Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble’s Holiday Snow Angel

December 15, 2011

in Science & Nature

From NASA:

The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched “wings” of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the “wings” of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an “hourglass” shape.

Big Bad Congressmen Afraid of the Dark

July 8, 2011

in Politics,Science & Nature

About a month ago, the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, made famous by the movie Contact, was shut down due to lack of funding. The money necessary to keep the array online for another year amounted to $1 million, or the cost of around 12 Javelin missiles. As much as I loathe that, and wonder whatever happened to the American people’s priorities, I can understand why it happened. There are doubts about whether the strength of the array is sufficient to capture any possible signals. (Nevermind the fact that we can’t possibly pretend to know if it would eventually work or not.) It might not capture anything; there might not be anything out there, and even if there is, we would — we assume — not be able to brave the distances needed to make any use of that knowledge.

But now the U.S. Congress is contemplating reducing NASA’s budget by $1.64 billion (8% of NASA’s total budget), a move that would kill, among other things, the James Webb Space Telescope program. The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which is arguably one of the chief glories of mankind. It is the tool with which we have gazed through time and space and watched as, time and time again, spots of darkness that were thought to be simply nothing turned out to house thousands of galaxies and hundreds of billions of stars; the marvel of engineering that through the past 20 years has taught us more about the origins of our universe and ourselves than anyone or anything else ever has — and now some people are saying it’s not “worthwhile” to see more.

The congressmen and women who are attempting to cancel the James Webb Space Telescope are essentially saying that they do not want to know about our origins. They are calling what might become a much greater tool of science than the Hubble Space Telescope — which is already one of very few things that humans will remember a few millennia from now — an “acceptable loss”. They are comfortable halting much of the progress in cosmology in order to reap a meager $1.64 billion, or approximately five days worth of sustaining the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To me, this is nothing less than cowardice. This project is not about finding life elsewhere, but about understanding the origin of time and space, and therefore ourselves. It is about not being content with living in ignorance, afraid of the dark, and about finding an answer to the oldest question we know: “Who are we?”

Are you American? Then write to your representative and try to stop what will surely be one of the more regressive acts of our “modern” civilization. If you do not agree, and if you do not act, then I can only ask: Why are you afraid of the dark?

Nothing is more fatal to the progress of the human mind than to presume that our views of science are ultimate, that our triumphs are complete, that there are no mysteries in nature, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.

– Humphry Davy

Update: It looks like the JWST will survive!

Firestorm of Star Birth in Centaurus A

June 16, 2011

in Science & Nature

From HubbleSite:

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.

Messier 5

May 3, 2011

in Science & Nature

From SpaceTelescope.org (ESA):

The globular cluster Messier 5, shown here in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, is one of the oldest belonging to the Milky Way. The majority of its stars formed more than 12 billion years ago, but there are some unexpected newcomers on the scene, adding some vitality to this aging population.

Stars in globular clusters form in the same stellar nursery and grow old together. The most massive stars age quickly, exhausting their fuel supply in less than a million years, and end their lives in spectacular supernovae explosions. This process should have left the ancient cluster Messier 5 with only old, low-mass stars, which, as they have aged and cooled, have become red giants, while the oldest stars have evolved even further into blue horizontal branch stars.

The Hubble Space Telescope Turns 21

April 20, 2011

in Science & Nature

To celebrate, the Hubble team pointed Hubble toward Arp 273 — a “galactic rose” — and took this picture:

Hubble has now turned 21, and unlike human young adults, we don’t have to worry about it staying up all night carousing at orbital drinking establishments. Instead the space telescope celebrates by doing what is has done best the past two decades, taking a marvelous image. This dramatic look at Arp 273 shows the very photogenic group of interacting galaxies that glow bright with intense star formation, perhaps triggered by a little carousing the two galaxies are doing with each other as they approach and interact.

Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. The image shows a tenuous tidal bridge of material between the two galaxies that are actually separated by tens of thousands of light-years from each other. But still, the gravitational pull between the two is causing distortions: visible in the larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, is a distorted disc. The swathe of blue stars across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young stars.

via Universe Today

Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen

January 27, 2011

in Science & Nature

From NASA.gov:

Astronomers have pushed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what is likely to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe. The object’s light traveled 13.2 billion years to reach Hubble, roughly 150 million years longer than the previous record holder. The age of the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years.

The tiny, dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the big bang. More than 100 such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way. The new research offers surprising evidence that the rate of star birth in the early universe grew dramatically, increasing by about a factor of 10 from 480 million years to 650 million years after the big bang.

Putting the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Into Perspective

November 16, 2010

in Science & Nature

We pointed the most powerful telescope ever built at absolutely nothing for no other reason than that we were curious, and, from what looked like empty space the size of a grain of sand, the light particles from thousands of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, struck its mirrors after journeying across the cosmos for billions of years. In 2014 we’ll do it once more with the significantly more powerful James Webb Space Telescope, gazing farther and more clearly than anyone ever thought possible; to memories of celestial objects — as old as the universe itself — that blasted away from us faster than the speed of light many million years ago, vanishing forever. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.

Active Galaxy NGC 1275

June 5, 2010

in Science & Nature

From NASA APOD:

Active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies. Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is also a prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission. NGC 1275 accretes matter as entire galaxies fall into it, ultimately feeding a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core. This color composite image, recreated from archival Hubble Space Telescope data, highlights the resulting galactic debris and filaments of glowing gas, some up to 20,000 light-years long. The filaments persist in NGC 1275, even though the turmoil of galactic collisions should destroy them. What keeps the filaments together? Observations indicate that the structures, pushed out from the galaxy’s center by the black hole’s activity, are held together by magnetic fields. Also known as Perseus A, NGC 1275 spans over 100,000 light years and lies about 230 million light years away.

Credit: Data – Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing – Al Kelly

Hubble Celebrates 20 Years of Being Crazy Awesome

April 23, 2010

in Science & Nature

The Hubble Space Telescope is 20 years old, but it never ceases to amaze me:

Thanks for showing us the universe, Hubble.

This brand new Hubble photo is of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but is even more striking in appearance. The image captures the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.

NASA’s best-recognized, longest-lived and most prolific space observatory was launched April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology.

See NASA, ESA and STScl’s announcement, Starry-Eyed Hubble Celebrates 20 Years of Awe and Discovery, and don’t forget to check out HubbleSite, Hubble’s official website with tons upon tons of awe-inspiring photographs of the cosmos!

The Antennae Galaxies

April 23, 2010

in Science & Nature

This image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters.

More at NASA’s gallery.

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