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Hubble Movie Shows Movement of Light Echo Around Exploded Star
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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 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.
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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 01, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. C. Ho, D. Thilker Today’s rather aquatic-themed NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy Messier 77, also known as the Squid Galaxy, which sits 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale).
The designation Messier 77 comes from the galaxy’s place in the famous catalog compiled by the French astronomer Charles Messier. Another French astronomer, Pierre Méchain, discovered the galaxy in 1780. Both Messier and Méchain were comet hunters who cataloged nebulous objects that could be mistaken for comets.
Messier, Méchain, and other astronomers of their time mistook the Squid Galaxy for either a spiral nebula or a star cluster. This mischaracterization isn’t surprising. More than a century would pass between the discovery of the Squid Galaxy and the realization that the ‘spiral nebulae’ scattered across the sky were not part of our galaxy but were in fact separate galaxies millions of light-years away. The Squid Galaxy’s appearance through a small telescope — an intensely bright center surrounded by a fuzzy cloud — closely resembles one or more stars wreathed in a nebula.
The name ‘Squid Galaxy’ is recent, and stems from the extended, filamentary structure that curls around the galaxy’s disk like the tentacles of a squid. The Squid Galaxy is a great example of how advances in technology and scientific understanding can completely change our perception of an astronomical object — and even what we call it!
Hubble previously released an image of M77 in 2013. This new image incorporates recent observations made with different filters and updated image processing techniques which allow astronomers to see the galaxy in more detail.
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
https://youtu.be/63uNNcCpxHI How are we made of star stuff?
Well, the important thing to understand about this question is that it’s not an analogy, it’s literally true.
The elements in our bodies, the elements that make up our bones, the trees we see outside, the other planets in the solar system, other stars in the galaxy. These were all part of stars that existed well before our Sun and Earth and solar system were even formed.
The universe existed for billions of years before we did. And all of these elements that you see on the periodic table, you see carbon and oxygen and silicon and iron, the common elements throughout the universe, were all put there by previous generations of stars that either blew off winds like the Sun blows off a solar wind, or exploded in supernova explosions and thrust their elements throughout the universe.
These are the same things that we can trace with modern telescopes, like the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These are all elements that we can map out in the universe with these observatories and trace back to the same things that form us and the elemental abundances that we see in stars now are the same things that we see in the Earth’s crust, we see in asteroids. And so we know that these are the same elements that were once part of these stars.
So the question of, “How are we made of star stuff?”, in the words of Carl Sagan, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]
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Last Updated Apr 28, 2025 Related Terms
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Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Searching for the Dark in the Light
The Perseverance rover acquired this image of the “Hare Bay” abrasion patch using its SHERLOC WATSON camera (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, and the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. This image was acquired on April 18, 2025 (Sol 1479, or Martian day 1,479 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 12:53:57. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University
Perseverance has been busy exploring lower “Witch Hazel Hill,” an outcrop exposed on the edge of the Jezero crater rim. The outcrop is composed of alternating light and dark layers, and naturally, the team has been trying to understand the makeup of and relationships between the light and dark layers. A few weeks ago, we sampled one of the light-toned layers, which we discovered was made up of very small clasts, or fragments of rocks or minerals, at “Main River.” Since then, we have learned that the dark layers tend to be composed of larger clasts compared to the light layers, and we’ve been searching for a place to sample this coarser-grained rock type. Sometimes, these coarser-grained rocks also contain spherules, which are of great interest to the science team because they provide clues about the process that formed these layered rocks.
Perseverance first looked at a dark layer at “Puncheon Rock” with an abrasion. We then examined a dark layer at “Wreck Apple,” near “Sally’s Cove,” but we could not identify a suitable surface to abrade. So, while team members searched for other locations to study the coarse-grained units and spherules, Perseverance drove south to “Port Anson.”
Perseverance acquired this image of the “Strong Island” workspace near Port Anson using its onboard Front Left Hazard Avoidance Camera A (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/rover-components/#eyes). This image was acquired on April 12, 2025 (Sol 1473, or Martian day 1,473 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 12:50:32. NASA/JPL-Caltech Port Anson was intriguing because, from orbit, it showed a clear contact between the light layers of Witch Hazel Hill and a distinct unit below it. And, although the rocks below the Port Anson contact do show interesting compositional differences with those of Witch Hazel Hill, they weren’t the coarse-grained rocks we were looking for. We still performed an abrasion there, at Strong Island, before driving back up north for another attempt at investigating the coarser-grained rocks.
We aimed for “Pine Pond,” which neighbors “Dennis Pond,” to abrade at “Hare Bay.” With the data just coming down over the weekend, the team will be hard at work to figure out if we captured the coarse grains and spherules, and if it is representative of rocks we have seen before or not. The image below is a close-up of this most recent abrasion patch at Hare Bay — what do you think? Stay tuned to find out!
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Last Updated Apr 25, 2025 Related Terms
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster Messier 72 (M72).ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto, M. Libralato As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, the European Space Agency (ESA) shared new images that revisited stunning, previously released Hubble targets with the addition of the latest Hubble data and new processing techniques.
ESA/Hubble released new images of NGC 346, the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Eagle Nebula earlier in the month. Now they are revisiting the star cluster Messier 72 (M72).
M72 is a collection of stars, formally known as a globular cluster, located in the constellation Aquarius roughly 50,000 light-years from Earth. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters their regular, spherical shape. There are roughly 150 known globular clusters associated with the Milky Way galaxy.
The striking variety in the color of the stars in this image of M72, particularly compared to the original image, results from the addition of ultraviolet observations to the previous visible-light data. The colors indicate groups of different types of stars. Here, blue stars are those that were originally more massive and have reached hotter temperatures after burning through much of their hydrogen fuel; the bright red objects are lower-mass stars that have become red giants. Studying these different groups help astronomers understand how globular clusters, and the galaxies they were born in, initially formed.
Pierre Méchain, a French astronomer and colleague of Charles Messier, discovered M72 in 1780. It was the first of five star clusters that Méchain would discover while assisting Messier. They recorded the cluster as the 72nd entry in Messier’s famous collection of astronomical objects. It is also one of the most remote clusters in the catalog.
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