Space Hubble Telescope News

Lecture Series Promotes Respect in the Workplace

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Today's workplace for "hard-discipline" organizations, such as science, technology, engineering and medicine requires a more diverse and balanced set of skills for success than at any other time in history. Organizational dynamics, diverse cultures, genders, professions and backgrounds, as well as environmental, consumer and business demands require an emphasis on interpersonal, ethical, and relational competencies as well as traditional technical orientations.

Several organizations and institutions, including the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, will address these issues in a six-part lecture series entitled "Hard Science/Soft Skills: Fostering Civility in the Scientific Workplace."

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Snaps Images of a Pinwheel-Shaped Galaxy

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This dramatic spiral galaxy is one of the latest viewed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Stunning details of the face-on spiral galaxy, cataloged as NGC 1309, are captured in this color image. NGC 1309 was home to supernova SN 2002fk, whose light reached Earth in September 2002. NGC 1309 resides 100 million light-years (30 Megaparsecs) from Earth. It is one of about 200 galaxies that make up the Eridanus group of galaxies.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Confirms New Moons of Pluto

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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.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble's Largest Galaxy Portrait Offers a New High-Definition View

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Giant galaxies weren't assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101). It is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever been released from Hubble. The galaxy's portrait is actually composed of 51 individual exposures taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in March 1994, September 1994, June 1999, November 2002, and January 2003. The newly composed image also includes elements from images from ground-based photos.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble's Latest Look at Pluto's Moons Supports a Common Birth

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The latest NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of Pluto's two newly discovered satellites reveal that the new moons have the same color as Charon. All three of Pluto's satellites reflect the Sun's light equally across the visible spectrum and have essentially the same color as Earth's moon. Pluto, in contrast, has a reddish hue. The common color of the moons further reinforces the idea that all three moons were born from a single titanic collision between Pluto and another similarly sized Kuiper Belt object billions of years ago. The color exposures were made on March 2nd in both red (F606W) and blue (F435W) filters using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Pluto team hopes to make further observations in more color filters to more precisely characterize the moons.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Astronomers Measure Precise Mass of a Binary Brown Dwarf

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This is an artist's concept of a pair of eclipsing brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are mysterious celestial objects that fall somewhere between the smallest stars and the largest planets. They have always been viewed by astronomers as a critical link in the understanding of how both stars and planets form. One problem has been that brown dwarfs are hard to find and so have defied nearly all attempts to accurately assess their size. But now astronomers, have discovered a pair of young brown dwarfs in mutual orbit. This has enabled scientists to weigh and measure the diameters of brown dwarfs for the first time. The new observations confirm the theoretical prediction that brown dwarfs start out as star-sized objects, but shrink and cool and become increasingly planet sized as they age. Before now, the only brown dwarf whose mass had been directly measured was much older and dimmer.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Nearby Dust Clouds in the Milky Way

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed dense knots of dust and gas in our Milky Way Galaxy. This cosmic dust is a concentration of elements that are responsible for the formation of stars in our galaxy and throughout the universe. These dark, opaque knots of gas and dust are called "Bok globules," and they are absorbing light in the center of the nearby emission nebula and star-forming region, NGC 281. These images were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in October 2005. NGC 281 is located nearly 9,500 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Finds 'Tenth Planet' is Slightly Larger than Pluto

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has resolved the "tenth planet," nicknamed "Xena," for the first time and has found that it is only just a little larger than Pluto.

Though previous ground-based observations suggested that Xena was about 30 percent greater in diameter than Pluto, Hubble observations taken on Dec. 9 and 10, 2005, yield a diameter of 1,490 miles (with an uncertainty of 60 miles) for Xena. Pluto's diameter, as measured by Hubble, is 1,422 miles. Xena is the large object at the bottom of this artist's concept. A portion of its surface is lit by the Sun, located in the upper left corner of the image. Xena's companion, Gabrielle, is located just above and to the left of Xena.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Magellanic Gemstones in the Southern Sky

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NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed images to date of the open star clusters NGC 265 and NGC 290 in the Small Magellanic Cloud – two sparkling sets of gemstones in the southern sky. These images, taken with Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys, show a myriad of stars in crystal clear detail. The brilliant open star clusters are located about 200,000 light-years away and are roughly 65 light-years across. The images were taken in October and November 2004.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Happy Sweet Sixteen, Hubble Telescope!

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To celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's 16 years of success, the two space agencies involved in the project, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), are releasing this image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). This mosaic image is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of M82. The galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds, and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions. The observation was made in March 2006.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Provides Spectacular Detail of a Comet's Breakup

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Hubble Space Telescope is providing astronomers with extraordinary views of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. The fragile comet is rapidly disintegrating as it approaches the Sun. Hubble images have uncovered many more fragments than have been reported by ground-based observers. These observations provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the demise of a comet nucleus. The comet is currently a chain of over three dozen separate fragments, named alphabetically, stretching across the sky by several times the angular diameter of the Moon. Hubble caught two of the fragments (B and G) shortly after large outbursts in activity. Hubble shows several dozen "mini-comets" trailing behind each main fragment, probably associated with the ejection of house-sized chunks of surface material. Deep-freeze relics of the early solar system, cometary nuclei are porous and fragile mixes of dust and ices that can break apart due to the thermal, gravitational, and dynamical stresses of approaching the Sun. Whether any of the many fragments survive the trip around the Sun remains to be seen in the weeks ahead.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Snaps Baby Pictures of Jupiter's "Red Spot Jr."

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers their most detailed view yet of a second red spot emerging on Jupiter. For the first time in history, astronomers have witnessed the birth of a new red spot on the giant planet, which is located half a billion miles away. The storm is roughly one-half the diameter of its bigger and legendary cousin, the Great Red Spot. Researchers suggest that the new spot may be related to a possible major climate change in Jupiter's atmosphere. These images were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys on April 8 and 16, 2006.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Finds that Earth is Safe from One Class of Gamma-ray Burst

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Homeowners may have to worry about floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes destroying their homes, but at least they can remove long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from their list of potential natural disasters, according to recent findings by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are powerful flashes of high-energy radiation that are sometimes seen coming from certain types of supernovae (the explosions of extremely massive stars). If Earth were flashed by a nearby long-duration burst, the devastation could range from destroying the ozone in our atmosphere to triggering climate change and altering life's evolution. Astronomers analyzing long-duration bursts in several Hubble telescope surveys have concluded that the Milky Way Galaxy is an unlikely place for them to pop off. These images are a sampling of the host galaxies of long-duration bursts taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The green crosshairs pinpoint the location of the gamma-ray bursts, now long faded away.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Astronomer Wins Top Prize for Creating Black Hole Web Site

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Explore the world of black holes in an award-winning Web site created by a team led by Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. The interactive Web site, called "Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull," rescues black holes from the realm of science fiction and puts them back into the domain of science. Visit the site at: HubbleSite: Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull Introduction

The Web site won the top prize for 2005 in the Pirelli INTERNETional Award competition, the first international multimedia contest for the communication of science and technology on the Internet.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Astronomers Use Innovative Technique to Find Extrasolar Planet

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An international team of professional and amateur astronomers, using simple off-the-shelf equipment to trawl the skies for planets outside our solar system, has hauled in its first "catch." The astronomers discovered a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a Sun-like star 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation Corona Borealis. The team, led by Peter McCullough of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., includes four amateur astronomers from North America and Europe.

This artist's impression shows a dramatic close-up of the extrasolar planet, called XO-1b, passing in front of a Sun-like star 600 light-years from Earth. The Jupiter-sized planet is in a tight four-day orbit around the star.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Captures a "Five-Star" Rated Gravitational Lens

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first-ever picture of a group of five star-like images of a single distant quasar.

The multiple-image effect seen in the Hubble picture is produced by a process called gravitational lensing, in which the gravitational field of a massive object - in this case, a cluster of galaxies - bends and amplifies light from an object - in this case, a quasar - farther behind it.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Sees Galaxy on Edge

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This is a unique view of the disk galaxy NGC 5866 tilted nearly edge-on to our line-of-sight. Hubble's sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing the galaxy into two halves. The image highlights the galaxy's structure: a subtle, reddish bulge surrounding a bright nucleus, a blue disk of stars running parallel to the dust lane, and a transparent outer halo. NGC 5866 is a disk galaxy of type "S0" (pronounced s-zero). Viewed face on, it would look like a smooth, flat disk with little spiral structure. It remains in the spiral category because of the flatness of the main disk of stars as opposed to the more spherically rotund (or ellipsoidal) class of galaxies called "ellipticals." Such S0 galaxies, with disks like spirals and large bulges like ellipticals, are called 'lenticular' galaxies. NGC 5866 lies in the Northern constellation Draco, at a distance of 44 million light-years. It has a diameter of roughly 60,000 light-years only two-thirds the diameter of the Milky Way, although its mass is similar to our galaxy. This Hubble image of NGC 5866 is a combination of blue, green and red observations taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in February 2006.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Eyes Star Birth in the Extreme

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Staring into the crowded, dusty core of two merging galaxies, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a region where star formation has gone wild.

The interacting galaxies appear as a single, odd-looking galaxy called Arp 220. The galaxy is a nearby example of the aftermath of two colliding galaxies. In fact, Arp 220 is the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth. This latest view of the galaxy is yielding new insights into the early universe, when galactic wrecks were more common. The sharp eye of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has unveiled more than 200 mammoth star clusters. The clusters are the bluish-white dots scattered throughout the image.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Dark Energy Co-Discoverer Adam Riess Shares Shaw Prize in Astronomy for 2006

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Astronomer Adam Riess, of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins University, and two colleagues, have been awarded this year's $1 million Shaw Prize in astronomy for their discovery of the mysterious "dark energy" that is causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster rate.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Pluto's Two Small Moons Officially Named Nix and Hydra

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A pair of small moons that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope discovered orbiting Pluto now have official names: Nix and Hydra. Photographed by Hubble in 2005, Nix and Hydra are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto and are about two to three times farther from Pluto than its large moon, Charon, which was discovered in 1978.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
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