NASA Helps Make Guinness World Record for Largest Astronomy Lesson at SXSW
Looking up through hundreds of colored filters and spectral glasses, 526 people shattered the record for the Largest Astronomy Lesson. Under the Texas night sky, students were instructed on the lawn of the Long Center for the Performing Arts at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin on Sunday, March 10, 2013.
Taken Under the "Wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud
NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope has made the first detection of X-ray emission from young solar-type stars that lie outside our Milky Way galaxy. They live in a region known as the "Wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. X-rays from young stars trace how active their magnetic fields are. Magnetic activity provides clues to a star's rotation rate and the rising and falling of hot gas in the star's interior. Astronomers suggest that if the X-ray properties of young stars are similar in different environments around our galaxy, then other related properties, such as the formation of planets, are also likely to be similar.
In this composite image from NASA's Great Observatories of the Wing, the Chandra data are shown in purple; visible light seen by the Hubble Space Telescope is in red, green, and blue; and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red. For more information, visit: Chandra :: Photo Album :: NGC 602 :: April 3, 2013 . (More at Hubble Site)
Hubble Breaks Record in Search for Farthest Supernova
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a star detonated with enough energy to briefly shine with an intrinsic brightness of one billion of our suns. The beacon of radiation arrived at Earth 10 billion years later and was captured in a Hubble Space Telescope deep survey of the universe. It is the farthest, and earliest, supernova of its type detected to date. More than simply an example of the ancient fireworks in the young and effervescent universe, the supernova belongs to a special class of stellar detonations that are so reliably bright, they can be used as intergalactic milepost markers.
Supernovae like this one provided the first observational evidence that the universe is expanding at an ever-faster rate. Our understanding of the accelerating universe, however, is only as solid as the reliability of supernovae as solid yardsticks for measuring cosmic distances. This record-breaker is so ancient it can be used to test competing theories about how such supernovae exploded in the universe's early days and compare them with nearby supernovae seen today. Its discovery is part of an ongoing program, where different teams of astronomers are using Hubble to push ever farther back into the early epoch of star formation. (More at Hubble Site)
NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) have announced the selection of 17 new Hubble Fellows. The Hubble Fellowship Program now includes all research relevant to present and future missions in NASA's Cosmic Origins theme. These missions currently 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. STScI in Baltimore, Md., administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA.
More than 310 of the most prominent and active scientists in this field have been supported at a crucial phase in their careers by this program, and the Hubble Fellowship Program continues to be one of the highlights of NASA's pursuit of excellence in space science. The new Hubble Fellows will begin their programs in the fall of 2013. (More at Hubble Site)
Unlike other celestial objects there is no question how the Horsehead Nebula got its name. This iconic silhouette of a horse's head and neck pokes up mysteriously from what look like whitecaps of interstellar foam. The nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery over a century ago. But Hubble's infrared vision shows the horse in a new light. The nebula, shadowy in optical light, appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. This pillar of tenuous hydrogen gas laced with dust is resisting being eroded away by the radiation from a nearby star. The nebula is a small part of a vast star-forming complex in the constellation Orion. The Horsehead will disintegrate in about 5 million years.
As part of Hubble's 23rd anniversary Horsehead Nebula release, amateur astronomers around the world were invited to send in their Horsehead Nebula photos. Visit the Hubble Heritage Horsehead Image Release (Hubble Heritage) to view the contributions via Flickr and Tumblr and to send us your own image. (More at Hubble Site)
Comet ISON is potentially the "comet of the century" because around the time the comet makes its closest approach to the Sun, on November 28, it may briefly become brighter than the full Moon. Right now the comet is far below naked-eye visibility, and so Hubble was used to snap the view of the approaching comet, which is presently hurtling toward the Sun at approximately 47,000 miles per hour. When the Hubble picture was taken on April 10, the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun. Even at that great distance the Sun is warming the comet enough to trigger outgassing from its frozen gases locked up in the solid nucleus. Hubble photographed a jet blasting dust particles off the sunward-facing side of the comet's nucleus. Preliminary measurements from the Hubble images suggest that the nucleus of ISON is no larger than three or four miles across. The comet was discovered in September 2012 by the Russian-led International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) using a 16-inch telescope. (More at Hubble Site)
STScI Appoints New Mission Head for the James Webb Space Telescope
The Space Telescope Science Institute has appointed Dr. Massimo Stiavelli as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Mission Head. Stiavelli will be responsible for the development and operations of the JWST Science and Operations Center at STScI. He has been acting JWST Mission Head since January 2012. The largest space observatory ever developed, JWST is scheduled for launch in 2018. Stiavelli succeeds Dr. Kathy Flanagan, who was appointed the Institute's Deputy Director in October 2012. Stiavelli has worked at the Institute for over 17 years. His many positions at the Institute include instrument scientist for three Hubble cameras. Stiavelli has been working on the JWST project since 1996. (More at Hubble Site)
Hubble Finds Dead Stars 'Polluted' with Planet Debris
Deep inside the Hyades star cluster, a pair of burned-out stars are yielding clues to the presence of rocky planets that may have whirled around them. Asteroid debris is 'raining' into the hot atmospheres of these white dwarfs. Asteroids should consist of the same material that form terrestrial planets, and seeing evidence of asteroids points to the possibility of Earth-sized planets in the same system.
Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph observed silicon and only low levels of carbon in the white dwarfs' atmospheres. Silicon is a major ingredient of the rocky material that constitutes Earth and other solid planets in our solar system. Astronomers used sophisticated computer models of white dwarf atmospheres to determine the abundances of various elements that can be traced to planets in the Hubble spectrograph data. (More at Hubble Site)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Reveals the Ring Nebula's True Shape
The distinctive shape of the Ring Nebula, the glowing shroud around a dying Sun-like star, makes it a popular celestial object that appears in many astronomy books. New observations of the Ring Nebula by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, however, reveal a new twist on an iconic nebula.
The Hubble images offer the best view yet of the nebula, revealing a complex structure. The observations have allowed astronomers to construct the most precise three-dimensional model of the glowing gas shroud, called a planetary nebula. Based on the new observations, the Hubble research team suggests that the ring wraps around a blue football-shaped structure that protrudes out of opposite sides of the ring. The nebula is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. (More at Hubble Site)
Rare Stellar Alignment Offers Opportunity to Hunt for Planets
The ancients thought that stars were fixed pinpoints of light on the sky. Today we know that they are all moving, like fish in a pond. This so-called proper motion is so small that it is not noticeable to the human eye over a single lifetime. But Hubble can precisely track stellar motions to razor-sharp precision. Not surprisingly the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri, is one of the fastest moving across the sky. Hubble astronomers have found that it will pass in front of two far-more distant background stars, once in 2014 and again in 2016. This will afford a very rare opportunity to see how Proxima's gravity warps the image of the background stars by bending their light. This effect, called gravitational lensing, can be used to estimate Proxima Centauri's mass and establish the presence of any planets orbiting the star. (More at Hubble Site)
Hubble Maps 3-D Structure of Ejected Material Around Erupting Star
After 45 years of peaceful bliss, the nova T Pyxidis erupted again in 2011. Astronomers took advantage of a flash of light accompanying the blast to map the ejecta from previous outbursts surrounding the double-star system. The team used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to trace the light as it sequentially illuminated different parts of the disk, a phenomenon called a light echo. Contrary to some predictions, the astronomers were somewhat surprised to find that the ejecta stayed in the vicinity of the star and formed a disk of debris. The discovery suggests that material continues expanding outward along the system's orbital plane, but it does not escape the system. (More at Hubble Site)
Hubble Uncovers Evidence for Extrasolar Planet Under Construction
Nearly 900 extrasolar planets have been confirmed to date, but now for the first time astronomers think they are seeing compelling evidence for a planet under construction in an unlikely place, at a great distance from its diminutive red dwarf star.
The keen vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a mysterious gap in a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust swirling around the nearby star TW Hydrae, located 176 light-years away in the constellation Hydra (the Sea Serpent). The gap's presence is best explained as due to the effects of a growing, unseen planet that is gravitationally sweeping up material and carving out a lane in the disk, like a snow plow. (More at Hubble Site)
What looks like a celestial hummingbird is really the result of a collision between a spiral and an elliptical galaxy at a whopping 326 million light- years away. The flat disk of the spiral NGC 2936 is warped into the profile of a bird by the gravitational tug of the companion NGC 2937. The object was first cataloged as a "peculiar galaxy" by Halton Arp in the 1960s. This interacting galaxy duo is collectively called Arp 142. (More at Hubble Site)
This July 4th, the solar system is showing off some fireworks of its own. Superficially resembling a skyrocket, Comet ISON is hurtling toward the Sun at a whopping 48,000 miles per hour. Unlike a firework, the comet is not combusting, but in fact is pretty cold. Its skyrocket-looking tail is really a streamer of gas and dust bleeding off the icy nucleus. The video shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span, compressed into just five seconds. The comet travels 34,000 miles during the exposure sequence. (More at Hubble Site)
Hubble has identified the true visible-light color of a giant Jupiter-sized planet located 63 light-years away. The planet has a cobalt blue color. It has torrential 4,500-mile-per-hour winds that are so hot they melt silicates into raindrops of molten glass. And that's where the cobalt-blue hue comes from, not oceans. The glass droplets scatter blue light more readily than green or red light.
The planet's color provides unique clues to the atmosphere and weather on a truly alien world that orbits much closer to its star than the innermost planet Mercury is to our Sun. (More at Hubble Site)
In the summer of 1989, a robotic emissary from Earth visited the farthest major planet from the Sun, Neptune. Like any good tourist, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft snapped a lot of pictures during the brief flyby. The prolific probe discovered several moons orbiting close to the blue-green planet. But one moon, no bigger than a metropolitan city and nearly coal-black, escaped detection because it was too faint to be seen. Until now.
While analyzing Neptune photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomer Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute noticed an extra white dot about 65,400 miles from Neptune, located between the orbits of the moons Larissa and Proteus. Hubble's extraordinary sensitivity and sharpness caught an object that is roughly one hundred million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye. Thankfully, Showalter also had 150 archival Neptune photographs taken by Hubble from 2004 to 2009. The same white dot appeared over and over again. This allowed him to plot a circular orbit for the moon, designated S/2004 N 1, which completes one revolution around Neptune every 23 hours. His discovery raises the number of known moons orbiting Neptune to 14. (More at Hubble Site)
Hopkins Astronomer Holland Ford Receives NASA Award for Hubble Contributions
Holland Ford, an astronomer at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., has received NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal for his outstanding contributions to the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Distinguished Public Service Medal is NASA's highest form of recognition, awarded to someone who has made a profound impact on the success of a NASA mission. The medal is one of several NASA Agency Honor Awards given annually. (More at Hubble Site)
Hubble Shows Link Between Stars' Ages and Their Orbits in Dense Cluster
Billions of years ago in our Milky Way galaxy, long before the Earth was born, swarms of stars formed in giant clusters. Each grouping of stars, called a globular cluster, was held together by the mutual gravity of its stars. These globular star clusters became the homesteaders of our Milky Way.
Astronomers have probed the galaxy's globular clusters using many telescopes, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, to dig into the Milky Way's past and uncover what was happening in these early, formative years. Recent stellar archaeological excavations with Hubble into one such globular cluster, 47 Tucanae, have allowed astronomers to piece together a timeline of the stars' births. (More at Hubble Site)
In this Hubble Space Telescope composite image taken in April 2013, the sun-approaching Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a handful of foreground stars. The icy visitor, with its long gossamer tail, appears to be swimming like a tadpole through a deep pond of celestial wonders.
This photo is one of the original images featured on ISONblog, a new online source offering unique analysis of Comet ISON by Hubble Space Telescope astronomers and staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. For more on ISONblog, visit: http://hubblesite.org/go/ison. (More at Hubble Site)
Ever since U.S. Air Force satellites serendipitously discovered gamma-ray bursts in the 1960s, astronomers have been searching for the triggering mechanism. Gamma-ray bursts are mysterious flashes of intense high-energy radiation that appear from random directions in space. These titanic explosions unleash as much energy in less than a second as the Sun does in 1 million years.
Now, astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to gather key evidence on what powers short-duration gamma-ray bursts, which last up to two seconds. Probing the location of a recent short-duration burst in near-infrared light, Hubble found the fading fireball produced in the aftermath of the blast. The afterglow reveals for the first time a new kind of stellar blast called a kilonova, an explosion predicted to accompany a short-duration gamma-ray burst. The kilonova is the "smoking gun" evidence that short-duration bursts are sparked by the merger of two small, super-dense stellar objects, such as a pair of neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. (More at Hubble Site)
