Today, Neptune has arrived at the same location in space where it was discovered nearly 165 years ago. To commemorate the event, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken "anniversary pictures" of the blue-green giant planet.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away.
A team of scientists studying the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, have pieced together the cluster's complex and violent history using telescopes in space and on the ground, including Hubble, VLT, Subaru, and Chandra.
Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. This image was taken in July 2010 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
Peering deep into the star-filled, ancient hub of our Milky Way, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found a rare class of oddball stars called blue stragglers, the first time such objects have been detected within our galaxy's bulge. Blue stragglers are so named because they seem to be lagging behind in their rate of aging compared with nearby older stars.
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. In commemoration of this landmark observation, astronomers with the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubble Heritage Project partnered with the American Association of Variable Star Observers to study the star. The observations are being presented today at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Boston, Mass.
The Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 has taken an image of galaxy NGC 4214. This galaxy glows brightly with young stars and gas clouds, and is an ideal laboratory to study star formation and evolution.
Late last year, astronomers noticed an asteroid named Scheila had unexpectedly brightened, and it was sporting short-lived plumes. Data from NASA's Swift satellite and Hubble Space Telescope show these changes likely occurred after Scheila was struck by a much smaller asteroid.
To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273.
NASA's Swift satellite, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to study one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts ever observed. More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from its location.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) announces today the selection of 17 new candidates for the Hubble Fellowship Program. This is one of the three prestigious postdoctoral fellowship programs funded by NASA. The other programs are the Sagan and the Einstein Fellowships. STScI administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have ruled out an alternate theory on the nature of dark energy after recalculating the expansion rate of the universe to unprecedented accuracy.
The "Dark Matter" 2011 May Symposium takes place May 2-5 at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md. and covers a wide range of topics in the areas of both astrophysics and particle physics. Journalists who wish to register should visit http://www.stsci.edu/institute/conference/spring2011 .
Adam Riess, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and a professor in physics and astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University, today was awarded the 2011 Einstein Medal by the Albert Einstein Society, located in Bern, Switzerland. The Society recognized him for leadership in the High-z Supernova Search Team's 1998 discovery that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, a phenomenon widely attributed to a mysterious, unexplained "dark energy" filling the universe. Riess will receive the medal at a ceremony in Bern in May 2011.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). This image was taken in 2010 through four different filters on Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Wavelengths range from ultraviolet light through visible light to near-infrared light.
Astronomers have pushed NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what is likely to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe.
These images by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show off two dramatically different face-on views of the spiral galaxy M51, dubbed the Whirlpool Galaxy. The images will be presented on Jan. 13, 2011, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Wash.
In a presentation at the American Astronomical Society meeting this week and a related paper in the current issue of the journal Nature, researchers using Hubble Space Telescope archival data say that as many as 20 percent of the most distant galaxies currently detected appear brighter than they actually are, because of an effect called "strong gravitational lensing."
A mysterious, glowing, green blob of gas is floating in space near a spiral galaxy. Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered delicate filaments of gas and a pocket of young star clusters in the giant object called Hanny's Voorwerp, which is the size of our Milky Way galaxy. These results will be presented at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Jan. 10, 2011.
Studying the light from 215,000 dwarfs collected in observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers found 100 stellar flares. The observations, taken over a seven-day period, constitute the largest continuous monitoring of red dwarf stars ever undertaken. These results will be presented on Jan. 10, 2011, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Wash.
A delicate sphere of gas, imaged by the Hubble telescope, floats serenely in the depths of space. The pristine bubble is the result of gas being shocked by the expanding blast wave from a supernova. Called SNR 0509-67.5, the bubble is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy 160,000 light-years from Earth.
Elliptical galaxies were once thought to be aging star cities whose star-making heyday was billions of years ago. But new Hubble Space Telescope observations show that ellipticals still have some youthful vigor left, thanks to encounters with smaller galaxies. Hubble’s near-ultraviolet images of the core of NGC 4150 reveal streamers of dust and gas and clumps of young, blue stars that are significantly less than a billion years old.
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope received a boost from a cosmic magnifying glass to construct one of the sharpest maps of dark matter in the universe. They used Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys to chart the invisible matter in the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689, located 2.2 billion light-years away. The cluster contains about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars.
Analyzing archived images of globular star cluster Omega Centauri taken over a four-year period by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers have made the most accurate measurements yet of the motions of more than 100,000 cluster inhabitants, the largest survey to date to study the movement of stars in any cluster.
Though the universe is chock full of spiral-shaped galaxies, no two look exactly the same. This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope imaged this galaxy between March 2000 and August 2009.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first snapshots of a suspected asteroid collision. The images show a bizarre X-shaped object at the head of a comet-like trail of material. In January, astronomers began using Hubble to track the object for five months. They thought they had witnessed a fresh asteroid collision, but were surprised to learn the collision occurred in early 2009.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of the large asteroid Vesta that will help scientists refine plans for the Dawn spacecraft's rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011. Scientists have constructed a video from the images that will help improve pointing instructions for Dawn as it is placed in a polar orbit around Vesta. Analyses of Hubble images revealed a pole orientation, or tilt, of approximately four degrees more to the asteroid's east than scientists previously thought.
If you think global warming is bad, 11 billion years ago there was universal warming. During this period, fierce radiation blasts from active galaxies stunted the growth of some small galaxies for approximately 500 million years. This is the conclusion of a team of astronomers who used the new capabilities of NASA's Hubble Telescope to probe the invisible, remote universe. The team's results will appear in the Oct. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
Hubble Space Telescope observations of comet 103P/Hartley 2, taken on September 25, are helping in the planning for a November 4 flyby of the comet by NASA's Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI) on NASA's Deep Impact Spacecraft performing the EPOXI mission.
This image is a composite of Hubble Space Telescope observations, taken in 2005 and 2010, of the dark pillars of cool gas and dust in the Carina Nebula region. The immense nebula lies an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Three-dimensional movies of the imaged region are also available.
An international team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has devised a new method for measuring perhaps the greatest puzzle of our universe - dark energy. This mysterious phenomenon, discovered in 1998, is pushing our universe apart at ever-increasing speeds. The team's results appear in the August 20, 2010 issue of the journal Science.
A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices. This natural-color image combines data obtained in 2006, 2007, and 2009.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope report that the hot, blue star HE 0437-5439 has been tossed out of the center of our Milky Way galaxy with enough speed to escape the galaxy's gravitational clutches. The stellar outcast is rocketing through the Milky Way's distant outskirts at 1.6 million miles an hour, high above the galaxy's disk, about 200,000 light-years from the center. The star is destined to roam intergalactic space.
The gas giant exoplanet, dubbed HD 209458b, is orbiting so close to its star that its heated atmosphere is escaping into space. New spectroscopic observations by NASA's Hubble suggest that powerful stellar winds are sweeping the castoff material behind the scorched planet and shaping it into a comet-like tail.
On July 1, the man nicknamed "the Hubble Repairman" became a research professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences in Baltimore, Md. While at Johns Hopkins, John Grunsfeld, who is deputy director at the Space Telescope Science Institute, will continue his research in astrophysics and the development of new technology and systems for space astronomy.
Like a July 4 fireworks display, a young, glittering collection of stars looks like an aerial burst in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust - the raw material for new star formation. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603.
Detailed observations made by the Wide Field Camera 3 on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found an answer to the flash of light seen June 3 on Jupiter. It came from a giant meteor burning up high above Jupiter's cloud tops. The space visitor did not plunge deep enough into the atmosphere to explode and leave behind any telltale cloud of debris, as seen in previous Jupiter collisions.
The Youth for Astronomy and Engineering Program (YAE) will host "Family Night at the Institute" from 6-8pm on July 8 and Aug. 5, 2010 at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md. Free workshops, but registration is required.
NASA Hubble Space Telescope snapshots revealed an impact scar on Jupiter fading from view over several months between July 2009 and November 2009. Based on comparison of Hubble images of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9’s assault on Jupiter in 1994, astronomers say the intruder in the 2009 event may have been a rogue asteroid about 1,600 feet (500 meters) wide. The 2009 images may show for the first time the immediate aftermath of an asteroid striking another planet.
For just over a decade, astronomers have known that three Jupiter-type planets orbit the star Upsilon Andromedae. But to their surprise it's now been discovered that not all planets orbit this star in the same plane, as the major planets in our solar system orbit the Sun. The orbits of two of the planets are inclined by 30 degrees with respect to each other. Such a strange orientation has never before been seen in any other planetary system. The discovery was made by joint observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, and other ground-based telescopes.
The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet, WASP-12b, is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.
A heavy runaway star is rushing away from a nearby stellar nursery at more than 250,000 miles an hour, a speed that will get you to the Moon and back in two hours. The runaway is the most extreme case of a very massive star that has been kicked out of its home by a group of even heftier siblings. Tantalizing clues from three observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope's newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and some old-fashioned detective work, suggest that the star may have traveled about 375 light-years from its suspected home, a giant star cluster called R136.
NASA's best-recognized, longest-lived, and most prolific space observatory zooms past a threshold of 20 years of operation this month. On April 24, 1990, the space shuttle and crew of STS-31 were launched to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope into a low Earth orbit. What followed was one of the most remarkable sagas of the space age. NASA is releasing today a brand new Hubble photo of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula.
Astronomers using Hubble and Gemini have discovered a planet-like object circling a brown dwarf. The companion is the right size for a planet (about 5-10 times Jupiter’s mass). But the object formed in less than 1 million years (about the age of the brown dwarf) and much faster than the predicted time it takes to build planets according to some theories.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., will hold its next annual Spring Symposium "Stellar Populations in the Cosmological Context" on May 3-6, 2010. Science writers who wish to attend the conference must register by April 26.
Max Mutchler, a research and instrument scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., and Noreen Grice, president of You Can Do Astronomy LLC and author of several tactile astronomy books, have created a touchable image of the Hubble Space Telescope's view of the Carina Nebula that is engaging for everyone, regardless of their visual ability.
Science visualization specialists at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore, Md. transformed Hubble Space Telescope 2-D images into 3-D environments to create several groundbreaking astronomy visualizations for the new Imax film "Hubble 3D," which opens today in 40 select Imax theaters worldwide.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) announces its selection of 17 new candidates for the 2010 Hubble Fellowship Program. The awardees pursue research broadly related to NASA's Cosmic Origins Program and will begin their programs this fall.
Astronomers have found the astronomical equivalent of prehistoric life in our intergalactic backyard: a group of small, ancient galaxies that has waited 10 billion years to come together. New images of this foursome by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope offer a window into the universe's formative years when the buildup of large galaxies from smaller building blocks was common.
NASA has released the most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy, mottled, dark molasses-colored world undergoing seasonal surface color and brightness changes.
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