Astronomy and Stars
Discussions about astronomy and stars. As we look further out what can we find in the universe beyond Earth's atmosphere?
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The anticipated celestial bombardment called the Leonid meteor storm on the afternoon of November 17th, 1998 won't deter the Hubble telescope from its key mission of gazing far across the universe - as long as the view is in the opposite direction of the incoming meteor swarm. Using the brilliant glow of a distant quasar located near the southern boundary of the constellation Aquarius, Hubble will probe galaxy formation and the distribution of matter in space. The Hubble data will become immediately available to the astronomical community. View the full article
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NGC 3132 is a striking example of a planetary nebula. This expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star is known to amateur astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere as the "Eight-Burst" or the "Southern Ring" Nebula. The name "planetary nebula" refers only to the round shape that many of these objects show when examined through a small telescope. In reality, these nebulae have little or nothing to do with planets, but are instead huge shells of gas ejected by stars as they near the ends of their lifetimes. NGC 3132 is nearly half a light year in diameter, and at a distance of about 2,000 light-years is one of the nearest known planetary nebulae. The gases are expanding…
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Resembling an aerial fireworks explosion, this dramatic Hubble telescope picture of the energetic star WR124 reveals that it is surrounded by hot clumps of gas being ejected into space at speeds of over 100,000 mph. Also remarkable are vast arcs of glowing gas around the star, which are resolved into clumps, yet with no overall global shell structure. Though the existence of clumps in the winds of hot stars has been deduced through spectroscopic observations, Hubble resolves them directly in the nebula M1-67 around WR124 as 100-billion-mile-wide glowing gas blobs. View the full article
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Astronomers who are using the Hubble telescope to observe the gravitational lensing of light from distant quasars have discovered new evidence about the rate at which the universe is expanding. The lensing study shows that the universe is expanding at rates slightly slower than, but similar to, rates calculated from the Hubble Key Project to measure the size and age of the universe. The distance scale was one of the primary science problems that Hubble was built to address. In the infrared picture on the left, the light from the quasar PG 1115+080 is split and distorted. In the infrared picture on the right, the four quasar images and the lens galaxy have been subtracte…
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The Hubble telescope has shown us that the shrouds of gas surrounding dying, Sun-like stars (called planetary nebulae) come in a variety of strange shapes, from an "hourglass" to a "butterfly" to a "stingray." With this image of NGC 6210, the Hubble telescope has added another bizarre form to the rogues' gallery of planetary nebulae: a turtle swallowing a seashell. Giving this dying star such a weird name is less of a challenge than trying to figure out how dying stars create those unusual shapes. The larger image shows the entire nebula; the inset picture captures the complicated structure surrounding the dying star. View the full article
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A vibrant celestial photo album of some of NASA Hubble Space Telescope's most stunning views of the universe is being unveiled today on the Internet. Called the Hubble Heritage Program, this technicolor gallery is being assembled by a team of astronomers at Hubble's science operations center, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. The four images released today are (top row, left to right) spiral galaxy NGC 7742, Saturn, and (bottom row, left to right) the Sagittarius Star Cloud and the Bubble Nebula. View the full article
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Using powerful ground- and space-based telescopes, scientists have obtained a moving look at some of the wildest, weirdest weather in the solar system. Combining simultaneous observations of Neptune made with the Hubble telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a team of scientists has captured the most insightful images to date of a planet whose blustery weather bewilders scientists. On Neptune, winds blow at 900 miles per hour and huge storms – some the sizes of Earth itself – come and go with regularity. View the full article
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A Hubble telescope infrared view of Uranus reveals that the planet is surrounded by its four major rings and by 10 of its 17 known satellites. Hubble recently found about 20 clouds - nearly as many clouds on Uranus as the previous total in the history of modern observations. The orange-colored clouds near the prominent bright band circle the planet at more than 300 mph (500 km/h). One of the clouds on the right-hand side is brighter than any other cloud ever seen on Uranus. View the full article
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The popular National Public Radio program "The Marc Steiner Show" (WJHU, FM 88.1) and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., will again team up to take listeners on a tour of the cosmos via the Internet on October 14, 1998. This is the second in a series of programs in which host Marc Steiner's discussion and interview with his guests will be made available on the World Wide Web, courtesy of the institute's Office of Public Outreach. This is also the first time the institute will utilize multimedia technology to stream video of the science images along with real-time audio from the radio show. View the full article
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Stretching the Hubble telescope's vision farther across space and further back into time than ever before, astronomers have peered into a previously unseen realm of the universe. A "long-exposure" infrared image has uncovered the faintest galaxies ever seen. Astronomers believe some of these galaxies could be the farthest objects ever seen. A powerful new generation of telescopes will be needed to confirm the suspected distances. The picture on the left contains over 300 galaxies, which have spiral, elliptical, and irregular shapes. The two images on the right represent close-up views of objects that may be over 12 billion light-years away, the farthest galaxies ever se…
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A survey of galaxy clusters by the Hubble telescope has found what could be some of the most distant clusters ever seen. If ground-based telescopes confirm the distances and masses of the clusters, the survey may hold clues to how galaxies quickly formed into massive, large-scale structures after the Big Bang, which could provide answers for the universe's eventual fate. According to theoretical models, if the clusters turn out to be massive and very distant, it could imply that the cosmos does not contain enough matter for gravity to stop the expansion of the universe. These models predict that such a low-density universe would have built most of its galaxy clusters lo…
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A Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer has found the equivalent of the proverbial 900-pound gorilla in deep space. The "gorilla" is an extremely massive cluster of galaxies - the weight of several thousand of our Milky Ways - that existed when the universe was half its present age. Paradoxically, the unexpected discovery of this ancient, heavyweight cluster is one of the strongest pieces of evidence yet that we live in a lightweight universe, one that doesn't have enough bulk to provide the gravity necessary to halt the expansion of space. Using X-ray satellites and ground-based telescopes to probe the remote regions of space, the Institute astronomer discovered…
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The Hubble telescope has taken a "family portrait" of young, ultra-bright stars nested in their embryonic cloud of glowing gases. The celestial maternity ward, called N81, is located 200,000 light-years from Earth in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small, irregular satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. These are probably the youngest massive stars ever seen in the magellanic cloud. The nebula offers a unique opportunity for a close-up glimpse of the "firestorm" accompanying the birth of extremely massive stars, each blazing with the brilliance of 300,000 suns. Such galactic fireworks were much more common billions of years ago in the early universe, when most star formation …
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Expanding its broadcast universe far beyond the Baltimore area and into cyberspace, the popular WJHU radio program "The Marc Steiner Show" (WJHU, FM 88.1) has teamed up with the Space Telescope Science Institute to take listeners on a Hubble Space Telescope tour of the cosmos via the Internet. For the show's first time, host Marc Steiner's discussion and interview with his guests will be available on the World Wide Web, courtesy of the institute's Office of Public Outreach. View the full article
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Observations obtained by the Hubble telescope and ground-based instruments reveal that Neptune's largest moon, Triton, seems to have heated up significantly since the Voyager spacecraft visited it in 1989. Even with the warming, no one is likely to plan a summer vacation on Triton, which is a bit smaller than Earth's moon. Since 1989 Triton's temperature has risen from about 37 on the absolute (Kelvin) temperature scale (-392 degrees Fahrenheit) to about 39 Kelvin (-389 degrees Fahrenheit). The scientists are basing a rise in Triton's surface temperature on the Hubble telescope's detection of an increase in the moon's atmospheric pressure, which has at least doubled in …
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Resembling a gigantic hubcap in space, a 3,700-light-year-wide dust disk encircles a 300-million- solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. The disk, possibly a remnant of an ancient galaxy collision, will be swallowed up by the black hole in several billion years. The black-and-white image on the left, taken by a ground-based telescope, shows the complete galaxy. The Hubble picture on the right is a close-up view of the dust disk surrounding the black hole. View the full article
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This Hubble telescope snapshot reveals clusters of infant stars that formed in a ring around the core of the barred-spiral galaxy NGC 4314. This stellar nursery, whose inhabitants were created within the past 5 million years, is the only place in the entire galaxy where new stars are being born. This close-up view also illustrates other interesting details in the galaxy's core: dust lanes, a smaller bar of stars, dust and gas embedded in the stellar ring, and an extra pair of spiral arms packed with young stars. These details make the center resemble a miniature version of a spiral galaxy. The black-and-white image on the left, taken by a ground-based telescope, shows t…
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The duties of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., will be expanded to include the management of science operations for the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), NASA officials announced today. The Space Telescope Science Institute, located at the Johns Hopkins University, has been operating the science program for the Hubble telescope since 1983. The illustration represents the four designs NASA is considering for NGST. View the full article
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The Hubble telescope has given astronomers their first direct look at what is possibly a planet outside our solar system - one apparently that has been ejected into deep space by its parent stars. The discovery further challenges conventional theories about the birth and evolution of planets, and offers new insights into the formation of our own solar system. Located within a star-forming region in the constellation Taurus, the object, called TMR-1C, appears to lie at the end of a strange filament of light, suggesting it has apparently been flung away from the vicinity of a newly forming pair of binary stars. View the full article
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Astronomers have obtained an unprecedented look at the nearest example of galactic cannibalism – a massive black hole hidden at the center of a nearby giant galaxy that is feeding on a smaller galaxy in a spectacular collision. Such fireworks were common in the early universe, as galaxies formed and evolved, but are rare today. The Hubble telescope offers a stunning unprecedented close-up view of a turbulent firestorm of star birth along a nearly edge-on dust disk girdling Centaurus A, the nearest active galaxy to Earth. The picture at upper left shows the entire galaxy. The blue outline represents Hubble's field of view. The larger, central picture is Hubble's close-up…
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A team of astronomers has announced that a recently detected gamma-ray burst was as bright as the rest of the universe, releasing a hundred times more energy than previously theorized. The team measured the distance to a faint galaxy from which the burst, designated GRB 971214, originated. It is about 12 billion light-years from Earth. The astronomers used a suite of satellites and ground-based telescopes to follow the burst. This Hubble image of the GRB 971214 field was taken about four months after the burst, well after the afterglow had faded away. The extremely faint and distant object marked with an arrow is the host galaxy of the gamma-ray burst. View the f…
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In honor of NASA Hubble Space Telescope's eighth anniversary, we have gift-wrapped Saturn in vivid colors. Actually, this image is courtesy of Hubble's infrared camera, which has taken its first peek at Saturn. This view provides detailed information on the clouds and hazes in Saturn's atmosphere. The blue colors indicate a clear atmosphere down to the main cloud layer. Most of the Northern Hemisphere that is visible above the rings is relatively clear. The dark region around the South Pole indicates a big hole in the main cloud layer. The green and yellow colors indicate a haze above the main cloud layer. The red and orange colors indicate clouds reaching up high into …
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Pinpointing the rapidly fading ember of a recently burned-out star, the Hubble telescope is giving astronomers a better estimate on just how big a star can be before it ultimately explodes as a supernova. Based on Hubble's detection of a rare, young white dwarf star, astronomers conclude that its progenitor was a whopping 7.6 times the mass of our Sun. Previously, astronomers had estimated that stars anywhere from 6 to 10 solar masses would not just quietly fade away as white dwarfs, but abruptly self-destruct in torrential explosions. In this picture, Hubble can easily resolve the star [the white circle] in the crowded cluster and detect its intense blue-white glow fro…
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Astronomers have caught a peek at a rare moment in the final stages of a star's life: a ballooning shroud of gas cast off by a dying star flicking on its stellar light bulb. The Hubble telescope has captured the unveiling of the Stingray nebula (Hen-1357), the youngest known planetary nebula. Twenty years ago, the nebulous gas entombing the dying star wasn't hot enough to glow. The Stingray nebula (Hen-1357) is so named because its shape resembles a stingray fish. Images of a planetary nebula in its formative years can yield new insights into the last gasps of ordinary stars like our Sun. View the full article
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The Hubble telescope has probed the inner regions of Comet Hyakutake. This picture captures sunlight scattered by dust particles in the comet's inner coma. The coma is the head or dusty-gas atmosphere surrounding a comet's icy nucleus. This image will help astronomers understand the effects of sunlight on the comet's icy central region. View the full article
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