Tag Archives: Hubble Space Telescope

Mergers and Acquisitions

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galactic_mergerSeveral telescopes have teamed up to examine a rare and massive merger of two galaxies that took place when the universe was just 3 billion years old (that was over 10 billion years ago). The galaxies, collectively called HXMM01, were creating a couple of thousand new star a year as they merged. These days, our galaxy, the Milky Way, hatches about two to three a year. The total number of stars in both colliding galaxies averages is around 400 billion.

The Herschel Space Observatory first spotted the collision in images taken with infrared light (the image at left). Follow-up observations from other telescopes showed the extreme degree of star-formation taking place in the merger.

The merging galaxies are circled in the close up view (on the right). The red data from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Submillimeter Array atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, show dust-enshrouded regions of star formation. The green data, taken by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array, near Socorro, N.M., show carbon monoxide gas in the galaxies.

Blue shows visible starlight. The blue blobs outside of the circle are galaxies located closer to us as seen via near-infrared light observations are from the Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/STScI/Keck/NRAO/SAO

Ring Nebula

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ring_nebulaThe Hubble Space Telescope took a look down a barrel of gas cast off by a dying star thousands of years ago. The resulting photo reveals elongated dark clumps of material embedded in the gas at the edge of the nebula and the dying central star floating in a blue haze of hot gas. This ring nebula is about a light-year in diameter and around 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The colors shown in this image are roughly true colors. The image was assembled from three black-and-white photos taken through different color filters. Blue emissions come from very hot helium mostly located near the hot central star. Green is from ionized oxygen found farther out. Red comes from ionized nitrogen farthest from the star. The gases glow because it is excited ultraviolet radiation from the star whose surface temperature is estimated to be over 100,000 °C.

Image Credit: NASA

Black Hole at Work

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BlackHolePoweredJetsThis composite image of a galaxy is built up from X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), visible light data from Hubble (gold), and radio astronomy data from the Very Large Array (pink). It shows how the intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to generate vast amounts of energy.

4C+29.30 is a galaxy located 850 million light years or so from Earth. The radio emissions come from two jets of particles that are speeding outward at thousands of km/s from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The guesstimated mass of the black hole is on the order of 100,000,000 times our Sun’s. The jets show larger areas of radio emission located outside the galaxy.

The X-ray data show the location of hot gas in the galaxy. The bright X-rays in the center of the image come from a pool of 1,000,000° gas around the black hole. Some of this gas could wind up being eaten by the black hole, and the magnetized, whirlpool of gas near the black hole could, in turn, feed more energy to the radio jet.

Most of the low-energy X-rays from the vicinity of the black hole are absorbed by a doughnut of dust and gas surrounding the black hole. The doughnut blocks the visible light produced near the black hole; astronomers call this type of source as a hidden or buried black hole. The visible light seen in the image is from the stars in the galaxy.

Image Credit: NASA

A Shell in a Fish

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supernova_shellThese thin wisps of gas are an object known as SNR 0519. The blood-red clouds are the remains from a violent explosion of a star as a supernova seen about 600 years ago. The star that exploded is known to have been a white dwarf star—a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life.

SNR 0519 is over 150 000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish), a constellation that also contains most of our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, a region of the sky is full of intriguing and beautiful deep sky objects. The Large Magellanic Cloud orbits the Milky Way galaxy as a satellite and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA

Incoming Comet ISON

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ISON_HubbleThis Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) was photographed earlier this month when the comet was just inside Jupiter’s orbit at a distance of around 620 million km from the Sun (635 million km from Earth).

Even that far out, the comet is already becoming active as sunlight warms the surface and frozen volatiles sublimate. Analysis of the dust coma surrounding the solid, icy nucleus shows a strong stream of dust particles coming off the Sun-facing side of the comet.

Preliminary measurements from Hubble images suggest that the ISON’s nucleus isn’t much more than than 5 or 6 km across. That’s tiny considering the high level of activity observed thus far. Astronomers are measuring the activity level of this comet now in order to predict the comet’s activity when it skims a bit more than 1,000,000 km above the sun’s surface on Thanksgiving.

The comet’s dusty coma, the head of the comet, is approximately 5,000 km across, and its dust tail stretches more than 90,000 km, which is wider than Hubble’s field of view.

This image was taken in visible light. The blue false color was added to highlight details in the comet structure.

Image Credit: NASA

A Horsehead of a Different Color

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horseheadofadifferentcolorhorsehead_cThe Hubble Space Telescope was launched 23 years ago. Astronomers have used Hubble to make the above photograph of the iconic Horsehead Nebula in infrared light to mark the anniversary. The Horsehead Nebula has been a staple image in astronomy books for a century or so. While it’s shadowy in visible light (at left), it appears transparent and ethereal when photographed at infrared wavelengths as it pops out against a backdrop of stars and distant galaxies visible in infrared light.

Image Credit: NASA

Ants in Space

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ant_nebulaThis Hubble Space Telescope image of the Ant Nebula may shed new light on the future of our Sun. When seen through ground based telescopes, the Ant Nebula (aka Mz3) resembles the head and thorax of an insect. This image, with 10 times the resolution and 100 times better detail, shows the ant’s body as a pair of fiery lobes extending from a dying, Sun-like star.

The image and other pictures of dying stars in what are called planetary nebulae call into question some theories about what happens to dying stars. Our Sun’s fate will probably be much more interesting, complex and dramatic than astronomers previously believed, but we’ll have to wait several billion years to find out.

The ejection of gas from the dying star in the Ant Nebula does not show the chaos one might expect from an ordinary explosion. The patterns are quite symmetrical. It could be that the central star has a closely orbiting companion whose gravitational tidal forces shape the outflowing gas. Electrically charged winds, much like those in our Sun’s solar wind but millions of times denser and moving at speeds up to 1,000 kilometers per second from the star, follow the twisted field lines on their way out into space. Perhaps as the dying star spins, its strong magnetic fields are wound up into complex shapes like noodles being stirred.

Image Credit: NASA

Stingray!

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Stingray_nebulaThe Stingray nebula (Hen-1357) is the youngest known planetary nebula. This Hubble image (click to embiggen) captures the bright central star is in the middle of the green ring of gas. A companion star is above it at 10 o’clock. A green spur of gas forms a faint bridge to the companion star as a result of gravitational attraction. There’s also a ring of green gas surrounding the central star and bubbles of gas at the lower left and upper right of the ring. The wind of stellar material propelled by radiation from the hot central star has created enough pressure to blow out holes in the ends of the bubbles, allowing gas to escape. The bright red, curved lines of gas are heated by the collision of the central star’s wind hitting the bubbles’ walls. The nebula is about 130 times the diameter of our Solar System. However, since it’s 18,000 light-years away, it appears only as big as a dime viewed a mile away. The colors in this picture are actual colors emitted by nitrogen (red), oxygen (green), and hydrogen (blue).

The Stingray is located in the southern constellation Ara (the Altar). As to why it’s called the Stingray … Beats me. I doesn’t look much like an old Corvette.

Image Credit: NASA

ESO 243-49 and Its Black Hole

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ESO 243-49This spectacular galaxy, called ESO 243-49, is noted for our edge-on view. It’s home to a black hole that may have been stolen from a dwarf galaxy. The black hole has an estimated mass 20,000 time that of the Sun and lies above ESO 243-49′s galactic plane. That’s is an unusual place for such a massive back hole—which is why astronomers assume that it belonged to a small galaxy that was gravitationally torn apart by the black hole’s new host. The circle identifies the black hole’s X-ray source. The X-rays are believed to be radiation from a hot accretion disk of matter falling into the black hole’s event horizon. The blue light not only comes from a hot accretion disk, but also from a group of hot young stars that formed around the black hole. The image above was made by the Hubble Space Telescope, but Hubble can’t resolve the stars individually because the suspected cluster is too far away (290 million light-years). Their existence is implied from the color and brightness of the light coming from the black hole’s location.

Image Credit: NASA

M80

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M80No, not the firecracker, the star cluster.

M80 is in the constellation Scorpius between the stars α Scorpii (Antares) and β Scorpii in a part of the Milky Way rich in nebulae. When viewed with a modest amateur telescope (like mine), it appears as a mottled ball of light. This Hubble image shows more detail. M80 is roughly 95 light-years in diameter. It contains several hundred thousand stars, making it one of the more densely populated globular clusters in the galaxy.

M80 contains a fair number of blue stragglers, stars that appear to be much younger than the cluster itself. Astronomers believe that these stars lost part of their outer layers during close encounters with other cluster members or as the result of collisions between stars in the tightly packed cluster. Images from Hubble show regions with very high blue straggler densities which suggests that the center of the cluster probably has a very high capture and collision rate.

Image Credit: NASA

The Farthest Supernova (So Far)

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20130404-135230.jpgThis is a Hubble Space Telescope picture of supernova SN UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson, that exploded over 10 billion years ago. The small box in the top image pinpoints SN Wilson’s host galaxy. The image is a composite of visible and near-infrared light. The three inserts at the bottom were taken in near-infrared light and show how the astronomers found the supernova. The image at on the left shows the host galaxy without SN Wilson. The middle image, taken a year earlier, shows the galaxy with SN Wilson, but the supernova cannot be seen because it is too close to the center of its host galaxy. To detect the supernova, astronomers subtracted the left image from the middle image to see the light from SN Wilson. That A-B image is on the right.

Image Credit: NASA

Colliding Star Clusters

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cluster-collisionThis Hubble Space Telescope image shows a pair of star clusters that are believed to be in the early stages of merging. The clusters are parts the gigantic 30 Doradus nebula (aka the Tarantula Nebula) which is 170,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

Image Credit: NASA

Boomerang Nebula

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boomerang_nebulaHere’s another image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric cones of matter that are being ejected from it’s central star. Nearly one and a half times the mass of our Sun has been lost by the central star of the Boomerang Nebula in a bipolar outflow over the past 1,500 years. It doesn’t look much like a boomerang in this picture; the nebula’s name is derived from its symmetric structure as seen with ground-based telescopes. Hubble‘s sharper view resolves patterns and ripples in the nebula very close to the central star that are not visible from the ground.

The Boomerang Nebula is about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the Southern constellation Centaurus. Measurements show that most of the nebula has a temperature roughly the same as liquid helium in a vacuum or about 1 K (-272 °C), making it one of the coldest naturally occurring objects.

Image Credit: NASA

Uranus and Ariel

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Uranus_ArielUranus’ moon Ariel (white dot) and its shadow (black dot) were caught crossing the face of Uranus in this Hubble Space Telescope image. Note that the cloud bands which are aligned with the planet’s rotation are nearly vertical in the picture. Uranus is the giant planet whose equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit. A collision with an Earth-sized object several billion years ago is the likely cause of Uranus’ tilt. Nearly a twin to Neptune, Uranus has more methane in its mainly hydrogen and helium atmosphere than Jupiter or Saturn. Methane gives Uranus its blue tint.

Image Credit: NASA

An Interstellar Monster?

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carina06_hubble_960Lurking inside the head of this interstellar monster is a star that is slowly destroying it. The monster is really an inanimate pillar of gas and dust that is over a light year long. The star, which is hidden by the thick cloud of dust, is bursting out energetic beams of particles that will eventually disperse the cloud. Similar star v. dust cloud battles are being played out all over the star-forming region known as the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372). The stars will win in the end, and their pillars of creation will be blown apart over the next 100,000 years or so. The result will be a new open cluster of stars. The pink dots are newly formed stars that have already freed themselves from their dust cloud nurseries.

Image Credit: NASA

An Eye in the Sky

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ngc6751_hst_960Planetary nebulae appear simple, round, and planet-like in small telescopes. However, images from the Hubble Space Telescope have become well known for showing these fluorescent gas shrouds of dying Sun-like stars to possess a staggering variety of detailed symmetries and shapes. This composite color Hubble image of NGC 6751, the Glowing Eye Nebula, is a lovely example of a complex planetary nebula. Winds and radiation from the intensely hot central star (140,000 °C) have created the nebula’s streamer-like features. The nebula is about 0.8 light-years across, roughly 600 times the diameter of our Solar System. It’s 6,500 light-years distant in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle).

Image Credit: NASA

Space Invaders!

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Hubble image of Abell 68The gravitational field surrounding this massive cluster of galaxies know as Abell 68 acts as a lens in space bending the light coming from very distant background galaxies. The lensing creates a funhouse mirror effect on the background galaxies. The foreground cluster is 2 billion light-years away, and the lensed galaxies are far behind it.

In this Hubble photo, a spiral galaxy at upper left has been stretched and mirrored into a shape similar to that of a simulated alien from the classic 1970s computer game Space Invaders!

Image Credit: NASA

Sauron in Space?

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Sauron in SpaceEven though it looks like it belongs atop the Dark Tower of Barad-dûr, this fiery swirl is actually a planetary nebula known as ESO 456-67. It lies in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer) in the southern sky.

It is possible to see in this image of the nebula the various layers of material expelled by the central star. Each appears in a different color—red, orange, yellow, and green-tinted bands of gas are visible, with clear patches of at the center. Astronomers don’t fully understood how planetary nebulae form such a wide variety of shapes and structures. Some are spherical, some elliptical, others shoot material in waves from their polar regions, some look like hourglasses or figures of eight, and others resemble large, messy stellar explosions.

Image Credit: NASA

Pluto, Charon, Nix, and Hydra

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Pluto and moonsThis picture shows the dwarf planet Pluto and three of its five moons. This Hubble image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. Those brightness values were translated into a range of bluish hues. Such color maps can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly-varying brightness in an image. The colors in this image are not what human eyes would see looking at Pluto.

Image Credit: NASA

Friday’s Asteroid

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First of all, asteroids aren’t caused by global warming. They’re the floor sweepings left over from the formation of the planets billions of years ago. Some of them are pretty big. Indeed, one of them, Ceres, is large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet. Most of them are tiny.

Several tons worth of the tiny asteroids collide with the Earth each day. Almost all of them burn up in the atmosphere as meteors. A few make it to the ground as meteorites. Every thousand years or so, a large meteor weighing tens of tons smacks into the ground releasing energy equivalent to a nuclear weapon. This happened in Siberia in 1908. Larger, Earth-shattering kabooms occur every few million years when an asteroid several hundred metres (or larger) in diameter hits. A large strike about 66 million years ago ended the Age of Dinosaurs.

This Friday’s asteroid will miss us. If it were to hit, the energy release would be roughly equivalent to a 2 megaton nuke, inconvenient for the local neighborhood but hardly Earth-shattering.

We frequently discover new asteroids. One was discovered in 1998 as the long blue streak in this archival image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.asteroidstreak_hst_960

A Cosmic Closeup

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LLOri_hubble_960This close-up of cosmic clouds blown about by stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula. LL Orionis is a variable star in Orion’s stellar nursery and still in its formative years. It produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun. As the stellar wind runs into slow moving gas, a shock front is formed, similar to the bow wave of a boat moving through water. The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of center is LL Ori‘s cosmic bow shock. It’s about half a light-year across. The slower gas is flowing away from the Orion Nebula’s hot central star cluster, the Trapezium is out of the frame of this picture toward the upper left. LL Ori‘s wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the “bottom” edge.

Image Credit: NASA, Hubble Legacy Archive

Infrared Uranus

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infrared_uranusThe Solar System’s third largest planet usually looks quite plain. Uranus typically appears as a featureless small spot in a small telescope or a featureless large orb in a large telescope. Back in the late ’90s, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed Uranus in infrared light. In this image the distant planet’s unusual clouds, rings, and moons are visible. Analysis indicates that clouds seen here in orange appear to circle Uranus at speeds in excess of 500 km/h.

Image Credit: NASA

NGC 1309, A Galaxy Head On

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NGC1309_HLANGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation Eridanus (The River) about 100 million light-years away. It about 30,000 light-years across or about one third the size of our Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes trace out NGC 1309′s spiral arms, winding around an older yellowish star population at the galaxy’s core.

NGC 1309′s recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars are used to derive calibration data for the expansion of the Universe.

Image Credit: NASA

Dwarves

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dwarf galaxyHappy, Sneezy, Dopey, … No, no … Balin, Bifur, Bofur, … No, not them either. This post is about one of the dwarf galaxies that is part of the M101 group. Ursa Major (The Great Bear) is home to Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. Messier 101 is one of the biggest and brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky. Like the Milky Way, Messier 101 is not alone with smaller dwarf galaxies in its neighborhood. NGC 5477, which is the main subject of the Hubble Space Telescope image above, is one of those companion galaxies. It’s a typical irregular dwarf galaxy with no obvious structure but plenty of signs of new star creation. The bright nebulae that extend across the galaxy are clouds of glowing hydrogen gas in which those new stars are forming. These glow pinkish red in real life, but appear white in this false color image which was taken through green and infrared filters using Hubble‘s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is about 3.3 arcminutes wide.

The picture includes numerous galaxies in the background; some are visible right through NGC 5477. This demonstrates that galaxies, far from being solid, opaque objects, are actually largely made up of the empty space between their stars.

Image Credit: NASA