Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
A Grazing Encounter between Two Spiral Galaxies
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Images a Peculiar Spiral
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a peculiar spiral galaxy called Arp 184 or NGC 1961. ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz), C. Kilpatrick A beautiful but skewed spiral galaxy dazzles in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy, called Arp 184 or NGC 1961, sits about 190 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).
The name Arp 184 comes from the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies compiled by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. It holds 338 galaxies that are oddly shaped and tend to be neither entirely elliptical nor entirely spiral-shaped. Many of the galaxies are in the process of interacting with other galaxies, while others are dwarf galaxies without well-defined structures. Arp 184 earned its spot in the catalog thanks to its single broad, star-speckled spiral arm that appears to stretch toward us. The galaxy’s far side sports a few wisps of gas and stars, but it lacks a similarly impressive spiral arm.
This Hubble image combines data from three Snapshot observing programs, which are short observations that slotted into time gaps between other proposals. One of the three programs targeted Arp 184 for its peculiar appearance. This program surveyed galaxies listed in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as well as A Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations, a similar catalog compiled by Halton Arp and Barry Madore.
The remaining two Snapshot programs looked at the aftermath of fleeting astronomical events like supernovae and tidal disruption events — like when a supermassive black hole rips a star apart after it wanders too closely. Since Arp 184 hosted four known supernovae in the past three decades, it is a rich target for a supernova hunt.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Share
Details
Last Updated May 01, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Spiral Galaxies The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble’s Galaxies
Tracing the Growth of Galaxies
Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights
View the full article
-
By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Sols 4525-4526: The Day After Groundhog Day (Between Ghost Mountain and Texoli, Headed South)
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image showing ChemCam/Mastcam targets “Breeze Hill” and “Laguna Mountain,” together with a rover wheel planted firmly on the Martian surface. Curiosity captured the image using its Left Navigation Camera on April 27, 2025 — Sol 4523, or Martian day 4,523 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 13:23:32 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Earth planning date: Monday, April 28, 2025
Curiosity is back on the road! For sols 4525 and 4526, we have an isolated nominal plan in which the communication pass timing works out in such a way that the rover can fit in fully targeted science blocks on both sols rather than just the first sol. So in this power-hungry Martian winter season, we’re in a good position to take advantage of the power saved up during the missed uplink.
The weekend drive went well and delivered the rover into a stable, arm-work-compatible position in a workspace with rock targets that we could brush with the DRT. Happy days! The DRT/APXS/MAHLI measurements will bring us geochemical and rock texture data from local bedrock blocks “Bradshaw Trail” and “Sweetwater River.” Further geochemical information will come from the ChemCam LIBS rasters on a more coarsely layered target, “Breeze Hill,” and an exposed layer expressing both polygonal features and a vein or coating of dark-toned material, “Laguna Mountain.”
Long-distance imaging with the ChemCam RMI included a mosaic to add to our coverage of the boxwork sedimentary features of the type Curiosity will soon be exploring in situ. A second RMI mosaic was planned to cover a truncated sedimentary horizon on the Texoli butte that may provide further evidence of ancient aeolian scouring events. Meanwhile, the “Morrell Potrero” Mastcam mosaic will provide some detail on the base of the boxwork-bearing “Ghost Mountain” butte and on a ridge nearby. In the drive direction, the “Garnet Peak” mosaic will capture some potentially new rock textures and colors in the upcoming strata.
Nearer-field imaging in the plan includes Mastcam documentation of some troughs that provide evidence for sand and dust movement in response to the modern aeolian environment. Additionally Mastcam mosaics went to “Breeze Hill” (covering the LIBS target) and “Live Oak” to document variations in bedding, color, and texture in the nearby bedrock.
A few observations of the modern environment were scheduled for the afternoon: a phase function sky survey to look for scattered light from thin water-ice clouds and a separate set of cloud altitude observations.
Finally, a Mastcam documentation image was planned for the AEGIS LIBS target from the weekend plan! This reflects an update to the rover’s capability in which the AEGIS target can be determined and downlinked in time for the decisional downlink pass, so that we know where to look for it during the next planning cycle.
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 30, 2025 Related Terms
Blogs Explore More
4 min read Sols 4522-4524: Up on the Roof
Article
1 day ago
2 min read Searching for the Dark in the Light
Article
5 days ago
3 min read Sols 4520-4521: Prinzregententorte
Article
5 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
View the full article
-
By NASA
3 min read
Help Classify Galaxies Seen by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope!
The Galaxy Zoo classification interface shows you an image from NASA’s Webb telescope and asks you questions about it. Image credit: Galaxy Zoo, Zooniverse. Inset galaxy: NASA/STScI/CEERS/TACC/S. Finkelstein/M. Bagley/Z. Levay/A. Pagan NASA needs your help identifying the shapes of thousands of galaxies in images taken by our James Webb Space Telescope with the Galaxy Zoo project. These classifications will help scientists answer questions about how the shapes of galaxies have changed over time, what caused these changes, and why. Thanks to the light collecting power of Webb, there are now over 500,000 images of galaxies on website of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project—more images than scientists can classify by themselves.
“This is a great opportunity to see images from the newest space telescope,” said volunteer Christine Macmillan from Aberdeen, Scotland. “Galaxies at the edge of our universe are being seen for the first time, just as they are starting to form. Just sign up and answer simple questions about the shape of the galaxy that you are seeing. Anyone can do it, ages 10 and up!”
As we look at more distant objects in the universe, we see them as they were billions of years ago because light takes time to travel to us. With Webb, we can spot galaxies at greater distances than ever before. We’re seeing what some of the earliest galaxies ever detected look like, for the first time. The shapes of these galaxies tell us about how they were born, how and when they formed stars, and how they interacted with their neighbors. By looking at how more distant galaxies have different shapes than close galaxies, we can work out which processes were more common at different times in the universe’s history.
At Galaxy Zoo, you’ll first examine an image from the Webb telescope. Then you will be asked several questions, such as ‘Is the galaxy round?’, or ‘Are there signs of spiral arms?’. If you’re quick, you may even be the first person to see the galaxies you’re asked to classify.
“I’m amazed and honored to be one of the first people to actually see these images! What a privilege!” said volunteer Elisabeth Baeten from Leuven, Belgium.
Galaxy Zoo is a citizen science project with a long history of scientific impact. Galaxy Zoo volunteers have been exploring deep space since July 2007, starting with a million galaxies from a telescope in New Mexico called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and then, moving on to images from space telescopes like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ESA (European Space Agency)’s Euclid telescope. The project has revealed spectacular mergers, taught us about how the black holes at the center of galaxies affect their hosts, and provided insight into how features like spiral arms form and grow.
Now, in addition to adding new data from Webb, the science team has incorporated an AI algorithm called ZooBot, which will sift through the images first and label the ‘easier ones’ where there are many examples that already exist in previous images from the Hubble Space Telescope. When ZooBot is not confident on the classification of a galaxy, perhaps due to complex or faint structures, it will show it to users on Galaxy Zoo to get their human classifications, which will then help ZooBot learn more. Working together, humans and AI can accurately classify limitless numbers of galaxies. The Galaxy Zoo science team acknowledges support from the International Space Sciences Institute (ISSI), who provided funding for the team to get together and work on Galaxy Zoo. Join the project now.
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 29, 2025 Related Terms
Astrophysics Division Citizen Science Get Involved James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Explore More
2 min read Hubble Visits Glittering Cluster, Capturing Its Ultraviolet Light
Article
4 days ago
5 min read Eye on Infinity: NASA Celebrates Hubble’s 35th Year in Orbit
Article
6 days ago
3 min read Nine Finalists Advance in NASA’s Power to Explore Challenge
Article
6 days ago
View the full article
-
By NASA
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is 6 days and less than 50 million miles (80 million km) away from its second close encounter with an asteroid; this time, the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson.
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
NASA/Dan Gallagher This upcoming event represents a comprehensive “dress rehearsal” for Lucy’s main mission over the next decade: the exploration of multiple Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. Lucy’s first asteroid encounter – a flyby of the tiny main belt asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam, on Nov. 1, 2023 – provided the team with an opportunity for a systems test that they will be building on during the upcoming flyby.
Lucy’s closest approach to Donaldjohanson will occur at 1:51pm EDT on April 20, at a distance of 596 miles (960 km). About 30 minutes before closest approach, Lucy will orient itself to track the asteroid, during which its high-gain antenna will turn away from Earth, suspending communication. Guided by its terminal tracking system, Lucy will autonomously rotate to keep Donaldjohanson in view. As it does this, Lucy will carry out a more complicated observing sequence than was used at Dinkinesh. All three science instruments – the high-resolution greyscale imager called L’LORRI, the color imager and infrared spectrometer called L’Ralph, and the far infrared spectrometer called L’TES – will carry out observation sequences very similar to the ones that will occur at the Trojan asteroids.
However, unlike with Dinkinesh, Lucy will stop tracking Donaldjohanson 40 seconds before the closest approach to protect its sensitive instruments from intense sunlight.
“If you were sitting on the asteroid watching the Lucy spacecraft approaching, you would have to shield your eyes staring at the Sun while waiting for Lucy to emerge from the glare. After Lucy passes the asteroid, the positions will be reversed, so we have to shield the instruments in the same way,” said encounter phase lead Michael Vincent of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “These instruments are designed to photograph objects illuminated by sunlight 25 times dimmer than at Earth, so looking toward the Sun could damage our cameras.”
Fortunately, this is the only one of Lucy’s seven asteroid encounters with this challenging geometry. During the Trojan encounters, as with Dinkinesh, the spacecraft will be able to collect data throughout the entire encounter.
After closest approach, the spacecraft will “pitch back,” reorienting its solar arrays back toward the Sun. Approximately an hour later, the spacecraft will re-establish communication with Earth.
“One of the weird things to wrap your brain around with these deep space missions is how slow the speed of light is,” continued Vincent. “Lucy is 12.5 light minutes away from Earth, meaning it takes that long for any signal we send to reach the spacecraft. Then it takes another 12.5 minutes before we get Lucy’s response telling us we were heard. So, when we command the data playback after closest approach, it takes 25 minutes from when we ask to see the pictures before we get any of them to the ground.”
Once the spacecraft’s health is confirmed, engineers will command Lucy to transmit the science data from the encounter back to Earth, which is a process that will take several days.
Donaldjohanson is a fragment from a collision 150 million years ago, making it one of the youngest main belt asteroids ever visited by a spacecraft.
“Every asteroid has a different story to tell, and these stories weave together to paint the history of our solar system,” said Tom Statler, Lucy mission program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The fact that each new asteroid we visit knocks our socks off means we’re only beginning to understand the depth and richness of that history. Telescopic observations are hinting that Donaldjohanson is going to have an interesting story, and I’m fully expecting to be surprised – again.”
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, designed and built the L’Ralph instrument and provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for Lucy. Hal Levison of SwRI’s office in Boulder, Colorado, is the principal investigator. SwRI, headquartered in San Antonio, also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft, designed the original orbital trajectory and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the Lucy spacecraft. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed and built the L’LORRI (Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) instrument. Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, designed and build the L’TES (Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer) instrument. Lucy is the thirteenth mission in NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
By Katherine Kretke, Southwest Research Institute
Media Contact:
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Nancy N. Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 14, 2025 EditorMadison OlsonContactNancy N. Jonesnancy.n.jones@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Lucy Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Science Explore More
4 min read New Modeling Assesses Age of Next Target Asteroid for NASA’s Lucy
Article 4 weeks ago 3 min read NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Takes Its 1st Images of Asteroid Donaldjohanson
Article 2 months ago 3 min read NASA’s Lucy Asteroid Target Gets a Name
Article 2 years ago View the full article
-
By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s SPHEREx, which will map millions of galaxies across the entire sky, captured one of its first exposures March 27. The observatory’s six detectors each captured one of these uncalibrated images, to which visible-light colors have been added to represent infrared wavelengths. SPHEREx’s complete field of view spans the top three images; the same area of the sky is also captured in the bottom three images. NASA/JPL-Caltech Processed with rainbow hues to represent a range of infrared wavelengths, the new pictures indicate the astrophysics space observatory is working as expected.
NASA’s SPHEREx (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) has turned on its detectors for the first time in space. Initial images from the observatory, which launched March 11, confirm that all systems are working as expected.
Although the new images are uncalibrated and not yet ready to use for science, they give a tantalizing look at SPHEREx’s wide view of the sky. Each bright spot is a source of light, like a star or galaxy, and each image is expected to contain more than 100,000 detected sources.
There are six images in every SPHEREx exposure — one for each detector. The top three images show the same area of sky as the bottom three images. This is the observatory’s full field of view, a rectangular area about 20 times wider than the full Moon. When SPHEREx begins routine science operations in late April, it will take approximately 600 exposures every day.
Each image in this uncalibrated SPHEREx exposure contains about 100,000 light sources, including stars and galaxies. The two insets at right zoom in on sections of one image, showcasing the telescope’s ability to capture faint, distant galaxies. These sections are processed in grayscale rather than visible-light color for ease of viewing.NASA/JPL-Caltech “Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe,” said Olivier Doré, SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Southern California. “It’s performing just as it was designed to.”
The SPHEREx observatory detects infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. To make these first images, science team members assigned a visible color to every infrared wavelength captured by the observatory. Each of the six SPHEREx detectors has 17 unique wavelength bands, for a total of 102 hues in every six-image exposure.
Breaking down color this way can reveal the composition of an object or the distance to a galaxy. With that data, scientists can study topics ranging from the physics that governed the universe less than a second after its birth to the origins of water in our galaxy.
“This is the high point of spacecraft checkout; it’s the thing we wait for,” said Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx deputy project manager at JPL. “There’s still work to do, but this is the big payoff. And wow! Just wow!”
During the past two weeks, scientists and engineers at JPL, which manages the mission for NASA, have executed a series of spacecraft checks that show all is well so far. In addition, SPHEREx’s detectors and other hardware have been cooling down to their final temperature of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is necessary because heat can overwhelm the telescope’s ability to detect infrared light, which is sometimes called heat radiation. The new images also show that the telescope is focused correctly. Focusing is done entirely before launch and cannot be adjusted in space.
“Based on the images we are seeing, we can now say that the instrument team nailed it,” said Jamie Bock, SPHEREx’s principal investigator at Caltech and JPL.
How It Works
Where telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes were designed to target small areas of space in detail, SPHEREx is a survey telescope and takes a broad view. Combining its results with those of targeted telescopes will give scientists a more robust understanding of our universe.
The observatory will map the entire celestial sky four times during its two-year prime mission. Using a technique called spectroscopy, SPHEREx will collect the light from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in more wavelengths any other all-sky survey telescope.
Track the real-time location of NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory using the agency’s 3D visualization tool, Eyes on the Solar System. When light enters SPHEREx’s telescope, it’s directed down two paths that each lead to a row of three detectors. The observatory’s detectors are like eyes, and set on top of them are color filters, which are like color-tinted glasses. While a standard color filter blocks all wavelengths but one, like yellow- or rose-tinted glasses, the SPHEREx filters are more like rainbow-tinted glasses: The wavelengths they block change gradually from the top of the filter to the bottom.
“I’m rendered speechless,” said Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “There was an incredible human effort to make this possible, and our engineering team did an amazing job getting us to this point.”
More About SPHEREx
The SPHEREx mission is managed by JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Caltech managed and integrated the instrument. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more about SPHEREx, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-045
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Astrophysics Galaxies Origin & Evolution of the Universe The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
3 min read Discovery Alert: Four Little Planets, One Big Step
The Discovery Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest…
Article 13 hours ago 5 min read NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2025
The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its…
Article 1 day ago 2 min read Hubble Spots a Chance Alignment
The subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the stunning spiral galaxy NGC…
Article 4 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.