Space Hubble Telescope News

Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to Resume Operations

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NASA has moved closer to conducting science operations again with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, which suspended operations on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. Today, Jan. 15, the instrument was brought back to its operations mode. After resetting the telemetry circuits and associated boards, additional engineering data were collected and the instrument was brought back to operations. All values were normal. Additional calibration and tests will be run over the next 48 to 72 hours to ensure that the instrument is operating properly. Assuming that all tests work as planned, it is expected that the Wide Field Camera 3 will start to collect science images again by the end of the week.

For future updates and more information about Hubble, visit Hubble Space Telescope.

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NASA's Hubble Finds that Puny Stars Pack a Big Punch

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A survey of more than 200,000 stars in our Milky Way galaxy has unveiled the sometimes petulant behavior of tiny dwarf stars. These stars, which are smaller than the Sun, can unleash powerful eruptions called flares that may release the energy of more than 100 million atomic bombs. Red dwarfs are the most abundant stars in our universe and are presumably hosts to numerous planets. However, their erratic behavior could make life unpleasant, if not impossible, for many alien worlds. The flares the stars unleash would blast any planets orbiting them with ultraviolet light, bursts of X-rays, and a gush of charged particles called a stellar wind.

Studying the light from 215,000 dwarfs collected in observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers found 100 stellar flares. The observations, taken over a seven-day period, constitute the largest continuous monitoring of red dwarf stars ever undertaken. The illustration shows a red dwarf star unleashing a powerful flare. A hypothetical planet is in the foreground.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Zooms in on a Space Oddity

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A ghostly, glowing, green blob of gas has become one of astronomy's great cosmic mystery stories. The space oddity was spied in 2007 by Dutch high-school teacher Hanny van Arkel while participating in the online Galaxy Zoo project. The cosmic blob, called Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object in Dutch), appears to be a solitary green island floating near a normal-looking spiral galaxy, called IC 2497. Since the discovery, puzzled astronomers have used a slew of telescopes, including X-ray and radio observatories, to help unwrap the mystery. Astronomers found that Hanny's Voorwerp is the only visible part of a 300-light-year-long gaseous streamer stretching around the galaxy. The greenish Voorwerp is visible because a searchlight beam of light from the galaxy's core illuminated it. This beam came from a quasar, a bright, energetic object that is powered by a black hole. An encounter with another galaxy may have fed the black hole and pulled the gaseous streamer from IC 2497.

Now, with the help of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a pocket of young star clusters (colored yellow-orange in the image) at the tip of the green-colored Hanny's Voorwerp. Hubble also shows that gas flowing from IC 2497 (the pinkish object with the swirling spiral arms) may have instigated the star birth by compressing the gas in Hanny's Voorwerp.

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In Deep Galaxy Surveys, Astronomers Get a Boost -- from Gravity

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Astronomers are finding that the idiom "can't see the forest for the trees" applies to the universe of galaxies as well. In a paper published today in the science journal Nature, an international team of astronomers predicts that foreground galaxies will affect images of extremely far galaxies. The gravitational fields of the foreground galaxies distort space like a funhouse mirror. This means that a significant fraction of far background galaxies will appear on the sky near foreground galaxies. The good news is that the remote galaxies will appear brighter because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. This will need to be factored in when astronomers plan to look for the farthest galaxies in the universe with the planned James Webb Space Telescope.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
The Two-faced Whirlpool Galaxy

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These images by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show off two dramatically different face-on views of the spiral galaxy M51, dubbed the Whirlpool Galaxy.

The image at left, taken in visible light, highlights the attributes of a typical spiral galaxy, including graceful, curving arms, pink star-forming regions, and brilliant blue strands of star clusters. In the image at right, most of the starlight has been removed, revealing the Whirlpool's skeletal dust structure, as seen in near-infrared light. This new image is the sharpest view of the dense dust in M51. The narrow lanes of dust revealed by Hubble reflect the galaxy's moniker, the Whirlpool Galaxy, as if they were swirling toward the galaxy's core. These images will be presented on Jan. 13, 2011, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Wash.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
NASA's Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe

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How far is far? And, when do you know when you get there? This is not a Dr. Seuss riddle, but the ultimate "final frontier" confronting astronomers. We are on the cusp of seeing nearly as far as we ever can into the universe of stars and galaxies. The question can be better phrased: How young is young? And how do you know when you've seen the earliest objects that ever existed? That's because the farther we look into space the further back into time we see. We're accustomed to instantaneous communications on Earth, but starlight carries a roaming fee. It takes billions of years for information to reach us from the remote universe.

Now astronomers have pushed the Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what they believe is the most distant object ever seen in the universe. Its light traveled 13.2 billion years to reach Hubble. The dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang, only four percent of the universe's current age. It is tiny. Astronomers were surprised to discover that these observations offer evidence that the rate at which the universe was forming stars grew precipitously in about a 200-million-year time span. This huge change in the rate of star birth means that if astronomers can probe a little further back in time they are going to see even more dramatic changes. This will require the power of the James Webb Space Telescope, the planned successor to Hubble, which will be launched later this decade.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Shows New Image of Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). This image was taken in 2010 through four different filters on Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Wavelengths range from ultraviolet light through visible light to near-infrared light.

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Astrophysicist Adam Riess Wins the 2011 Einstein Medal

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Adam Riess, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and a professor in physics and astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University, today was awarded the 2011 Einstein Medal by the Albert Einstein Society, located in Bern, Switzerland. The Society recognized him for leadership in the High-z Supernova Search Team's 1998 discovery that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, a phenomenon widely attributed to a mysterious, unexplained "dark energy" filling the universe. Riess will receive the medal at a ceremony in Bern in May 2011.

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Space Telescope Science Institute Announces the 2011 Hubble Fellows

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The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) announces today the selection of 17 new candidates for the Hubble Fellowship Program. This is one of the three prestigious postdoctoral fellowship programs funded by NASA. The other programs are the Sagan and the Einstein Fellowships. STScI administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA.

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Firestorm of Star Birth in the Active Galaxy Centaurus A

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Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble's panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust. This image was taken in July 2010 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.

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Hubble Movies Provide Unprecedented View of Supersonic Jets from Young Stars

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A team of scientists has collected enough high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope images over a 14-year period to stitch together time-lapse movies of powerful jets ejected from three young stars.

The jets, a byproduct of gas accretion around newly forming stars, shoot off at supersonic speeds in opposite directions through space. These phenomena are providing clues about the final stages of a star's birth, offering a peek at how our Sun came into existence 4.5 billion years ago. Hubble's unprecedented sharpness allows astronomers to see changes in the jets over just a few years' time. Most astronomical processes change over timescales that are much longer than a human lifetime.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Astrophysicist Adam Riess Wins the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

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Adam Riess, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, today was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The academy recognized him for leadership in the High-z Team's 1998 discovery that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, a phenomenon widely attributed to a mysterious, unexplained "dark energy" filling the universe.

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NASA's Hubble Breaks New Ground with Distant Supernova Discovery

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a distant Type Ia supernova, the farthest stellar explosion that can be used to measure the expansion rate of the universe. The supernova is the remnant of a star that exploded 9 billion years ago. The sighting is the first finding of an ambitious survey that will help astronomers place better constraints on the nature of dark energy: a mysterious repulsive force that is causing the universe to fly apart ever faster. The object, nicknamed SN Primo, belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae, which are bright beacons used as distance markers for studying the expansion rate of the universe.

SN Primo is the farthest Type Ia supernova whose distance has been confirmed through spectroscopic observations. The supernova was discovered as part of a three-year Hubble program to survey faraway Type Ia supernovae, enabling searches for this special class of stellar explosion at greater distances than previously possible. The remote supernovae will help astronomers determine whether the exploding stars remain dependable distance markers across vast distances of space in an epoch when the cosmos was only one-third its current age of 13.7 billion years. Called the CANDELS+CLASH Supernova Project, the census uses the sharpness and versatility of Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to look in regions targeted by two large Hubble programs: the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) and the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH).

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Hubble Solves Mystery on Source of Supernova in Nearby Galaxy

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Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have solved a longstanding mystery on the type of star, or so-called progenitor, that caused a supernova in a nearby galaxy. The finding yields new observational data for pinpointing one of several scenarios that could trigger such outbursts.

Based on previous observations from ground-based telescopes, astronomers knew that a kind of supernova called a Type Ia created a remnant named SNR 0509-67.5, which lies 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. The type of system that leads to this kind of supernova explosion has long been a high importance problem with various proposed solutions but no decisive answer. All these solutions involve a white dwarf star that somehow increases in mass to the highest limit. Astronomers failed to find any companion star near the center of the remnant, and this rules out all but one solution, so the only remaining possibility is that this one Type Ia supernova came from a pair of white dwarfs in close orbit.

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Astronomers Watch Delayed Broadcast of a Powerful Stellar Eruption

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Astronomers are watching a delayed broadcast of a spectacular outburst from the unstable, behemoth double-star system Eta Carinae, an event initially seen on Earth nearly 170 years ago. Dubbed the "Great Eruption," the outburst first caught the attention of sky watchers in 1837 and was observed through 1858. But astronomers didn't have sophisticated science instruments to accurately record the star system's petulant activity. Luckily for today's astronomers, some of the light from the eruption took an indirect path to Earth and is just arriving now, providing an opportunity to analyze the outburst in detail. The wayward light was heading in a different direction, away from our planet, when it bounced off dust clouds lingering far from the turbulent stars and was rerouted to Earth, an effect called a "light echo." Because of its longer path, the light reached Earth 170 years later than the light that arrived directly.

The astronomers' study involved a mix of visible-light and spectroscopic observations from ground-based telescopes. The team's paper will appear Feb. 16 in a letter to the journal Nature.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
NASA's Hubble Reveals a New Class of Extrasolar Planet

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Observations of the extrasolar planet GJ1214b by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It's smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth. A paper reporting these results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

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Astronomers Using NASA's Hubble Discover Quasars Acting as Gravitational Lenses

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Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found several examples of galaxies containing quasars, which act as gravitational lenses, amplifying and distorting images of galaxies aligned behind them.

Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, far outshining the total starlight of their host galaxies. Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes. To find these rare cases of galaxy-quasar combinations acting as lenses, a team of astronomers selected 23,000 quasar spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). They looked for the spectral imprint of galaxies at much greater distances that happened to align with foreground galaxies. Once candidates were identified, Hubble's sharp view was used to look for gravitational arcs and rings (indicated by the arrows in these three Hubble photos) that would be produced by gravitational lensing.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Space Astronomy Archive and Distant Supernova Are Named in Honor Of U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski

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One of the world's largest astronomy archives, containing a treasure trove of information about myriad stars, planets, and galaxies, has been named in honor of the United States Senator from Maryland Barbara Mikulski.

Called MAST, for the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, the huge database contains astronomical observations from 16 NASA space astronomy missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope. The archive is located at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

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Stellar Archaeology Traces Milky Way's History

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Unfortunately, stars don't have birth certificates. So, astronomers have a tough time figuring out their ages. Knowing a star's age is critical for understanding how our Milky Way galaxy built itself up over billions of years from smaller galaxies. But Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University's Center for Astrophysical Sciences, both in Baltimore, Md., has found the next best thing to a star's birth certificate.

Using a new technique, Kalirai probed the burned-out relics of Sun-like stars, called white dwarfs, in the inner region of our Milky Way galaxy's halo. The halo is a spherical cloud of stars surrounding our galaxy's disk. Those stars, his study reveals, are 11.5 billion years old, younger than the first generation of Milky Way stars. They formed more than 2 billion years after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Previous age estimates, based on analyzing normal stars in the inner halo, ranged from 10 billion to 14 billion years. Kalirai's study reinforces the emerging view that our galaxy's halo is composed of a layer-cake structure that formed in stages over billions of years.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
Most Quasars Live on Snacks, Not Large Meals

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Black holes in the early universe needed a few snacks rather than one giant meal to fuel their quasars and help them grow, a new study shows. Quasars are the brilliant beacons of light that are powered by black holes feasting on captured material, and in the process, heating some of the matter to millions of degrees. The brightest quasars reside in galaxies distorted by collisions with other galaxies. These encounters send lots of gas and dust into the gravitational whirlpool of hungry black holes. Now, however, astronomers are uncovering an underlying population of fainter quasars that thrive in normal-looking spiral galaxies. They are triggered by black holes snacking on such tasty treats as a batch of gas or the occasional small satellite galaxy.

A census of 30 quasar host galaxies conducted with two of NASA's premier observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, has found that 26 of the host galaxies bear no tell-tale signs of collisions with neighbors, such as distorted shapes. Only one galaxy in the sample shows evidence of an interaction with another galaxy. The galaxies existed roughly 8 billion to 12 billion years ago, during a peak epoch of black-hole growth. The study bolsters evidence that the growth of most massive black holes in the early universe was fueled by small, long-term events rather than dramatic short-term major mergers.

(More at HubbleSite.com)
 
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