NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this close-up of the red planet Mars when it was just 55 million miles - 88 million kilometers - away. This color image was assembled from a series of exposures taken within 36 hours of the Mars closest approach with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Mars will be closest to Earth on December 18, at 11:45 p.m. Universal Time (6:45 p.m. EST).
Hubble Finds that "Blue Blobs" in Space Are Orphaned Clusters of Stars
Hubble Space Telescope's powerful vision has resolved strange objects nicknamed "blue blobs" and found them to be brilliant blue clusters of stars born in the swirls and eddies of a galactic smashup 200 million years ago. Such "blue blobs" – weighing tens of thousands of solar masses – have never been seen in detail before in such sparse locations, say researchers. The "blue blobs" are found along a wispy bridge of gas strung among three colliding galaxies, M81, M82, and NGC 3077, residing about 12 million light-years away from Earth. This is not the place astronomers expect to find star clusters, because the gas filaments were considered too thin to accumulate enough material to actually build these many stars. The star clusters in this diffuse structure might have formed from gas collisions and subsequent turbulence, which enhanced locally the density of the gas streams. Galaxy collisions were much more frequent in the early universe, so "blue blobs" should have been common. After the stars burned out or exploded, the heavier elements forged in their nuclear furnaces would have been ejected to enrich intergalactic space.
The Violent Lives of Galaxies: Caught in the Cosmic Dark Matter Web
Astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to dissect one of the largest structures in the universe as part of a quest to understand the violent lives of galaxies. Hubble is providing indirect evidence of unseen dark matter tugging on galaxies in the crowded, rough-and-tumble environment of a massive supercluster of hundreds of galaxies. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe's mass. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has mapped the invisible dark matter scaffolding of the supercluster Abell 901/902, as well as the detailed structure of individual galaxies embedded in it. The image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the supercluster. The magenta clumps throughout the image reveal the distribution of dark matter in the cluster. The galaxies lie within the clumps of dark matter. The image was assembled by combining a visible-light image of the supercluster taken with the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope in La Silla, Chile, with a dark matter map derived from Hubble observations.
The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string. This very rare phenomenon can offer insight into dark matter, dark energy, the nature of distant galaxies, and even the curvature of the universe. The phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, occurs when a massive galaxy in the foreground bends the light rays from a distant galaxy behind it, in much the same way as a magnifying glass would. When both galaxies are exactly lined up, the light forms a circle, called an "Einstein ring," around the foreground galaxy. If another background galaxy lies precisely on the same sightline, a second, larger ring will appear. The massive foreground galaxy is almost perfectly aligned in the sky with two background galaxies at different distances. The foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away. The inner ring and outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a distance of 6 billion and approximately 11 billion light-years. The odds of seeing such a special alignment are estimated to be 1 in 10,000.
What superficially resembles a giant moth floating in space is giving astronomers new insight into the formation and evolution of planetary systems. This is not your typical flying insect. It has a wingspan of about 22 billion miles. The wing- like structure is actually a dust disk encircling the nearby, young star HD 61005, dubbed "The Moth." Its shape is produced by starlight scattering off dust. Dust disks around roughly 100-million-year-old stars like HD 61005 are typically flat structures where planets can form. But images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of "The Moth" are showing that some disks sport surprising shapes.
The Hubble image was taken with the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). The black disk in the center of the image is a coronagraphic hole in the NICMOS camera that blocks out most of the central star's light so that astronomers can see details in the surrounding dust disk.
NASA Unveils Cosmic Images Book in Braille for Blind Readers
At a ceremony today at the National Federation of the Blind, NASA unveiled a new book that brings majestic images taken by its Great Observatories to the fingertips of the blind. "Touch the Invisible Sky" is a 60-page book with color images of nebulae, stars, galaxies and some of the telescopes that captured the original pictures. Braille and large-print descriptions accompany each of the book's 28 photographs, making the book's design accessible to readers of all visual abilities.The book contains spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope and powerful ground-based telescopes. The celestial objects are presented as they appear through visible-light telescopes and different spectral regions invisible to the naked eye, from radio to infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray light.
Detailed analysis of two continent-sized storms that erupted in Jupiter's atmosphere in March 2007 shows that Jupiter's internal heat plays a significant role in generating atmospheric disturbances. Understanding this outbreak could be the key to unlock the mysteries buried in the deep Jovian atmosphere. An international team coordinated by Agustin Sánchez-Lavega from the Universidad del País Vasco in Spain presents its findings about this event in the January 24 issue of the journal Nature. The team monitored the new eruption of cloud activity and its evolution with an unprecedented resolution using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, and telescopes in the Canary Islands (Spain). A network of smaller telescopes around the world also supported these observations.
Isolated Galaxy or Corporate Merger? Hubble Spies NGC 1132
The elliptical galaxy NGC 1132 reveals the final result of what may have been a group of galaxies that merged together in the recent past. Another possibility is that the galaxy formed in isolation as a "lone wolf" in a universe ablaze with galaxy groups and clusters.
Astronomers Find One of the Youngest and Brightest Galaxies in the Early Universe
NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, with a boost from a natural "zoom lens," have uncovered what may be one of the youngest and brightest galaxies ever seen in the middle of the cosmic "dark ages," just 700 million years after the beginning of our universe.
Hubble Discovers 67 New Gravitationally Lensed Galaxies in the Distant Universe
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have compiled a large catalog of gravitational lenses in the distant universe. The catalog contains 67 new gravitationally lensed galaxy images found around massive elliptical and lenticular-shaped galaxies. This sample demonstrates the rich diversity of strong gravitational lenses. If this sample is representative, there would be nearly half a million similar gravitational lenses over the whole sky.
Probing a glowing bubble of gas and dust encircling a dying Sun-like star, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a wealth of previously unseen structures in planetary nebula NGC 2371. The remnant star visible at the center of NGC 2371 is the super-hot core of the former red giant, now stripped of its outer layers. Its surface temperature is a scorching 240,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Prominent pink clouds of cool, dense gas lie on opposite sides of the central star. Also striking are the numerous, very small pink dots, marking relatively dense and small knots of gas, which also lie on diametrically opposite sides of the star. NGC 2371 lies about 4,300 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. The Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images were taken in November 2007.
The Aesthetics of Hubble Images Showcased at Walters Art Museum
Just as the early explorers ventured ever further into the oceans, recording the wonders they encountered, today's astronomers are probing farther and deeper into space, mapping the distant landscape of the universe. "Mapping the Cosmos: Images from the Hubble Space Telescope," brings together over 20 Hubble images as part of the Walters Art Museum exhibit "Maps: Finding Our Place in the World." The exhibit was created through a unique collaboration between the Walters, scientists and experts at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and Professor Elizabeth Rodini and her students in the "Behind the Scenes at the Walters Art Museum" class at Johns Hopkins University. Seven undergraduate students and Professor Rodini worked with STScI professionals to choose the images and design the two-room exhibit. The students handled the images in the Manuscripts Gallery, while STScI professionals selected images for the museum's Palazzo Courtyard.
Hubble Finds First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough is an important step in eventually identifying signs of life on a planet outside our solar system. The molecule found by Hubble is methane, which under the right circumstances can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry - the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it. This illustration depicts the extrasolar planet HD 189733b with its parent star peeking above its top edge.
Astronomers Find Suspected Medium-Size Black Hole in Omega Centauri
The core of the spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri glitters with the combined light of 2 million stars. The entire cluster contains 10 million stars, and is among the biggest and most massive of some 200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy. Omega Centauri lies 17,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the University of Texas at Austin have reported on the possible detection of an intermediate-mass black hole in the core of Omega Centauri.
The result is primarily based on spectroscopic measurements obtained with the Gemini South observatory in Chile which suggest the stars are moving around the central core of the cluster at higher than expected velocities. Among the possible explanations for these speedy stars – and the one favored by their study – is that an intermediate-mass black hole of approximately 40,000 solar masses resides at the center of Omega Centauri. Its powerful gravitational field speeds up the motions of stars near the core. Hubble images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys were used in key areas in support of this study: to help pinpoint the center of the cluster, as well as to measure the amount of starlight at the cluster center. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Paranal, Chile, team members Eva Noyola and Karl Gebhardt are planning to obtain follow-up observations to help confirm the existence of an intermediate-mass black hole. The Hubble images were taken in June 2002.
Peering across 7.5 billion light-years and halfway back to the Big Bang, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the fading optical counterpart of a powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the intrinsically brightest naked-eye object ever seen from Earth. For nearly a minute on March 19, this single "star" was as bright as 10 million galaxies. Hubble Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images of GRB 080319B, taken on Monday, April 7 show the fading optical counterpart of the titanic blast. Hubble astronomers had hoped to see the host galaxy where the burst presumably originated, but were taken aback that the light from the gamma ray burst is still drowning out the galaxy's light even three weeks after the explosion. Called a long-duration gamma ray burst, such events are theorized to be caused by the death of a very massive star, perhaps weighing as much as 50 times our Sun.
Astronomy textbooks typically present galaxies as staid, solitary, and majestic island worlds of glittering stars. But galaxies have a dynamical side. They have close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing sites of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes. Today, in celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary, 59 views of colliding galaxies constitute the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public. This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail.
In what's beginning to look like a case of planetary measles, a third red spot has appeared alongside its cousins – the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. – in the turbulent Jovian atmosphere. This third red spot, which is a fraction of the size of the two other features, lies to the west of the Great Red Spot in the same latitude band of clouds. The visible-light images were taken on May 9 and 10 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
This sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere. The time series shows the passage of the "Red Spot Jr." in a band of clouds below (south) of the Great Red Spot (GRS). "Red Spot Jr." first appeared on Jupiter in early 2006 when a previously white storm turned red. This is the second time, since turning red, it has skirted past its big brother apparently unscathed. But this is not the fate of "baby red spot," which is in the same latitudinal band as the GRS. This new red spot first appeared earlier this year. The baby red spot gets ever closer to the GRS in this picture sequence until it is caught up in the anticyclonic spin of the GRS. In the final image the baby spot is deformed and pale in color and has been spun to the right (east) of the GRS. These three natural-color Jupiter images were made from data acquired on May 15, June 28, and July 8, 2008, by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found an answer to a long-standing puzzle by resolving giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275. It is the most striking example of the influence of the immense tentacles of extragalactic magnetic fields. The galaxy was photographed in July and August 2006 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in three color filters.
Hubble Views Galactic Core in Unprecedented New Detail
This composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. It offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and influence their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies. This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope survey done with its Infrared Astronomy Camera (IRAC). The Galactic core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. The spatial resolution of NICMOS corresponds to 0.025 light-years at the distance of the galactic core of 26,000 light-years. Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own solar system. The NICMOS images were taken between February 22 and June 5, 2008.
