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NASA’s Hubble Finds More Black Holes than Expected in the Early Universe
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NASA Glenn Research Center senior materials research engineer Kim de Groh, who conducted research for Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions, shared her experiences during a presentation at Great Lakes Science Center, home of the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, in Cleveland on Thursday, May 8, 2025. Credit: NASA/Dennis Brown April 24 marked the 35th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The iconic space observatory remains a household name —the most well-recognized and scientifically productive telescope in history. Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland played a significant role in how the telescope functions today.
NASA’s Glenn Research Center researchers Kim de Groh, left, and Joyce Dever conducted research for Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions. De Groh shared her experiences during a presentation at Great Lakes Science Center, home of the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, in Cleveland on Thursday, May 8, 2025. Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna NASA Glenn researchers assisted in all five Hubble servicing missions by testing damaged insulation, determining why it degraded in space, and recommending replacement materials.
One of those researchers, Kim de Groh, senior materials research engineer, shared some of that research in a special presentation at Great Lakes Science Center, home of the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, in Cleveland on May 8. She chronicled her Hubble experience with a presentation, a show-and-tell with samples directly from the telescope, and a Q&A addressing the audience’s Hubble-related questions.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Science Activation Take a Tour of the Cosmos with… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 4 min read
Take a Tour of the Cosmos with New Interactives from NASA’s Universe of Learning
Ready for a tour of the cosmos? NASA’s Universe of Learning has released a new, dynamic way for lifelong learners to explore NASA’s breathtaking images of the universe—ViewSpace interactive Image Tours. ViewSpace has an established track record of providing museums, science centers, libraries, and other informal learning environments with free, web-based videos and digital interactives—like its interactive Image Sliders. These new Image Tours are another unique experience from NASA’s Universe of Learning, created through a collaboration between scientists that operate NASA telescopes and experts well-versed in the most modern methods of learning. Hands-on, self-directed learning resources like these have long been valued by informal learning sites as effective means for engaging and intriguing users with the latest discoveries from NASA’s space telescope missions—while encouraging lifelong learners to continue their passionate exploration of the stars, galaxies, and distant worlds.
With these new ViewSpace Image Tours, visitors can take breathtaking journeys through space images that contain many exciting stories. The “Center of the Milky Way Galaxy” Tour, for example, uses breathtaking images from NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra X-ray telescopes and includes eleven Tour Stops, where users can interact with areas like “the Brick”—a dense, dark cloud of hydrogen molecules imaged by Spitzer. Another Tour Stop zooms toward the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, offering a dramatic visual journey to the galaxy’s core.
In other tours, like the “Herbig-Haro 46/47” Tour, learners can navigate through points of interest in an observation from a single telescope mission. In this case, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides the backdrop where lifelong learners can explore superheated jets of gas and dust being ejected at tremendous speeds from a pair of young, forming stars. The power of Webb turns up unexpected details in the background, like a noteworthy distant galaxy famous for its uncanny resemblance to a question mark. Each Interactive Image Tour allows people to examine unique features through videos, images, or graphical overlays to identify how those features have formed in ways that static images alone can’t convey.
These tours, which include detailed visual descriptions for each Tour Stop, illuminate the science behind the beauty, allowing learners of all ages to develop a greater understanding of and excitement for space science, deepening their engagement with astronomy, regardless of their prior experience. Check out the About the Interactives page on the ViewSpace website for a detailed overview of how to use the Image Tours.
ViewSpace currently offers three Image Tours, and the collection will continue growing:
Center of the Milky Way Galaxy:
Peer through cosmic dust and uncover areas of intense activity near the Milky Way’s core, featuring imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Herbig-Haro 46/47:
Witness how a tightly bound pair of young stars shapes their nebula through ejections of gas and dust in an image from the James Webb Space Telescope.
The Whirlpool Galaxy:
Explore the iconic swirling arms and glowing core of a stunning spiral galaxy, with insights into star formation, galaxy structure, and more in a Hubble Space Telescope image.
“The Image Tours are beautiful, dramatic, informational, and easy to use,” explained Sari Custer, Chief of Science and Curiosity at Arizona Science Center. “I’m excited to implement them in my museum not only because of the incredible images and user-friendly features, but also for the opportunity to excite and ignite the public’s curiosity about space.”
NASA’s Universe of Learning is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/
Select views from various Image Tours. Clockwise from top left: The Whirlpool Galaxy, Center of the Milky Way Galaxy, Herbig-Haro 46/47, detail view in the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Share
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Last Updated May 13, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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What is a black hole?
Well, the name is actually a little misleading because black holes aren’t actually holes. They’re regions in space that have a gravitational pull that is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. Scientists know about two different sizes of black holes — stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes.
A stellar-mass black hole is born when a massive star dies. That’s a star that’s larger than our own Sun. These stars burn up all the nuclear fuel in their cores, and this causes them to collapse under their own gravity. This collapse causes an explosion that we call a supernova. The entire mass of the star is collapsing down into a tiny point, and the area of the black hole is just a few kilometers across.
Supermassive black holes can have a mass of millions to tens of billions of stars. Scientists believe that every galaxy in the universe contains a supermassive black hole. That’s up to one trillion galaxies in the universe. But we don’t know how these supermassive black holes form. And this is an area of active research.
What we do know is that supermassive black holes are playing a really important part in the formation and evolution of galaxies, and into our understanding of our place in the universe.
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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 Comes Face-to-Face with Spiral’s Arms
This Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the spiral galaxy NGC 3596. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker The spiral galaxy NGC 3596 is on display in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image that incorporates six different wavelengths of light. NGC 3596 is situated 90 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo, the Lion. British astronomer Sir William Herschel first documented the galaxy in 1784.
NGC 3596 appears almost perfectly face-on when viewed from Earth, showcasing the galaxy’s neatly wound spiral arms. These bright arms hold concentrations of stars, gas, and dust that mark the area where star formation is most active, illustrated by the brilliant pink star-forming regions and young blue stars tracing NGC 3596’s arms.
What causes these spiral arms to form? It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, partly because spiral galaxies are so diverse. Some have clear spiral arms, while others have patchy, feathery arms. Some have prominent bars across their centers, while others have compact, circular nuclei. Some have close neighbors, while others are isolated.
Early ideas of how spiral arms formed stumped astronomers with the ‘winding problem’. If a galaxy’s spiral arms are coherent structures, its arms would wind tighter and tighter as the galaxy spins, until the arms are no longer visible. Now, researchers believe that spiral arms represent a pattern of high-density and low-density areas rather than a physical structure. As stars, gas, and dust orbit within a galaxy’s disk, they pass in and out of the spiral arms. Much like cars moving through a traffic jam, these materials slow down and bunch up as they enter a spiral arm, before emerging and continuing their journey through the galaxy.
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated May 09, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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8 Min Read NASA Telescopes Tune Into a Black Hole Prelude, Fugue
The first sonification features WR124, an extremely bright, massive star. Here, the star is shown in a short-lived phase preceding the possible creation of a black hole. NASA released three new pieces of cosmic sound Thursday that are associated with the densest and darkest members of our universe: black holes. These scientific productions are sonifications — or translations into sound — of data collected by NASA telescopes in space including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope, and Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE).
This trio of sonifications represents different aspects of black holes and black hole evolution. WR124 is an extremely bright, short-lived massive star known as a Wolf-Rayet that may collapse into a black hole in the future. SS 433 is a binary, or double system, containing a star like our Sun in orbit with either a neutron star or a black hole. The galaxy Centaurus A has an enormous black hole in its center that is sending a booming jet across the entire length of the galaxy. Data from Chandra and other telescopes were translated through a process called “sonification” into sounds and notes. This new trio of sonifications represents different aspects of black holes. Black holes are neither static nor monolithic. They evolve over time, and are found in a range of sizes and environments.
WR 124
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: (Herschel) ESA/NASA/Caltech, (Spitzer) NASA/JPL/Caltech, (WISE) NASA/JPL/Caltech; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida) The first movement is a prelude to the potential birth of a black hole. WR124 is an extremely bright, short-lived massive star known as a Wolf-Rayet at a distance of about 28,000 light-years from Earth. These stars fling their outer layers out into space, creating spectacular arrangements seen in an image in infrared light from the Webb telescope. In the sonification of WR124, this nebula is heard as flutes and the background stars as bells. At the center of WR124, where the scan begins before moving outward, is a hot core of the star that may explode as a supernova and potentially collapse and leave behind a black hole in its wake. As the scan moves from the center outward, X-ray sources detected by Chandra are translated into harp sounds. Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is heard as metallic bell-like sounds, while the light of the central star is mapped to produce the descending scream-like sound at the beginning. The piece is rounded out by strings playing additional data from the infrared telescopic trio of ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Herschel Space Telescope, NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, and NASA’s retired Wide Image Survey Explorer (WISE) as chords.
SS 433
Credit: X-ray: (IXPE): NASA/MSFC/IXPE; (Chandra): NASA/CXC/SAO; (XMM): ESA/XMM-Newton; IR: NASA/JPL/Caltech/WISE; Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/VLA/B. Saxton. (IR/Radio image created with data from M. Goss, et al.); Image Processing/compositing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk & K. Arcand; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida) In the second movement of this black hole composition, listeners can explore a duet. SS 433 is a binary, or double, system about 18,000 light-years away that sings out in X-rays. The two members of SS 433 include a star like our Sun in orbit around a much heavier partner, either a neutron star or a black hole. This orbital dance causes undulations in X-rays that Chandra, IXPE, and ESA’s XMM-Newton telescopes are tuned into. These X-ray notes have been combined with radio and infrared data to provide a backdrop for this celestial waltz. The nebula in radio waves resembles a drifting manatee, and the scan sweeps across from right to left. Light towards the top of the image is mapped to higher-pitch sound, with radio, infrared, and X-ray light mapped to low, medium, and high pitch ranges. Bright background stars are played as water-drop sounds, and the location of the binary system is heard as a plucked sound, pulsing to match the fluctuations due to the orbital dance.
Centarus A
Credit: X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/SAO, (IXPE) NASA/MSFC; Optical: ESO; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, J. Major, and J. Schmidt; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida) The third and final movement of the black hole-themed sonifications crescendos with a distant galaxy known as Centaurus A, about 12 million light-years away from Earth. At the center of Centaurus A is an enormous black hole that is sending a booming jet across the entire length of the galaxy. Sweeping around clockwise from the top of the image, the scan encounters Chandra’s X-rays and plays them as single-note wind chimes. X-ray light from IXPE is heard as a continuous range of frequencies, producing a wind-like sound. Visible light data from the European Southern Observatory’s MPG telescope shows the galaxy’s stars that are mapped to string instruments including foreground and background objects as plucked strings.
For more NASA sonifications and information about the project, visit https://chandra.si.edu/sound/
These sonifications were led by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC), with support from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA’s Universe of Learning program, which is part of the NASA Science Activation program. The collaboration was driven by visualization scientist Kimberly Arcand (CXC), astrophysicist Matt Russo, and musician Andrew Santaguida (both of the SYSTEM Sounds project), along with consultant Christine Malec.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts. NASA’s Universe of Learning materials are based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The agency’s IXPE is a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. The IXPE mission is led by Marshall. BAE Systems, Inc., headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.
To learn more about NASA’s space telescopes, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/universe
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release features three sonifications related to black holes, presented as soundtracks to short videos. Each sonification video features a composite image representing a different aspect of the life of a black hole. These images are visualizations of data collected by NASA telescopes. During each video, a line sweeps through the image. When the line encounters a visual element, it is translated into sound according to parameters established by visualization scientist Kimberly Arcand, astrophysicist Matt Russo, musician Andrew Santaguida, and consultant Christine Malec.
The first sonification features WR124, an extremely bright, massive star. Here, the star is shown in a short-lived phase preceding the possible creation of a black hole. At the center of the composite image is the large gleaming star in white and pale blue. The star sits at the heart of a mottled pink and gold cloud, its long diffraction spikes extending to the outer edges. Also residing in the cloud are other large gleaming stars, glowing hot-pink dots, and tiny specks of blue and white light. In this sonification, the sound activation line is an ever-expanding circle which starts in the center of the massive star and continues to grow until it exits the frame.
The second sonification features SS 433, a binary star system at the center of a supernova remnant known as the Manatee Nebula. Visually, the translucent, blobby teal nebula does, indeed, resemble a bulbous walrus or manatee, floating in a red haze packed with distant specs of light. Inside the nebula is a violet streak, a blue streak, and a large bright dot. The dot, represented by a plucking sound in the sonification, is the binary system at the heart of the nebula. In this sonification, the vertical activation line begins at our right edge of the frame, and sweeps across the image before exiting at our left.
The third and final sonification features Centaurus A, a distant galaxy with an enormous black hole emitting a long jet of high-energy particles. The black hole sits at the center of the composite image, represented by a brilliant white light. A dark, grainy, oblong cloud cuts diagonally across the black hole from our lower left toward our upper right. A large, faint, translucent blue cloud stretches from our upper left to our lower right. And the long, thin jet, also in translucent blue, extends from the black hole at the center toward the upper lefthand corner. In this sonification, the activation line rotates around the image like the hand of a clock. It begins at the twelve o’clock position, and sweeps clockwise around the image.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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Last Updated May 08, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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