NASA Selects Home for Next Generation Space Telescope
The duties of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., will be expanded to include the management of science operations for the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), NASA officials announced today.
The Space Telescope Science Institute, located at the Johns Hopkins University, has been operating the science program for the Hubble telescope since 1983. The illustration represents the four designs NASA is considering for NGST.
A vibrant celestial photo album of some of NASA Hubble Space Telescope's most stunning views of the universe is being unveiled today on the Internet. Called the Hubble Heritage Program, this technicolor gallery is being assembled by a team of astronomers at Hubble's science operations center, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. The four images released today are (top row, left to right) spiral galaxy NGC 7742, Saturn, and (bottom row, left to right) the Sagittarius Star Cloud and the Bubble Nebula.
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.
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.
To the surprise and delight of astronomers, the Hubble telescope discovered a small armada of "mini-comets" left behind from what some scientists had prematurely thought was a total disintegration of the explosive Comet LINEAR. In one observation, Hubble's powerful vision has settled the fate of the mysteriously vanished solid nucleus of Comet LINEAR, which was reported "missing in action" following its passage around the Sun on July 26. Though comets have been known to break apart and vanish before, for the first time astronomers are getting a close-up view of the dismantling of a comet's nucleus due to warming by the Sun. The results support the popular theory that comet nuclei are really made up of a cluster of smaller icy bodies called "cometesimals."
Astronomers Ponder Lack of Planets in Globular Cluster
Astronomers using the Hubble telescope made the first broad search for planets far beyond our local stellar neighborhood. They trained Hubble's "eagle eye" for eight days on a swarm of 35,000 stars in 47 Tucanae, located in the southern constellation Tucana. The researchers expected to find 17 "extrasolar" planets. To their surprise, they found none. These results may be the first evidence that conditions for planet formation and evolution are different in other regions of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Hubble Sees Bare Neutron Star Streaking Across Space
It's as big as Manhattan Island, is 10 trillion times denser than steel, and is hurtling our way at speeds over 100 times faster than a supersonic jet. An alien spaceship? No, it's a runaway neutron star, called RX J185635-3754, forged in a stellar explosion that was visible to our ancestors in 1 million B.C. Precise observations made with the Hubble telescope confirm that the interstellar interloper is the closest neutron star ever seen. The object also doesn't have a companion star that would affect its appearance. Now located 200 light-years away in the southern constellation Corona Australis, it will swing by Earth at a safe distance of 170 light-years in about 300,000 years.
Hubble Spies Huge Clusters of Stars Formed by Ancient Encounter
Studying galactic interactions is like sifting through the forensic evidence at a crime scene. Astronomers wade through the debris of a violent encounter, collecting clues so that they can reconstruct the celestial crime to determine when it happened. Take the case of M82, a small, nearby galaxy that long ago bumped into its larger neighbor, M81. When did this violent encounter occur? New infrared and visible-light pictures from the Hubble telescope reveal for the first time important details of large clusters of stars, which arose from the interaction.
Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to peer into the center of a dense swarm of stars called Omega Centauri. Located some 17,000 light-years from Earth, Omega Centauri is a massive globular star cluster, containing several million stars swirling in locked orbits around a common center of gravity. The stars are packed so densely in the cluster's core that it is difficult for ground-based telescopes to make out individual stars. Hubble's high resolution is able to pick up where ground-based telescopes leave off, capturing distinct points of light from stars at the very center of the cluster.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has measured the largest object discovered in the solar system since the discovery of Pluto 72 years ago. Approximately half the size of Pluto, the icy world is called "Quaoar" (pronounced kwa-whar). Quaoar is about 4 billion miles away, more than a billion miles farther than Pluto. Like Pluto, Quaoar dwells in the Kuiper belt, an icy belt of comet-like bodies extending 7 billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit.
The Secret Lives of Galaxies Unveiled in Deep Survey
Two of NASA's Great Observatories, bolstered by the largest ground-based telescopes around the world, are beginning to harvest new clues to the origin and evolution of the universe's largest building blocks, the galaxies. It's a bit like finding a family scrapbook containing snapshots that capture the lives of family members from infancy through adolescence to adulthood. The Hubble Space Telescope has joined forces with the Chandra X-ray Observatory to survey a relatively broad swath of sky encompassing tens of thousands of galaxies stretching far back in time. Called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), astronomers are studying galaxy formation and evolution over a wide range of distances and ages.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope precisely measured the mass of the oldest known planet in our Milky Way galaxy. At an estimated age of 13 billion years, the planet is more than twice as old as Earth's 4.5 billion years. It's about as old as a planet can be. It formed around a young, sun-like star barely 1 billion years after our universe's birth in the Big Bang. The ancient planet has had a remarkable history because it resides in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a cluster of more than 100,000 stars. The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate about the identity of this ancient world. Until Hubble's measurement, astronomers had debated the identity of this object. Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? Hubble's analysis shows that the object is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, confirming that it is a planet. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence that the first planets formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude that planets may be very abundant in our galaxy.
This Hubble Space Telescope view of the core of one of the nearest globular star clusters, called NGC 6397, resembles a treasure chest of glittering jewels. The cluster is located 8,200 light-years away in the constellation Ara. Here, the stars are jam-packed together. The stellar density is about a million times greater than in our Sun's stellar neighborhood. The stars in NGC 6397 are also in constant motion, like a swarm of angry bees. The ancient stars are so crowded together that a few of them inevitably collide with each other once in a while. Near misses are even more common.
These two images, taken 11 hours apart with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveal two nearly opposite sides of Mars. Hubble snapped these photos as the red planet was making its closest approach to Earth in almost 60,000 years. Mars completed nearly one half a rotation between the two observations.
Amid a backdrop of far-off galaxies, the majestic dusty spiral NGC 3370 looms in the foreground in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. Recent observations taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys show intricate spiral arm structure spotted with hot areas of new star formation. But this galaxy is more than just a pretty face. Nearly 10 years earlier, NGC 3370, located in the constellation Leo, hosted a bright exploding star.
Results from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope played a major role in preparing ESA's ambitious Rosetta mission for its new target, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G). For the first time in history, Rosetta will land a probe on a comet and study its origin. Hubble precisely measured the size, shape, and rotational period of comet 67P/C-G. The Hubble observations revealed comet 67P/C-G to be a football-shaped object of approximately three miles by two miles in size---large enough to provide a landing site for the Rosetta mission probe.
Farthest, Faintest Solar System Objects Found Beyond Neptune
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered three of the faintest and smallest objects ever detected beyond Neptune. Each object is a lump of ice and rock - roughly the size of Philadelphia - orbiting beyond Neptune and Pluto, where the icy bodies may have dwelled since the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. They reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks, or "planetesimals," from the solar system's creation. The biggest surprise of the Hubble search is that so few small Kuiper Belt members were discovered. With Hubble's exquisite resolution, Bernstein and his co-workers expected to find at least 60 Kuiper Belt members as small as 10 miles (15 km) in diameter - but only three were found. Two snapshots, taken 12 hours apart, were combined to produce this Hubble Space Telescope image of a Kuiper Belt object (named 2000 FV53) moving across the sky. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys tracked the object on Jan. 26, 2003. Like all the planets, this solar-system member appears to move relative to the fixed stars and galaxies in the background. This particular object was discovered from Hawaii in March 2000 and used to help target the Hubble observations.
This is a series of images of Saturn, as seen at many different wavelengths, when the planet's rings were at their maximum tilt of 27 degrees toward Earth. Saturn experiences seasonal tilts away from and toward the Sun, much the same way Earth does. This happens over the course of its 29.5-year orbit. This means that approximately every 30 years, Earth observers can catch their best glimpse of Saturn's South Pole and the southern side of the planet's rings. Between March and April 2003, researchers took full advantage to study the gas giant at maximum tilt. They used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to capture detailed images of Saturn's Southern Hemisphere and the southern face of its rings.
NASA Approves James Webb Space Telescope Mirror Architecture
NASA today announced a major milestone in the development of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the selection of a beryllium-based mirror technology for the telescope's 6.5-meter primary mirror. The JWST prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, Calif., recommended to NASA the mirror technology, supplied by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colo., be selected for the JWST primary mirror.
Hubble Uncovers Smallest Moons Yet Seen Around Uranus
Astronomers have discovered two of the smallest moons yet found around Uranus. The new moons, uncovered by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, are about 8 to 10 miles across (12 to 16 km) - about the size of San Francisco. The two moons are so faint they eluded detection by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which discovered 10 small satellites when it flew by the gas giant planet in 1986. The newly detected moons are orbiting even closer to the planet than the five major Uranian satellites, which are several hundred miles wide. The two new satellites are the first inner moons of Uranus discovered from an Earth-based telescope in more than 50 years. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) will announce the finding today. The Hubble telescope observations also helped astronomers confirm the discovery of another tiny moon that had originally been spotted in Voyager pictures.
