Space Hubble Telescope News

[Robby]

NASA's Hubble Sees Unexplained Brightness from Colossal Explosion

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In our infinite universe, stars can go bump in the night. When this happens between a pair of burned-out, crushed stars called neutron stars, the resulting fireworks show, called a kilonova, is beyond comprehension. The energy unleashed by the collision briefly glows 100 million times brighter than our Sun.

What's left from the smashup? Typically an even more crushed object called a black hole. But in this case Hubble found forensic clues to something even stranger happening after the head-on collision.

The intense flood of gamma-rays signaling astronomers to this event has been seen before in other stellar smashups. But something unexpected popped up in Hubble's near-infrared vision. Though a gusher of radiation from the aftermath of the explosion—stretching from X-rays to radio waves—seemed typical, the outpouring of infrared radiation was not. It was 10 times brighter than predicted for kilonovae. Without Hubble, the gamma-ray burst would have appeared like many others, and scientists would not have known about the bizarre infrared component.

The most plausible explanation is that the colliding neutron stars merged to form a more massive neutron star. It's like smashing two Volkswagen Beetles together and getting a limousine. This new beast sprouted a powerful magnetic field, making it a unique class of object called a magnetar. The magnetar deposited energy into the ejected material, causing it to glow even more brightly in infrared light than predicted. (If a magnetar flew within 100,000 miles of Earth, its intense magnetic field would erase the data on every credit card on our planet!)

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble's Celestial Snow Globe

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It's beginning to look a lot like the holiday season in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a blizzard of stars, which resembles a swirling snowstorm in a snow globe. The stars are residents of the globular star cluster Messier 79, or M79, located 41,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Lepus. The cluster is also known as NGC 1904.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Science Release: New Hubble Data Explains Missing Dark Matter

New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides further evidence for tidal disruption in the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4. This result explains a previous finding that this galaxy is missing most of its dark matter. By studying the galaxy’s light and globular cluster distribution, astronomers have concluded that the gravity forces of the neighbouring galaxy NGC 1035 stripped the dark matter from NGC 1052-DF4 and are now tearing the galaxy apart.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Telescopes and Spacecraft Join Forces to Probe Deep into Jupiter's Atmosphere

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With thunderheads that tower forty miles high and stretch half the width of a continent, hurricane-force winds in enormous storms that rage for centuries, and lightning three times as powerful as Earth's strongest superbolts, Jupiter—king of the planets—has proven itself a more-than-worthy namesake to the supreme Roman god of sky and thunder.

In spite of more than 400 years of scientific observations, many details of the gas giant's turbulent and ever-changing atmosphere have remained elusive. Now, thanks to the teamwork of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Gemini Observatory, and the Juno spacecraft, scientists are able to probe deep into storm systems, investigating sources of lightning outbursts, mapping cyclonic vortices, and unravelling the nature of enigmatic features within the Great Red Spot.

This unique collaboration is allowing researchers to monitor Jupiter's weather and estimate the amount of water in the atmosphere, providing insight into how Jupiter operates today as well as how it and the other planets in our solar system formed more than four-and-a-half billion years ago.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

WFIRST Telescope Named For ‘Mother of Hubble’ Nancy Grace Roman

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Today, NASA announced that it is naming its next-generation space telescope, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), in honor of Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first Chief Astronomer, who paved the way for space telescopes focused on the broader universe. The newly named Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (or Roman Space Telescope, for short), is set to launch in the mid-2020s. The Space Telescope Science Institute will serve as the science operations center for the Roman Space Telescope. In that role, the Institute will plan, schedule, and carry out observations, process and archive mission datasets, and engage and inform the astronomical community and the public.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

In Planet Formation, It's Location, Location, Location

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One of the top priorities for new home buyers is location. Finding a home in the right neighborhood is a key ingredient for a happy, prosperous family.

Like families hunting for a house, fledgling planets also need the proper location to grow and thrive. Astronomers using Hubble to probe the giant, young star cluster Westerlund 2 are finding that stars residing in the system's crowded central city face a rough-and-tumble neighborhood that suppresses planet formation. The Hubble observations show that lower-mass stars near the cluster's core do not have the large, dense clouds of dust that eventually could become planets in just a few million years.

But life is a lot easier for stars and would-be planets in the cluster suburbs, farther away from the dense center. Hubble detected those planet-forming clouds embedded in disks encircling stars in these neighborhoods.

The absence of planet-forming clouds around stars near the center is mainly due to their bully neighbors: bright, giant stars, some of which weigh up to 80 times the Sun's mass. Their blistering ultraviolet light and hurricane-like stellar winds of charged particles blowtorch disks around neighboring lower-mass stars, dispersing the giant dust clouds.

Understanding the importance of location and environment in nurturing planet formation is crucial for building models of planet formation and stellar evolution. Located 20,000 light-years away, Westerlund 2 is a unique laboratory to study stellar evolutionary processes because it's relatively nearby, quite young, and contains a large stellar population.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Intense Flash from Milky Way's Black Hole Illuminated Gas Far Outside of Our Galaxy

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About 3.5 million years ago, our distant hominid ancestors might have noticed a mysterious glowing spot along the arc of the star-studded Milky Way. Today we know that this would have been evidence for a tremendous explosion around a black hole that rocked the center of our galaxy. Scientists using Hubble now see the aftermath of that enormous flash of light that beamed out of our galaxy's center way back then. It illuminated a huge, ribbon-like tail of gas orbiting the Milky Way. Called the Magellanic Stream, this long trail lies far outside of our galaxy, at an average distance of 200,000 light-years. Like an aircraft contrail, It extends from neighboring dwarf galaxies called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Researchers made careful ultraviolet measurements of distant quasars behind the Magellanic Stream. As the ultraviolet light from the quasars passed through the stream, Hubble recorded the telltale fingerprints of how the flash altered the gas.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Makes Surprising Find in the Early Universe

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In Greek mythology the first deities born from the universe's origin in "the Chaos," created a race of Titans. The powerful Titans were eventually superseded by the gods of Olympus. In modern cosmology, the stellar equivalent of the legendary Titans are so-called Population III stars, that would have been the very first stars born after the big bang. These hypothetical stars are as elusive as the Titans. Unlike the stars of today—like our Sun (that contains heavier elements, such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and iron)—the Population III stars would have been solely made out of the few primordial elements first forged in the seething crucible of the big bang. Much more massive and brighter than our Sun, they would have defiantly blazed as lords over the inky void of the newborn universe.

A team of European researchers, led by Rachana Bhatawdekar of the European Space Agency, set out to find the elusive first-generation stars by probing from about 500 million to 1 billion years after the big bang. In their quest they used observations from Hubble, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and the ground-based Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory. They used the gravitational lensing power of a massive foreground galaxy cluster (that acts as a giant magnifying lens in space) to find brightened images of far more distant background galaxies 10 to 100 times fainter than any previously observed. Unfortunately, the team found no evidence of these first-generation Population III stars in this cosmic time interval they explored. These results are nevertheless important because they show that galaxies must have formed even earlier after the big bang than previously thought.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Photo Release: Hubble Captures Fading of the Stingray Nebula

Astronomers have caught a rare glimpse of a rapidly fading shroud of gas around an aging star. Archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357, nicknamed the Stingray nebula, has faded precipitously over just the past two decades. Witnessing such a swift rate of change in a planetary nebula is exceedingly without precedent, researchers say.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Captures Unprecedented Fading of Stingray Nebula

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Great things take time. This is true when it comes to many processes in the universe. For example, it takes millions of years for stars—the building blocks of the universe—to form. Then, many stars last for billions of years before they die and begin to eject shells of gas that glow against the vastness of space—what we call nebulas. It can be exceedingly rare to capture some of these processes in real time.

Lucky for us, it seems as if the Stingray nebula, Hen 3-1357, was destined to stand out from the crowd since its beginnings. It was dubbed the youngest known planetary nebula in 1998 after Hubble caught a rare peek at the central star’s final stages of life. Now, twenty years after its first snapshot, the Stingray nebula is capturing the attention of astronomers again for a very different reason.

Images from 2016 show a nebula that has drastically faded over the last two decades. Additionally, shells of gas that surrounded the central star have changed, no longer as crisp as they once were. Changes like this have never been captured at this clarity before.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Cosmic Magnifying Glasses Yield Independent Measure of Universe's Expansion

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People use the phrase "Holy Cow" to express excitement. Playing with that phrase, researchers from an international collaboration developed an acronym—H0LiCOW—for their project's name that expresses the excitement over their Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the universe's expansion rate.

Knowing the precise value for how fast the universe expands is important for determining the age, size, and fate of the cosmos. Unraveling this mystery has been one of the greatest challenges in astrophysics in recent years.

Members of the H0LiCOW (H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring) team used Hubble and a technique that is completely independent of any previous method to measure the universe's expansion, a value called the Hubble constant.

This latest value represents the most precise measurement yet using the gravitational lensing method, where the gravity of a foreground galaxy acts like a giant magnifying lens, amplifying and distorting light from background objects. The study new not rely on the traditional "cosmic distance ladder" technique to measure accurate distances to galaxies by using various types of stars as "milepost markers." Instead, the researchers employed the exotic physics of gravitational lensing to calculate the universe's expansion rate.

The researchers' result further strengthens a troubling discrepancy between the expansion rate calculated from measurements of the local universe and the rate as predicted from background radiation in the early universe, a time before galaxies and stars even existed. The new study adds evidence to the idea that new theories may be needed to explain what scientists are finding.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Slime Mold Simulations Used to Map the Dark Matter Holding the Universe Together

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A simple single-cell organism that may be growing on your lawn is helping astronomers probe the largest structures in the universe.

These organisms, called slime mold, feed on dead plant material, and they have an uncanny ability to seek out food sources. Although brainless, the organism's "genius" at creating efficient networks to reach its food goal has caught the attention of scientists. Researchers have recreated the slime mold's behavior in computer algorithms to help solve large-scale engineering problems such as finding the most efficient traffic routes in large cities, solving mazes, and pinpointing crowd evacuation routes.

A team of astronomers has now turned to slime mold to help them trace the universe's large-scale network of filaments. Built by gravity, these vast cobweb structures, called the cosmic web, tie galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along faint bridges of gas and dark matter hundreds of millions of light-years long.

To trace the filaments, the research team designed a computer algorithm informed by slime-mold behavior. The team seeded the algorithm with the charted positions of 37,000 galaxies and ran it to generate a filamentary map. The astronomers then used archival observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to detect and study the faint gas permeating the web at the predicted locations.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Exoplanet Apparently Disappears in Latest Hubble Observations

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What do astronomers do when a planet they are studying suddenly seems to disappear from sight? In the legendary Star Wars galaxy (you know, "a long time ago and far, far away") the planet might have been the victim of the evil empire's planet-zapping Death Star. But this is pretty improbable in our own cosmic back yard. The missing-in-action planet was last seen orbiting the star Fomalhaut, just 25 light-years away. (In fact, Fomalhaut is so close to us that it's one of the brightest stars in the sky, in the constellation of Pisces Austrinus, the Southern Fish.)

A team of researchers from the University of Arizona believe a full-grown planet never existed in the first place. Instead, they concluded that the Hubble Space Telescope was looking at an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles from two icy bodies that smashed into each other. Hubble came along too late to witness the suspected collision, but may have captured its aftermath. This happened in 2008, when astronomers eagerly announced that Hubble took its first image of a planet orbiting another star. The diminutive-looking object appeared as a dot next to a vast ring of icy debris encircling Fomalhaut. In following years, they tracked the planet along its trajectory. But over time the dot, based on their analysis of Hubble data, got fainter until it simply dropped out of sight, say the researchers, as they pored through the Hubble archival data.

Asteroid families in our own solar system are considered fossil relics of such collisions which happened here billions of years ago, in the solar system's rambunctious youth. But no such cataclysm has ever been seen happening around another star. Why? In the case of Fomalhaut, such smashups are estimated to happen once every 200,000 years. Therefore, Hubble astronomers may have been lucky enough to be looking at the right place at the right time.

Follow-up observations will likely be needed to test this startling conclusion.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Cosmic Collisions Galore!

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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.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Sees Nearby Asteroids Photobombing Distant Galaxies

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Photobombing asteroids from our solar system have snuck their way into this deep image of the universe taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. These asteroids are right around the corner in astronomical terms, residing roughly 160 million miles from Earth. Yet they’ve horned their way into this picture of thousands of galaxies scattered across space and time at inconceivably farther distances.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Pins Down Weird Exoplanet with Far-Flung Orbit

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Though every planet in our solar system has been visited by spacecraft over nearly the past 60 years, the outer frontier of the solar system, beyond Neptune, has been barely explored. There is circumstantial evidence that a planet five times Earth's mass – dubbed Planet Nine – may be lurking out there in the abyss. If real, it is creeping along a very wide orbit taking it 800 times farther from the Sun than Earth is. Though astronomers have yet to find this legendary world – if it exists at all – they have found another clue 336 light-years away.

Astronomers analyzing Hubble images of the double star, HD 106906, have discovered a planet in a huge 15,000-year-long orbit that sweeps it as far from its stellar duo as Planet Nine would be from our Sun. This is observational evidence that similarly far-flung worlds may exist around other stars. Researchers hypothesize that the planet wound up there in a game of planetary pinball where the gravitational pull of a passing star modified the orbit's shape. Perhaps a passing star had a similar influence on our solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Science Release: Hubble Identifies Strange Exoplanet That Behaves Like the Long-Sought “Planet Nine”

The 11-Jupiter-mass exoplanet called HD106906 b occupies an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away and it may be offering clues to something that might be much closer to home: a hypothesized distant member of our Solar System dubbed “Planet Nine.” This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a massive Jupiter-like planet that is orbiting very far away from its host stars and visible debris disc.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Confirms Existence of Massive Black Hole at Heart of Active Galaxy

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Astronomers using the Hubble telescope have found seemingly conclusive evidence for a massive black hole in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87, located 50 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Earlier observations suggested that the black hole was present, but they were not decisive.

This observation provides very strong support for the existence of gravitationally collapsed objects, which were predicted 80 years ago by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. This image shows a spiral-shaped disk of hot gas in the core of M87. Hubble measurements indicate that the disk's rapid rotation is strong evidence that it contains a massive black hole. A black hole is so massive and compact that nothing can escape its gravitational pull, not even light.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Red Dwarf Dynamo Raises Puzzle over Interiors of Lowest Mass Stars

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The Hubble telescope has uncovered surprising evidence that powerful magnetic fields may exist around the lowest mass stars in the universe, which barely have enough nuclear fuel to burn as stars.

Hubble detected a high-temperature outburst, called a flare, on the surface of the extremely small, cool red dwarf star Van Biesbroeck 10, also known as Gliese 752B. Stellar flares are caused by intense, twisted magnetic fields that accelerate and contain gases that are much hotter than a star's surface. The illustration demonstrates the complex nature of this star.

(More at HubbleSite.com)

 

[Robby]

Hubble Catches Up with a Blue Straggler Star

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Astronomers have long been mystified by observations of a few hot, bright, apparently young stars residing in well-established communities where most of their neighbors are much older.

With the help of the Hubble telescope, astronomers now have evidence that may eventually help solve the 45-year-old mystery of how these enigmatic stars, called blue stragglers, were formed. For the first time, astronomers have confirmed that a blue straggler in the core of a globular cluster (a very dense community of stars) is a massive, rapidly rotating star that is spinning 75 times faster than the Sun. This finding provides proof that blue stragglers are created by collisions or other intimate encounters in an overcrowded cluster core. A ground-based telescope image

shows the crowded core of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, which is teeming with blue stragglers. Peering into the heart of the cluster's brilliant core, Hubble separated the dense clump of stars into many individual stars

.

(More at HubbleSite.com)​