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Twin tail revealed in new Hubble image of Didymos-Dimorphos system following DART impact
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By NASA
ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image treats viewers to a wonderfully detailed snapshot of the spiral galaxy NGC 3430 that lies 100 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor. Several other galaxies, located relatively nearby to this one, are just beyond the frame of this image; one is close enough that gravitational interaction is driving some star formation in NGC 3430 — visible as bright-blue patches near to but outside of the galaxy’s main spiral structure. This fine example of a galactic spiral holds a bright core from which a pinwheel array of arms appears to radiate outward. Dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions help define these spiral arms.
NGC 3430’s distinct shape may be one reason why astronomer Edwin Hubble used to it to help define his classification of galaxies. Namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope, Edwin Hubble authored a paper in 1926 that outlined the classification of some four hundred galaxies by their appearance — as either spiral, barred spiral, lenticular, elliptical, or irregular. This straightforward typology proved extremely influential, and the detailed schemes astronomers use today are still based on Edwin Hubble’s work. NGC 3430 itself is a spiral lacking a central bar with open, clearly defined arms — classified today as an SAc galaxy.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick
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By NASA
2 min read
Hubble Images a Classic Spiral
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 3430. ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image treats viewers to a wonderfully detailed snapshot of the spiral galaxy NGC 3430 that lies 100 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor. Several other galaxies, located relatively nearby to this one, are just beyond the frame of this image; one is close enough that gravitational interaction is driving some star formation in NGC 3430 — visible as bright-blue patches near to but outside of the galaxy’s main spiral structure. This fine example of a galactic spiral holds a bright core from which a pinwheel array of arms appears to radiate outward. Dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions help define these spiral arms.
NGC 3430’s distinct shape may be one reason why astronomer Edwin Hubble used to it to help define his classification of galaxies. Namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope, Edwin Hubble authored a paper in 1926 that outlined the classification of some four hundred galaxies by their appearance — as either spiral, barred spiral, lenticular, elliptical, or irregular. This straightforward typology proved extremely influential, and the detailed schemes astronomers use today are still based on Edwin Hubble’s work. NGC 3430 itself is a spiral lacking a central bar with open, clearly defined arms — classified today as an SAc galaxy.
Astronomer Edwin Hubble pioneered the study of galaxies based simply on their appearance. This “Field Guide” outlines Hubble’s classification scheme using images from his namesake telescope. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Miranda Chabot; Lead Writer: Andrea Gianopoulos
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Claire Andreoli
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Last Updated Jul 25, 2024 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.
Hubble’s Galaxies
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By NASA
4 min read
NASA’s Fermi Finds New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet Seen
In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT — the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a feature never seen before.
The brightest gamma-ray burst yet recorded gave scientists a new high-energy feature to study. Learn what NASA’s Fermi mission saw, and what this feature may be telling us about the burst’s light-speed jets. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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“A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention,” said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and affiliated with Brera Observatory, part of INAF (the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics) in Merate, Italy. “When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs.”
A paper about the discovery appears in the July 26 edition of the journal Science.
When matter interacts with light, the energy can be absorbed and reemitted in characteristic ways. These interactions can brighten or dim particular colors (or energies), producing key features visible when the light is spread out, rainbow-like, in a spectrum. These features can reveal a wealth of information, such as the chemical elements involved in the interaction. At higher energies, spectral features can uncover specific particle processes, such as matter and antimatter annihilating to produce gamma rays.
“While some previous studies have reported possible evidence for absorption and emission features in other GRBs, subsequent scrutiny revealed that all of these could just be statistical fluctuations. What we see in the BOAT is different,” said coauthor Om Sharan Salafia at INAF-Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy. “We’ve determined that the odds this feature is just a noise fluctuation are less than one chance in half a billion.”
A jet of particles moving at nearly light speed emerges from a massive star in this artist’s concept. The star’s core ran out of fuel and collapsed into a black hole. Some of the matter swirling toward the black hole was redirected into dual jets firing in opposite directions. We see a gamma-ray burst when one of these jets happens to point directly at Earth. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the cosmos and emit copious amounts of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. The most common type occurs when the core of a massive star exhausts its fuel, collapses, and forms a rapidly spinning black hole. Matter falling into the black hole powers oppositely directed particle jets that blast through the star’s outer layers at nearly the speed of light. We detect GRBs when one of these jets points almost directly toward Earth.
The BOAT, formally known as GRB 221009A, erupted Oct. 9, 2022, and promptly saturated most of the gamma-ray detectors in orbit, including those on Fermi. This prevented them from measuring the most intense part of the blast. Reconstructed observations, coupled with statistical arguments, suggest the BOAT, if part of the same population as previously detected GRBs, was likely the brightest burst to appear in Earth’s skies in 10,000 years.
The putative emission line appears almost 5 minutes after the burst was detected and well after it had dimmed enough to end saturation effects for Fermi. The line persisted for at least 40 seconds, and the emission reached a peak energy of about 12 MeV (million electron volts). For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from 2 to 3 electron volts.
So what produced this spectral feature? The team thinks the most likely source is the annihilation of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.
“When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate, producing a pair of gamma rays with an energy of 0.511 MeV,” said coauthor Gor Oganesyan at Gran Sasso Science Institute and Gran Sasso National Laboratory in L’Aquila, Italy. “Because we’re looking into the jet, where matter is moving at near light speed, this emission becomes greatly blueshifted and pushed toward much higher energies.”
If this interpretation is correct, to produce an emission line peaking at 12 MeV, the annihilating particles had to have been moving toward us at about 99.9% the speed of light.
“After decades of studying these incredible cosmic explosions, we still don’t understand the details of how these jets work,” noted Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists investigate this extreme environment more deeply.”
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by Goddard. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jul 25, 2024 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. While there were hints that the planet existed, it had not been confirmed until Webb imaged it. The planet is one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date.
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By Space Force
The event not only marked the command’s first COR, but also SPACEFOR-INDOPAC’s first official ceremony since it’s activation in November 2022.
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