Astronomers report Hubble imaging and spectroscopy of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 clearly show a gas outflow stretching from the galaxy's black hole to a bright star birth region, triggering the already dense cloud into forming clusters of stars.
Over the last 31 years, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has changed the way we view our place in the universe. With more than 1.5 million observations of about 48,000 celestial objects resulting in upwards of 18,000 scientific papers, Hubble has not only revolutionized modern astronomy, but made astronomy relevant, engaging, and accessible for people of all ages.
Researchers will use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to examine three active supermassive black holes – known as quasars – their host galaxies, and their neighborhoods to better detail these distant objects and the conditions of the early universe.
Astronomers using Hubble and radio telescopes have found increasing evidence that the black hole near the center of our Milky Way galaxy periodically awakens, captures a star or gas cloud that falls into it, and then releases powerful beams of radiation and particles.
The Hubble Space Telescope is taking us on the scenic route through the outer Solar System with crisp new images of the gas giants—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Hubble celebrates Halloween with a striking view of the aging red giant star CW Leonis. The orange-red cobweb-like shells are dusty clouds of sooty carbon engulfing the dying star. Bright searchlight beams poke through the dust.
In its first year of operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will join forces with a global collaborative effort to create an image of the area directly surrounding the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
Hubble delivered a ringside seat to a supernova in the very earliest stage of exploding, giving astronomers an unprecedented view of the first moments of a star’s spectacular death.
Hubble Space Telescope observations of Jupiter's icy moon Europa have revealed the presence of persistent water vapor — but mysteriously, only in one hemisphere.
Hubble astronomers have uncovered what appears to be a pair of identical objects that look so weird it took years to determine what they are.
The innermost lane may typically be favored to win a race, but in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the winds in its outermost “lane” are taking the lead! Only Hubble can spot these trends: The observatory acts like a storm tracker for the giant planets in our solar system every year.
In this image, a remote galaxy is greatly magnified and distorted by the effects of gravitationally warped space. After its public release, astronomers used the picture to measure the galaxy's distance of 9.4 billion light-years. This places the galaxy at the peak epoch of star formation in cosmic evolution.
Fast and furious—that’s how six massive galaxies in the early universe lived before they literally ran out of gas, shut down star formation, and died. These images are composites from Hubble and ALMA.
What was our Solar System like as it was forming billions of years ago? We have some basic understanding of planet formation, but we don’t know the details – especially details about the solar system’s early chemical composition, and how it may have changed with time. And how did water make its way to Earth? While we can’t time travel to get the answers, we can detail how other planetary systems are forming right now.
Galaxies change over time, but those changes take millions or billions of years – far longer than the human lifetime. To understand how galaxies evolve, astronomers therefore need to study large numbers of galaxies at various stages. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will revolutionize galaxy studies since it can survey the sky up to thousands of times faster than can be done with Hubble at similar image sharpness (resolution). It will reveal how galaxies assembled and transformed over the history of the universe.
Hubble astronomers are predicting that the fading light from a distant supernova will be rebroadcast in 16 years. This future appearance will be the fourth known view of the same exploded star, dubbed Supernova Requiem.
Astronomers using Hubble have uncovered burned-out stars that look younger than they really are. After the nuclear furnaces at their cores shut down, the stars continue burning leftover hydrogen on their surface.
Astronomers who used the Hubble telescope to watch comet ATLAS disintegrate into a cascade of icy fragments in mid-2020, now believe it came from a parent comet that swung by the Sun 5,000 years ago.
Peering deeply into a huge patch of sky the size of three full Moons, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will undertake an ambitious program to study half a million galaxies. Called COSMOS-Webb, this survey is the largest project Webb will undertake during its first year. With more than 200 hours of observing time, it will build upon previous discoveries to make advances in three particular areas of study. These include revolutionizing our understanding of the Reionization Era; looking for early, fully evolved galaxies; and learning how dark matter evolved with galaxies’ stellar content. With its rapid public release of the data, this survey will be a primary legacy dataset from Webb for scientists worldwide studying galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has just successfully completed the critical design review of the mission’s ground systems, which are spread over multiple institutions including the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. This means the plan for science operations has met all of the design, schedule, and budget requirements. The mission will now proceed to the next phase: building and testing the newly designed systems that will enable planning and scheduling of Roman observations and managing the resulting data.
Located ½-billion miles from the Sun, the water ice on Ganymede's surface is frozen solid in frigid temperatures as low as minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes the ice as hard as rock. Still, a rain of charged particles from the Sun is enough to turn the ice into water vapor at high noon on Ganymede. This is the first time such evidence has been found, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope's spectroscopic observations of aurora on Ganymede spanning two decades. The auroras are used to trace the presence of oxygen, which then is linked to the presence of water molecules sputtering off the surface. Ganymede has a deep ocean located an estimated 100 miles below the surface.
Planetary systems are very busy places. In addition to the planets orbiting their host star, planetary systems are chock full of dust and other fragments left over from planet formation – a debris disk. Our own solar system includes the Kuiper Belt, which begins beyond Neptune. Younger systems, though, are a bit less “organized.” Take Beta Pictoris, a planetary system only 63 light-years away with a mature star, at least two planets, and the first comets discovered outside our solar system. Although researchers have observed it with powerful space- and ground-based telescopes since the 1980s, there’s still a lot we don’t yet know about its overall makeup. That’s why researchers will study the dusty disk of Beta Pictoris with Webb to better map out its dusty contents.
These early snapshots demonstrate Hubble's return to full science operations, following correction of a computer anomaly aboard the spacecraft. Normal science observations were restarted on July 17, at 1:18 pm EDT.
Outshining all the stars in their host galaxies combined, quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe. These brilliant, distant and active supermassive black holes shape the galaxies in which they reside. Shortly after its launch, scientists will use Webb to study six of the most far-flung and luminous quasars, along with their host galaxies, in the very young universe. They will examine what part quasars play in galaxy evolution during these early times. The team will also use the quasars to study the gas in the space between galaxies in the infant universe. Only with Webb’s extreme sensitivity to low levels of light and its superb angular resolution will this be possible. Shortly after its launch later this year, a team of scientists will train NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on six of the most distant and luminous quasars. They will study the properties of these quasars and their host galaxies, and how they are interconnected during the first stages of galaxy evolutio
Hubble astronomers say they confirmed that an oddball galaxy mysteriously lacks dark matter—the glue that holds stars and gas together in galaxies. This confirmation challenges the standard ideas of how researchers think galaxies work.
Researchers used the giant W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to observe a nearby brown dwarf in infrared light. They found that the dwarf’s atmosphere has a layer-cake structure with clouds of different composition at different altitudes.
The magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 2276 looks a bit lopsided in this Hubble Space Telescope snapshot. A bright hub of older yellowish stars normally lies directly in the center of most spiral galaxies. But the bulge in NGC 2276 looks offset to the upper left.
Astronomers are on the trail of one of the universe's most enigmatic events: powerful bursts of radio waves that disappear in the blink of an eye. Using Hubble, they have traced the radio bursts to the spiral arms of distant galaxies.
The Orion Bar is a ridge-like feature of gas and dust that is being sculpted by the intense radiation from neighboring, hot, young stars. In reality, the Orion Bar is not really a “bar” at all. Instead, it contains a lot of structure and several distinct zones. For the first time, Webb will be able to separate and study these different zones’ physical conditions.
Researchers using Hubble directly measured the mass growth rate of PDS 70b for the first time by using the observatory’s unique ultraviolet sensitivities to capture radiation from extremely hot gas falling onto the planet.
Hubble is marking its 31st anniversary in orbit with this image of a "celebrity star." AG Carinae is one of the brightest stars seen in our Milky Way galaxy, encircled by a glowing halo of gas and dust.
Webb will probe the atmospheres of nearby known exoplanets, such as HR 8799 and 51 Eridani b, at infrared wavelengths. Webb also will hunt for other distant worlds—possibly down to Saturn-size—on the outskirts of planetary systems that cannot be detected with ground-based telescopes.
The Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The institute is home of science operations for the Hubble Space Telescope, and mission and science operations for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
Astronomers are “seeing double,” uncovering two close pairs of ancient quasars that reside at the centers of merging galaxies. These brilliant light beacons are powered by supermassive black holes feeding on material, unleashing a torrent of radiation.
On Monday, April 19, 2021, journalists are invited to attend a virtual workshop for science writers on characterizing planets orbiting other stars. The workshop is hosted by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.
NASA has selected 24 new Fellows for its prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP). The NHFP is one of the highlights of NASA's pursuit of excellence in astrophysics. The program enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observation, experimentation, or instrument development. Over 400 applicants vied for the fellowships. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support.
Mission officials for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have announced the selection of the General Observer programs for the telescope’s first year, known as Cycle 1. The 286 selected proposals address a wide variety of science areas, such as seeking to find the first galaxies, exploring the formation of stars, and measuring physical and chemical properties of planetary systems, including our own solar system. The selection process, conducted by the Telescope Allocation Committee comprised of nearly 200 members of the worldwide astronomical community, spanned several weeks.
These four Hubble images reveal the chaotic birth of stars in the Orion complex, the nearest major star-forming region to Earth. Astronomers found that the cavities in the surrounding gas cloud sculpted by a forming star's outflow did not grow regularly as they matured, as theories propose.
Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will map and model the core of nearby galaxy Centaurus A.
Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity.
Hubble astronomers are investigating the dimming of one of the most colossal stars ever seen, VY Canis Majoris. Big enough to swallow our solar system out to Saturn’s orbit, the faded star is expelling huge dust clouds late in its life.
Hubble snapped this image of the young comet-like object P/2019 LD2 as it orbits near Jupiter’s captured ancient asteroids, which are called Trojans. The icy object is the first comet astronomers have spotted near the Trojan population.
The combination of high resolution and infrared-detecting instruments on NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will provide astronomers with a wealth of detailed data on individual stars in the local universe. A team of scientists has developed tests of Webb’s star-resolution capabilities, which will pave the way for future observations and discoveries across many areas of astronomy, including dark energy, the stellar lifecycle, and the evolution of galaxies over cosmic time.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope in their hunt for a massive black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397 found something they weren’t expecting: a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there instead. This is a new twist on the search for intermediate-mass black holes. They are the long-sought “missing link” between supermassive black holes and stellar-mass black holes.
A large, ambitious, deep-sky survey totaling nearly 800 hours of observing time with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will trace the formation and evolution of the first galaxies in what is possibly the cosmos' busiest star-forming period.
Hubble astronomers have retraced the expanding gaseous debris from a nearby exploded star to estimate the location and time of the stellar detonation. Their analysis reveals that the light from the supernova blast reached Earth about 1,700 years ago.
How dark is the sky, and what does that tell us about the number of galaxies in the visible universe? A team of scientists has used observations by NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt to determine the brightness of the cosmic optical background. Their result sets an upper limit to the abundance of faint, unresolved galaxies, showing that there is about twice as much optical light permeating space as can be accounted for by all known galaxies.
In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope stared at a blank patch of the sky for 10 straight days. The resulting Deep Field image captured thousands of previously unseen, distant galaxies. The Roman Space Telescope will be able to photograph an area of sky 100 times larger than Hubble with the same exquisite sharpness. As a result, a Roman Ultra Deep Field would collect millions of galaxies, including hundreds that date back to just a few hundred million years after the big bang.
Forming solar systems are a bit unkempt—a profusion of gas and dust, and an array of molecules orbits a star that's still gathering material. Over time, some of the dust bumps into one another, forming larger and larger particles until planets begin forming. Researchers know quite a bit about the outer regions of these planet-forming disks, but the inner areas, extending about as far as Saturn in our solar system, and the forming planets they may contain aren't yet well studied. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's specialization in mid-infrared light, specifically its collection of data known as spectra, will help researchers model what's going on at the centers of these systems with unprecedented detail.
A giant dark storm on Neptune heading for certain doom at the equator mysteriously halted its journey and began drifting in the opposite direction. Almost simultaneously, another smaller dark spot appeared nearby, only to vanish months later. Hubble astronomers are presenting these findings today at the Fall 2020 American Geophysical Union meeting.
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