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Hubble Reveals Rogue Planetary Orbit for Fomalhaut b
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By NASA
ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Windhorst, W. Keel This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043. We don’t see the galaxy’s spiral arms because we are seeing it from the side. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that we see edge-on.
This edge-on viewpoint makes the galaxy’s disk appear as a sharp line through space, with its prominent dust lanes forming thick bands of clouds that obscure our view of the galaxy’s glow. If we could fly above the galaxy, viewing it from the top down, we would see this dust scattered across UGC 10043, possibly outlining its spiral arms. Despite the dust’s obscuring nature, some active star-forming regions shine out from behind the dark clouds. We can also see that the galaxy’s center sports a glowing, almost egg-shaped ‘bulge’, rising far above and below the disk. All spiral galaxies have a bulge similar to this one as part of their structure. These bulges hold stars that orbit the galactic center on paths above and below the whirling disk; it’s a feature that isn’t normally obvious in pictures of galaxies. The unusually large size of this bulge compared to the galaxy’s disk is possibly due to UGC 10043 siphoning material from a nearby dwarf galaxy. This may also be why its disk appears warped, bending up at one end and down at the other.
Like most full-color Hubble images, this image is a composite, made up of several individual snapshots taken by Hubble at different times, each capturing different wavelengths of light. One notable aspect of this image is that the two sets of data that comprise this image were collected 23 years apart, in 2000 and 2023! Hubble’s longevity doesn’t just afford us the ability to produce new and better images of old targets; it also provides a long-term archive of data which only becomes more and more useful to astronomers.
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By European Space Agency
Launched in May 2024, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite is nearing the end of its commissioning phase with the release of its first data on clouds and aerosols expected early next year. In the meantime, an international team of scientists has found an innovative way of applying artificial intelligence to other satellite data to yield 3D profiles of clouds.
This is particularly news for those eagerly awaiting data from EarthCARE in their quest to advance climate science.
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By European Space Agency
On 1 December 2024, BepiColombo flew past Mercury for the fifth time. During this flyby, BepiColombo became the first spacecraft ever to observe Mercury in mid-infrared light. The new images reveal variations in temperature and composition across the planet's cratered surface.
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Spots a Spiral in the… Hubble Space Telescope 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 Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 2 min read
Hubble Spots a Spiral in the Celestial River
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 1637. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, the River.
This image comes from an observing program dedicated to studying star formation in nearby galaxies. Stars form in cold, dusty gas clouds that collapse under their own gravity. As young stars grow, they heat their nurseries through starlight, winds, and powerful outflows. Together, these factors play a role in controlling the rate at which future generations of stars form.
NGC 1637 holds evidence of star formation scattered throughout its disk, if you know where to look. The galaxy’s spiral arms have pockets of pink clouds, many with bright blue stars. The pinkish color comes from hydrogen atoms excited by ultraviolet light from young, massive stars forming within the clouds. This contrasts with the warm yellow glow of the galaxy’s center, which is home to a densely packed collection of older, redder stars.
The stars that set their cloudy birthplaces aglow are comparatively short-lived, and many of these stars will explode as supernovae just a few million years after they’re born. In 1999, NGC 1637 played host to a supernova named SN 1999EM, lauded as the brightest supernova seen that year. When a massive star expires as a supernova, the explosion outshines its entire home galaxy for a short time. While a supernova marks the end of a star’s life, it can also jump start the formation of new stars by compressing nearby clouds of gas, beginning the stellar lifecycle anew.
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Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Dec 05, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies Stars Supernovae View the full article
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble Takes the… Hubble Space Telescope 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 Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 4 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Takes the Closest-Ever Look at a Quasar
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. Credits:
NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) Astronomers have used the unique capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to peer closer than ever into the throat of an energetic monster black hole powering a quasar. A quasar is a galactic center that glows brightly as the black hole consumes material in its immediate surroundings.
The new Hubble views of the environment around the quasar show a lot of “weird things,” according to Bin Ren of the Côte d’Azur Observatory and Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. “We’ve got a few blobs of different sizes, and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure. This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.”
Some of the objects could be small satellite galaxies falling into the black hole, and so they could offer the materials that will accrete onto the central supermassive black hole, powering the bright lighthouse. “Thanks to Hubble’s observing power, we’re opening a new gateway into understanding quasars,” said Ren. “My colleagues are excited because they’ve never seen this much detail before.”
Quasars look starlike as point sources of light in the sky (hence the name quasi-stellar object). The quasar in the new study, 3C 273, was identified in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt as the first quasar. At a distance of 2.5 billion light-years it was too far away for a star. It must have been more energetic than ever imagined, with a luminosity over 10 times brighter than the brightest giant elliptical galaxies. This opened the door to an unexpected new puzzle in cosmology: What is powering this massive energy production? The likely culprit was material accreting onto a black hole.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. A coronagraph on Hubble blocks out the glare coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar. This allows astronomers to see unprecedented details near the black hole such as weird filaments, lobes, and a mysterious L-shaped structure, probably caused by small galaxies being devoured by the black hole. Located 2.5 billion light-years away, 3C 273 is the first quasar (quasi-stellar object) ever discovered, in 1963. NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) In 1994 Hubble’s new sharp view revealed that the environment surrounding quasars is far more complex than first suspected. The images suggested galactic collisions and mergers between quasars and companion galaxies, where debris cascades down onto supermassive black holes. This reignites the giant black holes that drive quasars.
For Hubble, staring into the quasar 3C 273 is like looking directly into a blinding car headlight and trying to see an ant crawling on the rim around it. The quasar pours out thousands of times the entire energy of stars in a galaxy. One of closest quasars to Earth, 3C 273 is 2.5 billion light-years away. (If it was very nearby, a few tens of light-years from Earth, it would appear as bright as the Sun in the sky!) Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) can serve as a coronagraph to block light from central sources, not unlike how the Moon blocks the Sun’s glare during a total solar eclipse. Astronomers have used STIS to unveil dusty disks around stars to understand the formation of planetary systems, and now they can use STIS to better understand quasars’ host galaxies. The Hubble coronograph allowed astronomers to look eight times closer to the black hole than ever before.
Scientists got rare insight into the quasar’s 300,000-light-year-long extragalactic jet of material blazing across space at nearly the speed of light. By comparing the STIS coronagraphic data with archival STIS images with a 22-year separation, the team led by Ren concluded that the jet is moving faster when it is farther away from the monster black hole.
“With the fine spatial structures and jet motion, Hubble bridged a gap between the small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations, and thus we can take an observational step towards a more complete understanding of quasar host morphology. Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail. In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues,” said Ren.
At least 1 million quasars are scattered across the sky. They are useful background “spotlights” for a variety of astronomical observations. Quasars were most abundant about 3 billion years after the big bang, when galaxy collisions were more common.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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Science Behind the Discoveries: Quasars
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Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contacts:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
Bin Ren
Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, France
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Last Updated Dec 05, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Quasars 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 Night Sky Challenge
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