tagged w/ Hubble Telescope
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Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have
uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development.
It is the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early
universe.Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have
uncovered a cluster of... more
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What this day sounded like in 1999.
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ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2011) — Galaxies are thought to develop by the gravitational attraction between and merger of smaller 'sub-galaxies', a process that standard cosmological ideas suggest should be ongoing. But new data from a team of scientists from Liverpool John Moores University directly challenges this idea, suggesting that the growth of some of the most massive objects stopped 7 billion years ago when the Universe was half its present age. On April 18 team member Claire Burke presented their work at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2011) in Llandudno, Wales.
How galaxies form and then evolve is still a major unanswered question in astronomy. The sub-galaxy units thought to have merged to make galaxies, are themselves associated with fluctuations in the density of material in the cosmos left over from the Big Bang and seen today as temperature 'ripples' in the cosmic background radiation.
To study galaxy evolution, the team, which also included Professor Chris Collins and Dr John Stott (now at the University of Durham) looked at the most massive galaxies in the Universe, known as Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) and so called because of their location at the centre of galaxy clusters, structures that typically contain hundreds of galaxies.
In the nearby Universe BCGs are elliptical in shape and are the largest, most uniform and most massive class of galaxies observed, with each galaxy having a mass equivalent to up to 100 trillion (100 million million) Suns. Like smaller elliptical galaxies, BCGs are composed of old red stars and are thought to have formed through mergers of the dense population of sub-galaxies that were found in the centre of galaxy clusters. By studying how BCGs grow in size gives an insight into the formation and evolution of galaxies in general.ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2011) — Galaxies are thought to develop by the... more
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope image captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth. Hubble was launched April 24, 1990.
Many beautiful pictures and explanations at the link.........
http://refreshingnews9.blogspot.com/2010/12/pictures-of-year-2010-space-hubble.htmlNASA's Hubble Space Telescope image captures the chaotic activity atop a... more
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This year was the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope...and she still amazes.
Here are one writer's favourites from among the Hubble photographs NASA released this year; more can be seen in the Abrams book “Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time,” created in collaboration with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2010/12/nasa.htmlThis year was the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope...and she still... more
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A tiny faint dot in a Hubble picture has been confirmed as the most distant galaxy ever detected in the Universe.
This collection of stars is so far away its light has taken more than 13 billion years to arrive at Earth.
Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to follow up the Hubble observation and make the necessary detailed measurements.
They tell the journal Nature that we are seeing the galaxy as it was just 600 million years after the Big Bang.
"If you look at the object in the Hubble image, it really isn't much," said Dr Matt Lehnert of the Observatoire de Paris, France, and lead author on the Nature paper
"We really don't know much about it, but it looks like it is quite small - much, much smaller than our own Milky Way Galaxy. It's probably got only a tenth to a hundredth of the stars in the Milky Way. And that's part of the difficulty in observing it - if it's not big, it's not bright," he told BBC News.
cientists are very keen to probe these great distances because they will learn how the early Universe evolved, and that will help them explain why the cosmos looks the way it does now.
In particular, they want to see more evidence for the very first populations of stars. These hot, blue giants would have grown out of the cold neutral gas that pervaded the young cosmos.
These behemoths would have burnt brilliant but brief lives, producing the very first heavy elements.
They would also have "fried" the neutral gas around them - ripping electrons off atoms - to produce the diffuse intergalactic plasma we still detect between nearby stars today.
So, apart from its status as a record-breaker, the newly discovered Hubble galaxy, classified as UDFy-38135539, is of keen interest because it is embedded directly in this time period - the "epoch of re-ionisation", as astronomers call it.
The galaxy was one of several interesting candidates identified in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) image of the Fornax Constellation acquired with the telescope's new Wide Field Camera 3 last year.
As a source of light, it barely registers on the Hubble picture which was made from an exposure lasting 48 hours.
More @ Link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11580789A tiny faint dot in a Hubble picture has been confirmed as the most distant galaxy... more
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The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world.... more
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Hubble has observed more than 30,000 celestial targets and amassed more than a half-million pictures in its archive, see some of them...Hubble has observed more than 30,000 celestial targets and amassed more than a... more
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Spurned Pluto is changing its looks, donning more rouge in its complexion and altering its iceball surface here and there.
Color astronomers surprised.
Newly released Hubble Space Telescope photos show the distant one-time planet - demoted to "dwarf planet" status in 2006 - is changing color and its ice sheets are shifting.
The photos, released by NASA Thursday, paint a Pluto that is significantly redder than it had been for the past several decades. To the layman, it has a yellow-orange hue, but astronomers say it has about 20 percent more red than it used to have.
The pictures show icy frozen nitrogen on Pluto's surface growing and shrinking, brightening in the north and darkening in the south. Astronomers say Pluto's surface is changing more than the surfaces of other bodies in the solar system. That's unexpected because a season lasts 120 years in some regions of Pluto.
"It's a little bit of a surprise to see these changes happening so big and so fast," said astronomer Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "This is unprecedented."
From 1954 to 2000, Pluto didn't change in color when it was photographed from Earth. But after that, it did. The red levels increased by 20 percent, maybe up to 30 percent, and stabilized from about 2000 to 2002, Buie said. It's not as red as Mars, however, Buie said.
Buie said he can explain the redness, but not why it changed so dramatically and so recently. The planet has a lot of methane, which contains carbon and hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen gets stripped off by solar winds and other factors, leaving carbon-rich areas on the surface, which tend to be red and dark.
The Hubble photos were taken in 2002 and the analysis took a few years. But why Pluto changed so quickly was such a mystery that Buie held off for years on announcing what he had found, worried that he might be wrong. However, since Pluto's moon Charon hadn't changed color in the same telescope images, he decided the Pluto findings weren't an instrument mistake.
His analysis also found that nitrogen ice was shifting in size and density in surprising ways. It's horribly cold on Pluto with, paradoxically, the bright spots being the coldest at about -382 degrees Fahrenheit. Astronomers are still arguing about the temperatures of the warm dark spots, which Buie believes may be 30 degrees warmer than the darker areas.
Part of the difficulty in figuring out what is going on with Pluto is that it takes the dwarf planet 248 years to circle the sun, so astronomers don't know what conditions are like when it's is farthest from the sun. The last time Pluto was at its farthest point was in 1870, which was decades before Pluto was discovered. Unlike Earth, Pluto's four seasons aren't equal lengths of time.
Buie's explanation makes sense, said retired NASA astronomer Stephen Maran, co-author of a book on Pluto. "Pluto is interesting and poorly understood, whether it qualifies as a planet or not," he said.Spurned Pluto is changing its looks, donning more rouge in its complexion and altering... more
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really amazing composite image of the Milky Way released by NASA. They combined infra red, visible, and x-ray images taken by Spitzer, Hubble, and Chandra to create one beautiful image to commemorate the 400 years since 1609, when Galileo looked up.
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/milkyway_heart.htmlreally amazing composite image of the Milky Way released by NASA. They combined infra... more
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Check out these really beautiful images. Breathtaking!
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what happens when we can see past "the big bang"?
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Even though it's in the middle of a post-makeover checkout, the Hubble Space Telescope was turned toward Jupiter this week to capture a picture of the bruise left behind by a comet or asteroid - and it's a real beaut of a shiner.
Hubble's view, captured by its brand-new Wide Field Camera 3 on Thursday, is the sharpest visible-light image of the impact site, which was first seen by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on Sunday and has been changing day by day. The picture also represents Hubble's first science observation since it was upgraded during May's final servicing mission by the space shuttle Atlantis' crew.
"This is just one example of what Hubble's new, state-of-the-art camera can do, thanks to the STS-125 astronauts and the entire Hubble team," Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in an image advisory released today. "However, the best is yet to come!"
The team behind the observations was led by Space Science Institute astronomer Heidi Hammel. In the advisory, Hammel said the imagery "has revealed an astonishing wealth of data" about the impact site.Even though it's in the middle of a post-makeover checkout, the Hubble Space... more
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The Hubble Space Telescope was repaired and enhanced during the STS-125 mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Launched on May 11, 2009, the 11 day mission included some five spacewalks to make repairs and upgrades to the telescope, leaving it more capable and hopefully prepared to last another five years.
This educational video will explain astronomy for kids in a fun and engaging style with exciting computer animation and breath-taking images from the Hubble Telescope.The Hubble Space Telescope was repaired and enhanced during the STS-125 mission of... more
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The ten most important scientific discoveries that the Hubble made possible, and the amazing images to go with themThe ten most important scientific discoveries that the Hubble made possible, and the... more
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The Wide Field Camera 3 will let Hubble look deeper into space and further back in time than ever before. Dave Mosher gets the details on the telescope's newest eyes. Jorge Ribas produces.The Wide Field Camera 3 will let Hubble look deeper into space and further back in... more
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In an orbital first, astronauts opened up and installed new electronics on one of the Hubble Space Telescope's most important instruments on Saturday. But NASA must now wait for the results of a battery of tests to see if the ambitious repair job was a success.
The space shuttle Atlantis is currently orbiting Earth on an 11-day mission to refurbish Hubble and extend its life until at least 2014. This is the fifth and last mission to service the telescope, which NASA hopes will leave Hubble with its best vision yet.
After two days of spacewalks that ran over-schedule, astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel made short work of the repair of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), expected to be one of the most challenging tasks of the mission.In an orbital first, astronauts opened up and installed new electronics on one of the... more
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HOUSTON – Atlantis' astronauts suited up Sunday for their second in-orbit repair of a dead science instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope in as many days.
This time, Michael Massimino and Michael Good were going to venture out of space shuttle Atlantis to try to fix a long-dead spectrograph. The day before, two other spacewalkers fixed a camera.
As spacewalk preparations were under way Sunday morning, Mission Control notified the astronauts that testing had confirmed that two of the science channels on the repaired camera were working again. A third was not.
But the wide-field channel that was resuscitated is "the real workhorse" and carries 95 percent of the science output, Mission Control noted. "Fantastic! Power is restored," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, the chief Hubble handyman who made the camera repairs.
NASA officials hoped Sunday's spacewalk would be just as successful. Once outdoors, Massimino will have to remove 117 screws from the failed spectrograph, and he can't let any float away. It's a repair job that was not part of the scientific instrument's design, so NASA had to make dozens of special tools.
The light-separating device makes a fingerprint of cosmic objects. It is good for finding black holes and examining the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system.
This will be the fourth spacewalk for the Atlantis astronauts, leaving just one more before it's time to set the better-than-ever Hubble free. No further repair missions are planned for the 19-year-old observatory, which NASA expects to keep operating for another five to 10 years.HOUSTON – Atlantis' astronauts suited up Sunday for their second in-orbit... more
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The Top 10 Weirdest Things in Space: Weird and strange things in theuniverse
Space is full of strange and often poorly understood things, from all-consuming black holes to exploding stars, from objects so dense a teaspoonful weighs a billion tons to empty "space" that may not be empty after all.
With 2001 promising to be a stellar year for space discovery, SPACE.com asked leading scientists to help us put together a list of the Top 10 Weirdest Things in Space.
Then we asked you to vote, and we've ordered the Top 10 based on the results.
Some of these objects and phenomena are pretty well understood. Others are complete mysteries. All of them remind us of the strange wonder of the cosmos.The Top 10 Weirdest Things in Space: Weird and strange things in theuniverse... more
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