Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world called Kepler-413b found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, Europe's Herschel Space Observatory, and numerous ground-based telescopes have pieced together the evolutionary sequence of compact elliptical galaxies that erupted and burned out early in the history of the universe.
Michael Hauser, former deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and an adjunct professor in the Johns Hopkins University's Physics and Astronomy Department, will receive the 2014 George Van Biesbroeck Prize from the American Astronomical Society.
This huge Hubble mosaic, spanning a width of 600 light-years, shows a star factory of more the 800,000 stars being born. The stars are embedded inside the Tarantula Nebula, a vibrant region of star birth that resides 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. Hubble's near-infrared sensitivity allows astronomers to see behind clouds of dust in the nebula to unveil where the newborn stars are clustered.
The vibrant magentas and blues in this Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy M83 reveal that the galaxy is ablaze with star formation. The galactic panorama unveils a tapestry of the drama of stellar birth and death. The galaxy, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, lies 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra.
The first of a set of unprecedented, super-deep views of the universe contain images of some of the intrinsically faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected. This is just the first of several primary target fields in The Frontier Fields program. The immense gravity in this foreground galaxy cluster, Abell 2744, warps space to brighten and magnify images of far-more-distant background galaxies as they looked over 12 billion years ago, not long after the big bang.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope joined forces to discover and characterize four unusually bright galaxies as they appeared more than 13 billion years ago, just 500 million years after the big bang. Although Hubble has previously identified galaxies at this early epoch, astronomers were surprised to find objects that are about 10 to 20 times more luminous than anything seen previously.
Scientists have long suspected there must be a hidden population of small, faint galaxies that were responsible during the universe's early years for producing a majority of stars now present in the cosmos. At last Hubble has found them in the deepest ultraviolet-light exposures made of the early universe. This underlying population is 100 times more abundant in the universe than their more massive cousins that were detected previously.
Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., are experimenting with the innovative technology to transform astronomy education by turning images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope into tactile 3-D pictures for people who cannot explore celestial wonders by sight. The 3-D print design is also useful and intriguing for sighted people who have different learning styles.
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have characterized the atmospheres of two of the most common type of planets in the Milky Way galaxy and found both may be blanketed with clouds. The best guess is that the clouds are not like anything found on Earth. Their scorching atmospheres are predicted to be hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit -- too hot for a rainy day.
This festive NASA Hubble Space Telescope image resembles a holiday wreath made of sparkling lights. The bright southern hemisphere star RS Puppis, at the center of the image, is swaddled in a gossamer cocoon of reflective dust illuminated by the glittering star. Hubble took a series of photos of light flashes rippling across the nebula in a phenomenon known as a "light echo."
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found something that Jovian probes may have missed, plumes of water vapor leaking off into space near the Europa's south pole.
The Maryland Academy of Sciences and the Maryland Science Center will present the 2013 Annual Outstanding Young Scientist (OYS) award to Dr. Jason S. Kalirai on Wed., Nov. 20, 2013. Kalirai is the James Webb Space Telescope Project Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and an associate researcher at the Center for Astrophysical Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided the first visual evidence showing how our home galaxy, the Milky Way, assembled itself into the majestic pinwheel of stars we see today. Perusing Hubble's deep-sky surveys, astronomers traced 400 galaxies similar to our Milky Way at various stages of construction over a time span of 11 billion years.
Hubble researchers say they were "literally dumbfounded" when they took a close-up look at P/2013 P5, an object that lives in the asteroid belt but superficially looks like a comet. It has no less than six dust tails that seem to be forming sequentially. The entire structure rotates like a bicycle wheel with spokes on one side.
In an ambitious collaborative program, called The Frontier Fields, NASA's Great Observatories are teaming up to look deeper into the universe than ever before. With a boost from natural "zoom lenses" found in space, they should be able to uncover galaxies that are as much as 100 times fainter than what the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes can typically see. Join several members of the Frontier Fields collaboration during the live Hubble Hangout event at 4:00pm (EDT) on Thursday, October 24 to discuss more on what's to come from these observations, how the clusters were chosen, and what we hope to learn from them.
A new image of the sunward plunging Comet ISON taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on October 9, 2013, suggests that the comet is intact despite some predictions that the fragile icy nucleus might disintegrate as the Sun warms it. The comet will pass closest to the Sun on November 28.
Astronomer Dr. Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has been cited by Baltimore Magazine as one of the "top 40 under 40" up-and-comers in the Baltimore metropolitan region. The 35-year-old Kalirai was selected from several hundred potential candidates to be highlighted in the magazine's October issue.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered the largest known population of globular star clusters, an estimated 160,000, swarming like bees inside the crowded core of the giant grouping of galaxies Abell 1689. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy hosts about 150 such clusters.
The light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust, seen in this Hubble photo, resembles a caterpillar on its way to a feast. Harsh winds from extremely bright stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at this 'wanna-be' star and sculpting the gas and dust into its long shape.
Astronomers have assembled, from more than 13 years of observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a series of time-lapse movies showing a jet of superheated gas — 5,000 light-years long — as it is ejected from a supermassive black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy M87.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy. New Hubble observations reveal that most of this stream was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud some 2 billion years ago, with a smaller portion originating more recently from its larger neighbor.
Probing the location of a recent short-duration gamma-ray burst in near-infrared light, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope found the fading fireball produced in the aftermath of the blast. The afterglow reveals for the first time a new kind of stellar blast called a kilonova.
In this Hubble composite image taken in April 2013, the sun-approaching Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a handful of foreground stars.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have determined the orbital motion of two distinct populations of stars in ancient globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, offering proof they formed at different times and providing a rare look back into the Milky Way galaxy's early days.
Holland Ford, an astronomer at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., has received NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal for his outstanding contributions to the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting the distant blue-green planet Neptune, the 14th known to be circling the giant planet. The moon, designated S/2004 N 1, is estimated to be no more than 12 miles across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptunian system.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have deduced the actual visible-light color of a planet orbiting another star 63 light-years away. If seen directly the planet, known as HD 189733b, would look like a "deep blue dot," reminiscent of Earth's color as seen from space.
Superficially resembling a skyrocket, Comet ISON is hurtling toward the Sun at 48,000 miles per hour. In May 2013, the comet was 403 million miles from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Hubble Space Telescope observed the comet over a 43-minute period. These images were then used to make a 5-second time-lapse video of the comet's journey during that short duration.
This collision between a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy resembles a celestial bird. The gravitational pull has stretched the spiral into an elongated shape. Lying 326 million light-years away, this colliding galaxy pair, known as Arp 142, is captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
The keen vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a mysterious gap in a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust swirling around the nearby star TW Hydrae, located 176 light-years away in the constellation Hydra (the Sea Serpent). The gap's presence is best explained as due to the effects of a growing, unseen planet that is gravitationally sweeping up material and carving out a lane in the disk, like a snow plow.
A flash of light from a stellar outburst has been used by NASA Hubble telescope astronomers to probe for the first time the 3-D structure of material ejected by an erupting nova.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will have two opportunities in the next few years to hunt for Earth-sized planets around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. The opportunities will occur in October 2014 and February 2016 when Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to our Sun, passes in front of two other stars.
When the Hubble picture of ISON was taken on April 10, the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun. Hubble photographed a jet blasting dust particles off the sunward-facing side of the comet's nucleus. Preliminary measurements suggest that ISON's nucleus is no larger than three or four miles across.
Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.
NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) have announced the selection of 17 new Hubble Fellows for 2013. STScI in Baltimore, Md., administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has broken the record in the quest to find the farthest supernova of the type used to measure cosmic distances. The supernova exploded more than 10 billion years ago (redshift 1.914). At that time, the universe was in its early formative years where stars were being born at a rapid rate.
Looking up through hundreds of colored filters and spectral glasses, 526 people shattered the record for the Largest Astronomy Lesson. Under the Texas night sky, students were instructed on the lawn of the Long Center for the Performing Arts at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin on Sunday, March 10, 2013.
A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step closer to finding the birth certificate of a star that's been around for a very long time.The star could be as old as 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 0.8 billion years), which at first glance would make it older than the universe's calculated age of about 13.8 billion years, an obvious dilemma.
The gravitational field surrounding this massive cluster of galaxies, Abell 68, acts as a natural lens in space to brighten and magnify the light coming from very distant background galaxies. In this Hubble photo, the image of a spiral galaxy at upper left has been stretched and mirrored into a shape similar to that of a simulated alien from the classic 1970s computer game Space Invaders!
Peering deep into the vast stellar halo that envelops our Milky Way galaxy, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered tantalizing evidence for the possible existence of a shell of stars that are a relic of cannibalism by our Milky Way.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), will host a spring symposium "Habitable Worlds Across Time and Space" on April 29-May. Journalists should contact Cheryl Gundy ([email protected]) by April 1, if they wish to attend. For more information, visit http://www.stsci.edu/institute/conference/habitable-worlds.
NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have teamed up to uncover a mysterious infant star that behaves like a strobe light.
Working with astronomical image processors at STScI, renowned astrophotographer Robert Gendler has taken science data from the Hubble telescope archive and combined it with his own ground-based observations to assemble a photo illustration of the magnificent spiral galaxy M106.
Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., has been awarded the 2013 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize. This annual prize from the American Astronomical Society is for outstanding achievement in observational astronomy by an astronomer under the age of 36. Kalirai, is 34.
Newly released Hubble Space Telescope images of a vast debris disk encircling the nearby star Fomalhaut, and of a mysterious planet circling it, may provide forensic evidence of a titanic planetary disruption in the system. Astronomers are surprised to find that the debris belt is wider than previously known, spanning a gulf of space from 14 billion miles to nearly 20 billion miles from the star. Even more surprisingly, the latest Hubble images have allowed a team of astronomers to calculate that the planet follows an unusual elliptical orbit that carries it on a potentially destructive path through the vast dust ring.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been providing astounding images of the universe since April 1990 and has led to remarkable discoveries. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the next-generation telescope that will peer even deeper into space and unveil even more mysteries. Both of these extraordinary telescopes are now the topics of two free e-books available from the Apple iBookstore.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have photographed a festive-looking nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. The intricate structure of this bright gaseous nebula resembles a glass-blown holiday ornament with a glowing ribbon entwined.
Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 3 percent of its present age. The deepest images to date from Hubble yield the first statistically robust sample of galaxies that tells how abundant they were close to the era when galaxies first formed. Want to know even more? Join our online webinar and hear three key astronomers illustrate and explain what Hubble’s powerful new view tells us about the evolving universe. Viewers can send in questions for our panel of experts to discuss. The webinar will be broadcast at 1 p.m. Friday, Dec. 14. Join us for this Google Event at the Hubble Space Telescope Google+ page (https://plus.google.com/+hubblespacetelescope/posts), or watch and leave questions at the HubbleSite YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/hubblesitechannel).
Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A illustrate the combined imaging power of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) telescope.
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