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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This Hubble telescope image [right] reveals a faint galaxy, the home of a quasar. The wealth of new detail in this picture helps solve a three-decade-old mystery about the true nature of quasars, the most distant and energetic objects in the universe. The picture clearly shows that the quasar, called 1229+204, lies in the core of a galaxy that has a common shape, consisting of two spiral arms of stars connected by a bar-like feature. The host galaxy is in a spectacular collision with a dwarf galaxy. That collision apparently fuels the quasar "engine" at the galaxy's center - presumably a massive black hole - and also triggers many sites of new star-formation. A ground-b…
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The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has recently selected 11 young scientists for the 1994 Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. The awardees were selected from a pool of applications from highly-qualified candidates worldwide. Inaugurated in 1990, the Hubble Fellowship Program funds research opportunities for a significant fraction of the approximately two hundred Ph.D. astronomers who graduate annually. The program is a joint venture between NASA and STScI in cooperation with astronomical institutions across the United States. View the full article
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Two astronomers have discovered that our own Milky Way galaxy and most of its neighboring galaxies, contained within a huge volume of the universe, one billion light-years in diameter, are drifting with respect to the more distant universe. This startling result may imply that the universe is "lumpier" on a much larger scale than can be readily explained by any current theory. "The new observations thus strongly challenge our understanding of how the universe evolved," says Dr. Tod Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO). View the full article
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These images of Comet P/Shoemaker- Levy 9 (1993e) fragments were made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The cometary chunks are expected to plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere in July 1994. The comet was torn into numerous pieces by the massive planet's gravitational pull as it passed by Jupiter in summer 1992. View the full article
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A NASA Hubble Space Telescope "natural color" image of the material surrounding the star Eta Carinae, as imaged by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2). The Camera was installed in the Hubble Space Telescope during the STS-61 Hubble Servicing Mission. The WFPC-2 optically corrects for the aberration of the telescope's primary minor, restoring the telescope's vision to its originally planned clarity. View the full article
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A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a region of the Great Nebula in Orion, as imaged by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. This is one of the nearest regions of very recent star formation (300,000 years ago). The nebula is a giant gas cloud illuminated by the brightest of the young hot stars at the top of the picture. Many of the fainter young stars are surrounded by disks of dust and gas, that are slightly more than twice the diameter of the solar system (or 100 Astronomical Units in diameter). View the full article
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These comparison images of the core of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae (NGC104) were taken with the COSTAR Corrected Faint Object Camera to show the improvement In performance when compared to images taken with the uncorrected camera. View the full article
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This series of images of Supernova 1 987A was taken with ESA's Faint Object Camera aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, prior to and following the HST Servicing Mission. The images demonstrate the dramatic improvement in Hubble's capabilities following the installation of the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), which compensates for spherical aberration in Hubble's primary mirror. The new picture has provided the most detailed closeup view ever obtained of the exploding star and its surroundings. Since SNi1987A first appeared in the southern sky nearly seven years ago (February 24, 19871, the outer envelope of the exploding star has been expandi…
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An image of the grand design spiral galaxy M100 obtained with the second generation Wide Field and Planetary Camera (WFPC-2), newly installed in the Hubble Space Telescope. Though the galaxy lies several tens of millions of light-years away, modified optics incorporated within the WFPC-2 allow Hubble to view M100 with a level of clarity and sensitivity previously possible only for the very few nearby galaxies that compose our "Local Group." Just as one does not learn about the diversity of mankind by conversing only with your next door neighbor, astronomers must study many galaxies in a host of different environments if they are to come to understand how our own galaxy, o…
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This pair of images of a single star, taken with the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera (FOC), demonstrate that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been restored fully to its planned optical performance. The COSTAR mirrors remove the effect of spherical aberration in the HST's primary mirror. The FOC will now be able to observe extremely faint celestial objects with a clarity and sensitivity unmatched by ground-based telescopes. View the full article
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This comparison image of the core of galaxy M100 shows the dramatic improvement in the Hubble telescope's view of the universe. The new image (right) was taken with the second generation Wide Field and Planetary Camera (WFPC2), which was installed during the STS-61 Hubble Servicing Mission. The picture beautifully demonstrates that the corrective optics incorporated within WFPC2 compensate fully for Hubble's near-sightedness. The new camera will allow Hubble to probe the universe with unprecedented clarity and sensitivity. The picture clearly shows faint structure as small as 30 light-years across in a galaxy tens of millions of light-years away. View the full ar…
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This sequence of pictures shows successive steps in optical improvement from ground based telescopes to the newly improved Hubble Space Telescope and demonstrates the unique capability of the repaired HST. HST offers superb resolution, which allows astronomers to distinguish individual afar. in other galaxies. The resolution also allows very faint stars to be seen. This set of pictures demonstrates that the repaired HST can see stars which could never before be detected. View the full article
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An image of a star-forming region in the 30 Doradus nebula, surrounding the dense star cluster R136. The image was obtained using the second generation Wide Filed and Planetary Camera (WFPC-2), installed in the Hubble Space Telescope during the STS-61 Servicing Mission. The WFPC-2 contains modified optics to correct for the aberration of the Hubble's primary mirror. The new optics will allow the telescope to tackle many of the most important scientific programs for which the it was built, but had to be temporarily shelved with the discovery of the spherical aberration in 1990. View the full article
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These three images are of a very bright (Wolf-Rayet) star, Melnick 34, located in the giant star-forming region called 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud. In the background are a number of fainter stars that are comparable in brightness to our Sun. A ground-based telescope captured the image at left. Hubble's first-generation visible-light camera, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera, snapped the center picture before the telescope's blurred vision was corrected. The image at right was taken by Hubble's new visible-light camera, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, which is equipped with a corrective optics system. In this new image the star appears sharper, and …
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The Hubble telescope has given astronomers their best look yet at a rapidly ballooning bubble of gas blasted off a star. The shell surrounds Nova Cygni 1992, which erupted Feb. 19, 1992. A nova is a thermonuclear explosion that occurs on the surface of a white dwarf star in a double-star system. The image [right], taken after Hubble's near-sightedness had been corrected, reveals an elliptical and slightly lumpy ring-like structure. The ring is the edge of a bubble of hot gas blasted into space by the nova. Another Hubble picture taken 467 days after the explosion [left] provided the first glimpse of the ring and a mysterious bar-like structure. But the image interpretat…
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The refurbished HST has provided this outstanding image of the nuclear region of the galaxy NGC 1068. NGC 1068 is located at a distance of approximately 60 Million Light Years and is the prototype of a class of galaxies, known as Seyfert Type 2. View the full article
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In one of the deepest celestial surveys yet made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a small group of previously unknown, interacting galaxies estimated to be three billion light-years away. View the full article
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided the most detailed look yet at the comet hurtling toward a July 1994 collision with the giant planet Jupiter. Hubble's high resolution shows that the approximately 20 objects that comprise comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 – giving it the resemblance of a "string of pearls" – are much smaller than originally estimated from observations with ground-based telescopes. According to Dr. Harold Weaver of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) Baltimore, MD, the Hubble observations show that the cometary nuclei are probably no bigger than three miles across, as opposed to earlier estimates of nine miles. View the full article
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has given astronomers their earliest look at a rapidly ballooning bubble of gas blasted off a star. The shell surrounds Nova Cygni 1992, which erupted February 19, 1992. A nova is a thermonuclear explosion that occurs on the surface of a white dwarf star in a double star system. Nova Cygni 1992 was one of the brightest novae in 20 years, reaching naked-eye visibility for a brief period. View the full article
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The Green (V band) image (left) shows the field around the quasar 3c 273 (courtesy Matthew Colless, David Schade and the CFHT). The optical jet can be seen southwest of the quasar. The blue (B band) image (right) shows the optical jet as seen by the Faint Object Camera (FOC) on board the Hubble Space Telescope. For comparison, the 11X11 arcsec FOC field of view is marked on the ground based CFHT image. The insert (right) is a Maximum Entropy reconstruction of the FOC image. This FOC image is derived from three linearly polarized images which show that the brightest knots are highly polarized (20%-50%). A letter which describes these data appears in the 9 September 1993 is…
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This is a comparison of pictures of the core of the globular cluster NGC 6624, as imaged with the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This comparison image demonstrates that Hubble's high resolution and ultraviolet sensitivity allow astronomers to pick out the faint blue counterpart to an X-ray burster buried in the globular cluster. (An X-ray burster is a class of unusual double star that is a source of violent bursts of X-rays.) HST clearly distinguishes the star from others crammed together in the dense core of the cluster. View the full article
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A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a "double nucleus" in the center of the neighboring spiral galaxy M31, located in the constellation Andromeda. View the full article
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A team of astronomers reports that recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of the nearest Seyfert galaxy, NGC 4395, further support the theory that active galaxies are fueled by a massive black hole at the center. The researchers say the HST results rule out vigorous star formation as the alternative explanation for the mysterious power source behind quasars and extremely bright galactic nuclei. View the full article
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After NASA Hubble Space Telescope's refurbishment to correct spherical aberration, its resolution for imaging stars is expected to increase by a factor of 10-15 over ground-based, and a factor of 2-3 over the pre-reburbished Hubble. The expected improvement in resolution is demonstrated by comparing a Hubble WFPC2 Thermal Vacuum globular cluster-mask (right panel) to a simulated view of the same globular cluster as viewed with Hubble's WFPC1 (left panel). View the full article
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has provided astronomers with their clearest look yet at a vast cloud of gas being heated by the birth of a new star. Called Herbig-Haro object #2 (HH-2), the cloud is heated by shock waves from jets of high speed gas being ejected from a newborn star. Because the star itself is embedded in a dusty cocoon, HH-2 provides the only visible clues to physical processes occurring in the young star. View the full article
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