telescope
The Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope suspended operations on January 8 due to a hardware problem. Hubble will continue to perform science observations with its other three active instruments, while the Wide Field Camera 3 anomaly is investigated. Wide Field Camera 3, installed during Servicing Mission 4 in 2009, is equipped with redundant electronics should they be needed to recover the instrument.
Wide Field Camera 3 Anomaly on Hubble Space Telescope Update
NASA continues to work toward recovering the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, which suspended operations on Tuesday, January 8. A team of instrument system engineers, Wide Field Camera 3 instrument developers, and other experts formed and quickly began collecting all available telemetry and onboard memory information to determine the sequence of events that caused the values to go out of limits. This team is currently working to identify the root cause and then to construct a recovery plan. If a significant hardware failure is identified, redundant electronics built into the instrument will be used to recover and return it to operations.
The Universe "Down Under" is the Latest Target for Hubble's Latest Deep-View
Turning its penetrating vision toward southern skies, the Hubble telescope has peered down a 12- billion-light-year-long corridor loaded with a dazzling assortment of thousands of never-before-seen galaxies. The observation, called the Hubble Deep Field South, doubles the number of far-flung galaxies available to astronomers for deciphering the history of the universe.
This new far-look complements the original Hubble "deep field" taken in late 1995, when Hubble was aimed at a small patch of space near the Big Dipper. Hubble's sharp vision allows astronomers to sort galaxy shapes. The image is dominated by beautiful pinwheel-shaped disk galaxies, which are like our Milky Way.
This Hubble telescope image of the Trifid Nebula reveals a stellar nursery being torn apart by radiation from a nearby, massive star. The picture also provides a peek at embryonic stars forming within an ill-fated cloud of dust and gas, which is destined to be eaten away by the glare from the massive neighbor. This stellar activity is a beautiful example of how the life cycles of stars like our Sun are intimately connected with their more powerful siblings.
Wrecks between two galaxies were a common occurrence in the early cosmos. But pileups among several galaxies? Astronomers conducting a three-year survey of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) have discovered more than 24 of them involved in three-, four-, or even five-galaxy smashups. Astronomers have made this discovery by analyzing Hubble telescope pictures of these pileups, including the nine presented here. These results offer a snapshot of what conditions were like in the early universe, when galaxy collisions were commonplace.
Spitzer and Hubble Capture Evolving Planetary Systems
Two of NASA's Great Observatories, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, have provided astronomers an unprecedented look at dusty planetary debris around stars the size of our sun. Spitzer has discovered for the first time dusty discs around mature, sun-like stars known to have planets. Hubble captured the most detailed image ever of a brighter disc circling a much younger sun-like star. The findings offer "snapshots" of the process by which our own solar system evolved, from its dusty and chaotic beginnings to its more settled present-day state.
Debris disks are composed of the shattered remnants of small bodies such as comets and asteroids that collided as they orbited the star. A similar, though much less dense cloud of dust orbits our Sun. Large, gaseous planets like Jupiter might already exist in such systems, while much smaller rocky planets like the Earth may be just starting to form.
Hubble Makes Movie of Neptune's Dynamic Atmosphere
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures the distant blue-green world, Neptune, and its satellites in this portrait. Astronomers used Hubble's assortment of filters to pinpoint high altitude clouds floating above the methane rich atmosphere. The images have been assembled into a time-lapse movie revealing the orbital motion of the satellites. The icy moons seen in this view are Proteus (the brightest), Larissa, Despina, and Galatea. Neptune had 13 moons at last count. In Roman mythology, Larsissa and Despina were Neptunes's daughters.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of two new moons around the distant planet Pluto. The moons were first discovered by Hubble in May 2005, but the Pluto Companion Search team probed even deeper into the Pluto system with Hubble on Feb. 15 to look for additional satellites and to characterize the orbits of the moons. In the image, Pluto is in the center and Charon is just below it. The moons, provisionally designated S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, are located to the right of Pluto and Charon.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found that young stellar nurseries, called open star clusters, have very short lives.
This is gleaned from new observations by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys that were used to do a "Where's Waldo" search for blue stars tossed out of their open cluster "nest" in the nearby galaxy known as NGC 1313.
NASA Announces 2009 Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellows
NASA has selected fellows in three areas of astronomy and astrophysics for its Einstein, Hubble, and Sagan Fellowships. The recipients of this year's postdoctoral fellowships will conduct independent research at institutions around the country.
Hubble Uncovers an Unusual Stellar Progenitor to a Supernova
Astronomers have detailed theories about what type of stars self-destruct in titanic supernova explosions. However, it would be useful to test stellar theory by actually seeing what a doomed star looked like before it blew apart. The problem is that a supernova blast pretty much eradicates all evidence of what the progenitor star was. Like a surveillance camera photographing the scene of a crime before it happened, the Hubble Space Telescope has a priceless archival photo of the galaxy that contains a picture of the supernova progenitor star as it appeared eight years before it exploded. The progenitor was comparatively easy to find because it was one of the brightest stars in the host galaxy. But the discovery has only further confounded supernova mysteries. The progenitor star belongs to a class of luminous blue variable stars that are not expected to explode at such an early stage of their existence.
Hubble Image Showcases Star Birth in M83, the Southern Pinwheel
The spectacular new camera installed on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during Servicing Mission 4 in May has delivered the most detailed view of star birth in the graceful, curving arms of the nearby spiral galaxy M83.
Nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel, M83 is undergoing more rapid star formation than our own Milky Way galaxy, especially in its nucleus. The sharp "eye" of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) has captured hundreds of young star clusters, ancient swarms of globular star clusters, and hundreds of thousands of individual stars, mostly blue supergiants and red supergiants. The image at right, taken in August 2009, is Hubble's close-up view of the myriad stars near the galaxy's core, the bright whitish region at far right. An image of the entire galaxy, taken by the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field Imager on the ESO/MPG 2.2-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile, is shown at left. The white box outlines Hubble's view.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md. has selected 17 new candidates for the 2010 Hubble Fellowship Program. The fellows may pursue their research at any host university or research center of their choosing in the United States and will begin their programs in the fall of 2010. Each fellowship provides support to the awardees for three years. The awardees pursue research broadly related to NASA's Cosmic Origins Program. The missions in this program examine the origins of galaxies, stars, and planetary systems, and the evolution of these structures with cosmic time, and presently include: the Herschel Space Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Inaugurated in 1990, the Hubble Fellowship Program funds research opportunities for outstanding candidates selected in 2010 from more than 230 applicants.
Neptune Completes Its First Circuit Around The Sun Since Its Discovery
These four images of Neptune were taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during the planet's 16-hour rotation. The snapshots were taken at roughly four-hour intervals, offering a full view of the blue-green planet. Today marks Neptune's first orbit around the Sun since it was discovered nearly 165 years ago. These images were taken to commemorate the event.
The Hubble images, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on June 25-26, reveal high-altitude clouds in the northern and southern hemispheres. The clouds are composed of methane ice crystals. In the Hubble images, absorption of red light by methane in Neptune's atmosphere gives the planet its distinctive aqua color. The clouds look pink because they are reflecting near-infrared light. A faint, dark band near the bottom of the southern hemisphere is probably caused by a decrease in the hazes in the atmosphere that scatter blue light. The band was imaged by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, and may be tied to circumpolar circulation created by high-velocity winds in that region. Neptune is the most distant major planet in our solar system. German astronomer Johann Galle discovered the planet on September 23, 1846. At the time, the discovery doubled the size of the known solar system. The planet is 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers) from the Sun, 30 times farther than Earth. Under the Sun's weak pull at that distance, Neptune plods along in its huge orbit, slowly completing one revolution approximately every 165 years.
Space Telescope Science Institute Announces the 2012 Hubble Fellows
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) announces today the selection of 17 new candidates for the Hubble Fellowship Program. This is one of the three prestigious postdoctoral fellowship programs funded by NASA. The other programs are the Sagan and the Einstein Fellowships. STScI administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA.
Close Encounters: Comet Siding Spring Seen Next to Mars
This is a photo composite of the encounter of Comet Siding Spring with Mars on October 19, 2014. Separate Hubble Space Telescope images of Mars and the comet have been combined together into a single picture. This is a composite image because a single exposure of the stellar background, Comet Siding Spring, and Mars would be problematic because the objects are all moving with respect to each other and the background stars. Hubble can only track one planetary target at a time. Also, Mars is actually 10,000 times brighter than the comet, and the exposure here has been adjusted so that details on the Red Planet can be seen.
Wide Field Camera 3 Anomaly on Hubble Space Telescope
The Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope suspended operations on January 8 due to a hardware problem. Hubble will continue to perform science observations with its other three active instruments, while the Wide Field Camera 3 anomaly is investigated. Wide Field Camera 3, installed during Servicing Mission 4 in 2009, is equipped with redundant electronics should they be needed to recover the instrument.
Wide Field Camera 3 Anomaly on Hubble Space Telescope Update
NASA continues to work toward recovering the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, which suspended operations on Tuesday, January 8. A team of instrument system engineers, Wide Field Camera 3 instrument developers, and other experts formed and quickly began collecting all available telemetry and onboard memory information to determine the sequence of events that caused the values to go out of limits. This team is currently working to identify the root cause and then to construct a recovery plan. If a significant hardware failure is identified, redundant electronics built into the instrument will be used to recover and return it to operations.
