Space Hubble Telescope News

[Robby]

Hubble Hunts Down Binary Objects at the Fringe of Our Solar System

The Hubble Space Telescope is hot on the trail of a puzzling new class of solar system object that might be called a Pluto "mini-me." Together, these objects are 5,000 times less massive than Pluto and Charon. Like Pluto and Charon, these dim and fleeting objects travel in pairs in the frigid, mysterious outer realm of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt, a long-hypothesized "junkyard" of countless icy bodies left over from the solar system's formation. A total of seven binary Kuiper Belt objects have been seen so far by Hubble and ground-based observatories. Among them is a pair called 1998 WW31, which the Hubble telescope studied in detail.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

NASA's Hubble Observes the Farthest Active Inbound Comet Yet Seen

A solitary frozen traveler has been journeying for millions of years toward the heart of our planetary system. The wayward vagabond, a city-sized snowball of ice and dust called a comet, was gravitationally kicked out of the Oort Cloud, its frigid home at the outskirts of the solar system. This region is a vast comet storehouse, composed of icy leftover building blocks from the construction of the planets 4.6 billion years ago.

The comet is so small, faint, and far away that it eluded detection. Finally, in May 2017, astronomers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii spotted the solitary intruder at a whopping 1.5 billion miles away — between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. The Hubble Space Telescope was enlisted to take close-up views of the comet, called C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS (K2).

The comet is record-breaking because it is already becoming active under the feeble glow of the distant Sun. Astronomers have never seen an active inbound comet this far out, where sunlight is merely 1/225th its brightness as seen from Earth. Temperatures, correspondingly, are at a minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit. Even at such bone-chilling temperatures, a mix of ancient ices on the surface — oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide — is beginning to sublimate and shed as dust. This material balloons into a vast 80,000-mile-wide halo of dust, called a coma, enveloping the solid nucleus.

Astronomers will continue to study K2 as it travels into the inner solar system, making its closest approach to the Sun in 2022.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope To Monitor Changes On Mars

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has begun a long-term program to monitor seasonal and interannual changes that occur on the surface and in the atmosphere of the planet Mars. This program will allow for a better understanding of the martian climate and processes involved in surface changes, and may eventually allow scientists to characterize global weather patterns on Mars, which will be an important prerequisite for a manned expedition to the red planet.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Explores the Volcanic Moon Io

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is allowing several teams of astronomers to explore Io [EYE-oh] at a level of detail not possible since a pair of Voyager spacecraft flew by the small moon 13 years ago.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Discovers New Moons Orbiting Saturn

Astronomers have announced the discovery of at least two, and possibly as many as four, new moons orbiting the giant planet Saturn. This discovery was based upon Hubble telescope images that were taken when Saturn's rings were tilted edge-on to Earth.

Two of the satellites seen by Hubble are in orbits similar to those of Atlas and Prometheus, a pair of moons discovered in 1980 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Additional Hubble observations of Saturn will provide more images that can be used to determine whether two of the four satellites detected by Hubble are truly new or not. This four-picture sequence shows one of the new moons discovered by Hubble. Saturn appears as a bright white disk at far right, and the edge-on rings extend diagonally to the upper left.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Again Views Saturn's Rings Edge-On

Saturn's magnificent ring system is seen tilted edge-on - for the second time in 1995 - in this Hubble telescope picture taken Aug. 10, when the planet was 895 million miles (1,440 million kilometers) away from Earth. Hubble snapped the image as Earth sped back across Saturn's ring plane to the sunlit side of the rings.

Several of Saturn's icy moons are visible as tiny star-like objects in or near the ring plane. On May 22, 1995 Earth dipped below the ring plane, giving observers a brief look at the backlit side of the rings. Ring-plane crossing events occur approximately every 15 years. Earthbound observers won't have as good a view until the year 2038.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Doomed Star Eta Carinae

A huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds is captured in this stunning Hubble telescope picture of the super-massive star Eta Carinae.

Even though Eta Carinae is more than 8,000 light-years away, features 10 billion miles across (about the diameter of our solar system) can be distinguished. Eta Carinae suffered a giant outburst about 150 years ago, when it became one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Though the star released as much visible light as a supernova explosion, it survived the outburst. Somehow, the explosion produced two lobes and a large, thin equatorial disk, all moving outward at about 1.5 million miles per hour. Estimated to be 100 times heftier than our Sun, Eta Carinae may be one of the most massive stars in our galaxy.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Sees Early Building Blocks of Today's Galaxies

New Hubble telescope images unveil what may be galaxies under construction in the early universe.

Hubble's detailed pictures reveal a grouping of 18 gigantic star clusters that appear to be the same distance from Earth, and close enough to each other that they will eventually merge into a few galaxy- sized objects. They are so far away, 11 billion light-years, that they existed during the epoch when it is commonly believed galaxies started to form. These results add weight to a leading theory that galaxies grew by starting out as clumps of stars, which, through a complex series of encounters, consolidated into larger assemblages that we see as fully formed galaxies.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Census Tracks a Stellar "Baby Boom"

Analyzing the pictures of some of the most distant galaxies in the universe, astronomers are uncovering intriguing new evidence that the Big Bang was followed by a stellar "baby boom."

Hubble's unprecedented measurement of the rate of star birth in remote galaxies, which existed when the cosmos was less than 10 percent its current age, supports the emerging view that the early universe had an active, dynamic youth where stars formed out of dust and gas at a ferocious rate. The graph is based on observations of distant galaxies made by the Hubble telescope and ground-based observatories. Hubble shows a steep rise in star birth that happened shortly after the Big Bang. The ground-based data show a precipitous decline in the star formation rate, beginning about 9 billion years ago and continuing to the present.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hale-Bopp Observations with Hubble and IUE Surprise Astronomers

Completing an unprecedented yearlong study of Comet Hale-Bopp with two NASA observatories, including the Hubble telescope, astronomers report that they are surprised to find that the different ices in the nucleus seem to be isolated from each other. They also have seen unexpectedly brief and intense bursts of activity from the nucleus during the monitoring period. The Hubble observations suggest that the nucleus is huge, 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) across.

Here are a series of Hubble telescope observations of the region around the nucleus of Hale-Bopp, taken on eight different dates since September 1995. They chronicle changes in the evolution of the nucleus as it moves ever closer to, and is warmed by, the Sun.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Gamma-Ray Bursts Common To Normal Galaxies? Hubble Data Offer New Clues and Puzzles

Nature's most powerful explosions, gamma-ray bursts, occur among the normal stellar population inside galaxies scattered across the universe. The energy released in such a titanic explosion, which can last from a fraction of a second to a few hundred seconds, is equal to all of the Sun's energy generated over its 10-billion-year lifetime.

Here is the visible glow from one such burst, GRB 970228. This Hubble telescope picture is the first visible-light view ever taken that links a gamma-ray burst with a potential host galaxy. This observation provides strong supporting evidence that gamma-ray bursts are cosmological- they originate in distant galaxies across the universe. The arrow points to the fireball, which is the white blob immediately to the upper left of center. Immediately to the lower right of center is an extended object (roughly resembling an "E") and interpreted to be the host galaxy where the gamma-ray burst is embedded.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

World's Most Powerful Telescopes Team Up With a Lens in Nature to Discover Farthest Galaxy in the Universe

An international team of astronomers has discovered the most distant galaxy in the universe to date. They found it by combining the unique sharpness of the Hubble telescope with the light-collecting power of the W. M. Keck Telescopes – with an added boost from a gravitational lens in space.

The results show the young galaxy is as far as 13 billion light-years from Earth, based on an estimated age for the universe of approximately 14 billion years. The Hubble picture at left shows the young galaxy as a red crescent to the lower right of center. The galaxy's image is brightened, magnified, and smeared into this arc-shape by the gravitational influence of an intervening galaxy cluster, which acts like a gigantic lens. The image at upper right is a close-up of the "gravitationally lensed" galaxy. In the picture at lower right, astronomers have "unsmeared" the galaxy, revealing the galaxy's normal appearance.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Reveals Huge Crater on the Surface of the Asteroid Vesta

Astronomers have used the Hubble Space telescope to discover a giant impact crater on the asteroid Vesta. The crater is a link in a chain of events thought responsible for forming a distinctive class of tiny asteroids as well as some meteorites that have reached the Earth.

The giant crater is 285 miles across, which is nearly equal to Vesta's 330-mile diameter. If Earth had a crater of proportional size, it would fill the Pacific Ocean basin. Astronomers had predicted the existence of one or more large craters, reasoning that if Vesta is the true "parent body" of some smaller asteroids then it should have the wound of a major impact that was catastrophic enough to knock off big chunks. In this Hubble picture of Vesta, a "nub" at the bottom of the asteroid is suggestive of a catastrophic impact.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

One Star's Loss is Another's Gain: Hubble Captures Brief Moment in Life of Lively Duo

Some stars in double-star systems have found a quick way to lose weight by dumping their extra pounds onto their companions. Astronomers using the Hubble telescope have discovered such a case in the double-star system Phi Persei. A "rapid diet" program has trimmed an aging, once massive star to a lean one solar mass, while the once mild-mannered, moderately massive companion has bulked up to a hefty nine solar masses and is spinning so violently that it's flinging gas from its surface.

Taken from the perspective of the Hubble telescope's observations of Phi Persei, this artist's depiction provides a taste of the double-star system's unstable existence. The star shedding pounds is represented as the white, semicircular object looming in the upper right of the illustration. The red, pancake-shaped object surrounding it is a gas disk. The gas is material the star is losing because of its rapid rotation. The small, hot sub-dwarf in the lower left of the illustration is the star that is benefiting from its companion's weight-loss program.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Pinpoints Distant Supernovae

Peering halfway across the universe to analyze light from exploded stars that died long before our Sun even existed, the Hubble telescope has allowed astronomers to determine that the expansion of the cosmos has not slowed since the initial impetus of the Big Bang. Thus, the universe's expansion should continue to balloon outward indefinitely.

These results are based on unprecedented distance measurements to supernovae that are so far away they allow astronomers to determine if the universe was expanding at a faster rate long ago. These images showcase three of the supernovae used in the survey. The arrows in the bottom row of pictures pinpoint these exploding stars; the top row of images shows the regions where the supernovae reside.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Space Telescope Completes Eighth Year Of Exploration

In honor of NASA Hubble Space Telescope's eighth anniversary, we have gift-wrapped Saturn in vivid colors. Actually, this image is courtesy of Hubble's infrared camera, which has taken its first peek at Saturn.

This view provides detailed information on the clouds and hazes in Saturn's atmosphere. The blue colors indicate a clear atmosphere down to the main cloud layer. Most of the Northern Hemisphere that is visible above the rings is relatively clear. The dark region around the South Pole indicates a big hole in the main cloud layer. The green and yellow colors indicate a haze above the main cloud layer. The red and orange colors indicate clouds reaching up high into the atmosphere. The rings, made up of chunks of ice, are as white as images taken in visible light.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Gamma-Ray Burst Found to be Most Energetic Event in Universe

A team of astronomers has announced that a recently detected gamma-ray burst was as bright as the rest of the universe, releasing a hundred times more energy than previously theorized.

The team measured the distance to a faint galaxy from which the burst, designated GRB 971214, originated. It is about 12 billion light-years from Earth. The astronomers used a suite of satellites and ground-based telescopes to follow the burst. This Hubble image of the GRB 971214 field was taken about four months after the burst, well after the afterglow had faded away. The extremely faint and distant object marked with an arrow is the host galaxy of the gamma-ray burst.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Views of Dust Disks and Rings Surrounding Young Stars Yield Clues

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their first views of a dust ring around the star HR 4796A and a dark gap dividing an immense dust disk around the star HD 141569. These images may provide important clues to possible planet formation.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Cosmic Collisions - European HST Scientists Catch Merging Galaxies in the Act

Exciting Hubble telescope images of more than a dozen very distant colliding galaxies indicate that, at least in some cases, big massive galaxies form through collisions between smaller ones, in a "generation after generation" story.

Hubble studied 81 galaxies in the galaxy cluster MS1054-03 and found that 13 are remnants of recent collisions or pairs of colliding galaxies. The large picture on the left shows this galaxy cluster. The eight smaller images on the right are close-ups of some of the colliding galaxies. The snapshots show the paired galaxies very close together with streams of stars being pulled out of them. The colliding "parent" galaxies lose their shape and smoother galaxies are formed. The whole merging process can take less than a billion years.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Suspected Protoplanet May Really Be a Distant Star

Follow-up observations of an unusual object initially suspected to be the first directly detected planet outside our solar system have shown that the object is too hot to be a planet.

Astronomers now believe it is more likely that the strange object is a background star whose light has been dimmed and reddened by interstellar dust, giving the illusion that it is in the vicinity of the double star system in which it was initially believed to have been a planet.

(More at HubbleSite.com)