Astronomers will use the upcoming NASA James Webb Space Telescope to study star birth in the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which contains some of the same conditions that existed in galaxies during the universe’s peak star-formation epoch.
A new website with interactive sliders lets visitors explore the multiwavelength cosmos and learn the secrets that are revealed by going beyond visible light.
Visit the James Webb Space Telescope at its orbit point beyond the Moon, 1 million miles from Earth. Fly through the Orion Nebula and watch a planet-forming disk take shape. Explore the star fields of a simulated galaxy. Or get hands-on and fling stars into a ravenous black hole to watch them spaghettify. All of these encounters are part of the new WebbVR virtual experience.
Over the past 28 years Hubble has photographed innumerable galaxies. One especially photogenic galaxy, M100, was used to demonstrate Hubble’s optical repair that was conducted by space shuttle astronauts 25 years ago this month. This picture flips between Hubble’s first image of the galaxy that was blurry due to a flaw in its primary mirror. The second image shows the galaxy in crystal-clear focus after astronauts installed vision-corrected instruments on Hubble.
Hubble has completed a survey of over 22,000 globular star clusters scattered throughout the giant Coma cluster of galaxies 300 million light-years from Earth. Containing the oldest known stars in the universe, about 150 globular clusters orbit our Milky Way.
November 16 marks the premiere of a unique film and musical experience inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope’s famous Deep Field image. It represents a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Grammy award-winning American composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, producers Music Productions, multi award-winning artists 59 Productions, and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of our Universe features a variety of Hubble’s stunning imagery and includes 11 computer-generated visualizations of far-flung galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters developed by STScI. The film is available on YouTube and will be shared with the world through screenings and live performances around the globe.
Astronomers may have finally uncovered the long-sought progenitor to a specific type of exploding star by sifting through NASA Hubble Space Telescope archival data. The supernova, called a Type Ic, is thought to detonate after its massive star has shed or been stripped of its outer layers of hydrogen and helium.
Young stars, like young children, are messy eaters, swallowing most of the material falling onto them but spitting the rest out. The gas a newborn star fails to eat gets ejected outward at supersonic speeds, creating shock waves that heat the interstellar medium and cause it to glow in infrared light. NASA’s Webb telescope will examine stellar outflows and shocks to learn more about how stars like our sun form.
Deep inside the dusty, messy cores of merging galaxies are pairs of black holes feasting on material and moving closer to coalescence. Near-infrared images by the Hubble and Keck telescopes are giving astronomers their best glimpse yet of this process.
The Kepler spacecraft launched in 2009 with the goal of finding exoplanets orbiting distant stars. In the years since, astronomers have used Kepler observations to discover 2,818 exoplanets as well as another 2,679 exoplanet candidates which need further confirmation. On October 30, 2018 NASA announced that Kepler had run out of fuel and would be decommissioned. While spacecraft operations have ceased, its data will continue to be publicly available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute. These data will enable new scientific discoveries for years to come.
Like a fly that wanders into a flashlight’s beam, a young star’s planet-forming disk is casting a giant shadow, nicknamed the “Bat Shadow.” Hubble’s near-infrared vision captured the shadow of the disk of this fledgling star, which resides nearly 1,300 light-years away in a stellar nursery called the Serpens Nebula. In this Hubble image, the shadow spans approximately 200 times the length of our solar system. It is visible in the upper right portion of the picture. The young star and its disk likely resemble what the solar system looked like when it was only 1 or 2 million years old.
The Hubble telescope has photographed the “Ghost Nebula,” which has eerie, semitransparent flowing veils of gas and dust. The creepy-looking nebula is located 550 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.
Violent outbursts of seething gas from young red dwarf stars may make conditions uninhabitable on the planets that orbit them. Scientists found that flares from the youngest red dwarfs they surveyed are much more energetic than when the stars are older. They also detected one of the most intense stellar flares ever observed in ultraviolet light — more energetic than the most powerful flare from our Sun ever recorded.
Astronomers will use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to measure the mass of the black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 4151.
Using the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes two astronomers have found the first compelling evidence for a moon outside our Solar System. The data indicate an exomoon the size of Neptune, in a stellar system 8,000 light-years from Earth.
Astronomers using Hubble's near-infrared vision to look at nearby neutron star RX J0806.4-4123 were.surprised to see a gush of infrared light coming from a region around the neutron star. That infrared light might come from an 18-billion-mile-across circumstellar disk.
A new Hubble observing campaign, called BUFFALO, will boldly expand the space telescope's view into regions adjacent to huge galaxy clusters previously photographed by the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes under a program called Frontier Fields.
When NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is en route to and in orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, continuous communications with its Mission Operations Center (MOC) in Baltimore will be essential. Recently, at the Space Telescope Science Institute—home of the MOC—Webb’s Flight Operations Team successfully completed two critical communications tests.
Astronomers have just assembled one of the most comprehensive portraits yet of the universe’s evolutionary history, based on a broad spectrum of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground-based telescopes. This photo encompasses a sea of approximately 15,000 galaxies — 12,000 of which are star-forming — widely distributed in time and space. Astronomers using the ultraviolet vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have captured one of the largest panoramic views of the fire and fury of star birth in the distant universe. The field features approximately 15,000 galaxies, about 12,000 of which are forming stars.
Based on new data, researchers suggest that it takes more than a massive outburst to destroy the mammoth star Eta Carinae. The 1840s eruption may have been triggered by a prolonged stellar brawl among three rowdy sibling stars, which destroyed one star and left the other two in a binary system. This tussle may have culminated with a violent explosion when Eta Carinae devoured one of its two companions, rocketing more than 10 times the mass of our Sun into space. The ejected mass created gigantic bipolar lobes resembling the dumbbell shape seen in present-day images.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has photographed Saturn and Mars near their closest approaches to Earth in June and July 2018. It’s now summertime in Saturn’s northern hemisphere and springtime in Mars’ southern hemisphere. The Hubble images show that Earth isn’t the only planet where intense spring and summer storms wreak havoc.
Using the Hubble and Gaia space observatories, astronomers have made the most precise measurements to date of the expansion of space, which may suggest reworking our understanding of the physics of the universe.
In April 2018, NASA launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Its main goal is to locate Earth-sized planets and larger “super-Earths” orbiting nearby stars for further study. One of the most powerful tools that will examine the atmospheres of some planets that TESS discovers will be NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Since observing small exoplanets with thin atmospheres like Earth will be challenging for Webb, astronomers will target easier, gas giant exoplanets first.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope's unparalleled sharpness and spectral range, an international research team has created the most comprehensive, high-resolution ultraviolet-light survey of star-forming galaxies in the local universe. The LEGUS data provide detailed information on 39 million young, massive stars and 8,000 star clusters, and how their environment affects their development.
An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have detected helium in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b. This is the first time this element has been detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. The discovery demonstrates the ability to use infrared spectra to study exoplanet extended atmospheres.
In the fading afterglow of a supernova explosion, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have photographed the first image of a surviving companion to a supernova. This is the most compelling evidence that some supernovas originate in double-star systems.
One of the key science goals of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is to learn about “first light,” the moment when the first stars and galaxies lit the universe. While the first galaxies will be within Webb’s reach, individual stars shine so faintly that Webb would not be able to detect them without help. That help could come in the form of natural magnification from gravitational lensing, according to a new theoretical paper.
For 28 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been delivering breathtaking views of the universe. The latest offering is this image of the Lagoon Nebula to celebrate the telescope’s anniversary. Hubble shows the roiling heart of this vast stellar nursery in stunning unprecedented detail.
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers were able to use the same sort of trigonometry that surveyors use to precisely measure the distance to NGC 6397, one of the closest globular clusters to Earth. The only difference is that the angles measured in Hubble’s camera are infinitesimal by earthly surveyors’ standards.
NASA has selected 24 new Fellows for its prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP). The program enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope and a quirk of nature called gravitational lensing, an international team of astronomers has found the most distant individual star ever discovered, dubbed "Icarus." This discovery provides new insight into the formation and evolution of stars in the early universe, the makeup of galaxy clusters, and the nature of dark matter.
Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 have turned up an oddity that sets it apart from most other galaxies, even the diffuse-looking ones. It contains little, if any, dark matter, an invisible substance that makes up the bulk of our universe.
Using Kepler's unique capabilities, astronomers have captured the blast properties of an unusual exploding phenomenon known as a Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient (FELT). This allowed them to exclude a range of theories about how FELTs happen, and converge on a plausible model.
Scientists have used the Hubble Space Telescope to chemically analyze the gas in the Leading Arm (the arching collection of gas that connects the Magellanic Clouds to the Milky Way) and determine its origin.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified a very rare and odd assemblage of stars that has remained essentially unchanged for the past 10 billion years. The diffuse stellar island, galaxy NGC 1277, provides valuable new insights into the origin and evolution of galaxies billions of years ago.
Most of the water in the universe floats in vast reservoirs called molecular clouds. It coats the surface of dust grains, turning them into cosmic snowflakes. When stars and planets form, those snowflakes get swept up, delivering key ingredients for life. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will map water and other cosmic ices to gain new insights into these building blocks for habitable planets.
Astronomers have used Hubble to uncover a vast, complex dust structure, about 150 billion miles across, enveloping the young star HR 4796A. A bright, narrow, inner ring of dust is already known to encircle the star and may have been corralled by the gravitational pull of an unseen giant planet. This newly discovered huge structure around the system may have implications for what this yet-unseen planetary system looks like around the 8-million-year-old star, which is in its formative years of planet construction.
Scientists using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found a larger than expected amount of water in the atmosphere of WASP-39b, a hot, bloated, Saturn-mass exoplanet located about 700 light-years from Earth. Though no planet like this resides in our solar system, WASP-39b can provide new insights into how and where planets form around a star.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have made the most precise measurement to date of the rate at which the universe is expanding the big bang. This may mean that there's something unknown about the makeup of the universe. The new numbers remain at odds with independent measurements of the early universe's expansion.
Mars rovers and orbiters have found signs that Mars once hosted liquid water on its surface. Much of that water escaped over time. How much water was lost, and how does the water that’s left move from ice to atmosphere to soil? During its first year of operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will seek answers. Webb also will study mysterious methane plumes that hint at possible geological or even biological activity.
Three billion miles away on the farthest known major planet in our solar system, an ominous, dark storm is shrinking out of existence as seen in pictures of Neptune taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Immense dark storms on Neptune were first discovered in the late 1980s by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Since then, only Hubble has tracked these elusive features that play a game of peek-a-boo over the years.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have conducted the first spectroscopic survey of the Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone around the nearby star TRAPPIST-1. Hubble reveals that at least three of the exoplanets (d, e, and f) do not seem to contain puffy, hydrogen-rich atmospheres similar to gaseous planets such as Neptune. The results, instead, favor more compact atmospheres like those of Earth, Venus, and Mars.
In an unprecedented deep survey for small, faint objects in the Orion Nebula, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered the largest known population of brown dwarfs sprinkled among newborn stars. Looking in the vicinity of the survey stars, researchers not only found several very-low-mass brown dwarf companions, but also three giant planets. They even found an example of binary planets where two planets orbit each other in the absence of a parent star.
An intensive survey deep into the universe by NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes has yielded the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack: the farthest galaxy yet seen in an image that has been stretched and amplified by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
A new analysis of about 10,000 normal Sun-like stars in the Milky Way's bulge reveals that our galaxy’s hub is a dynamic environment of variously aged stars zipping around at different speeds. This conclusion is based on nine years’ worth of archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Astronomers have caught a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy snacking on gas and then "burping" — not once, but twice.
By combining the visible and infrared capabilities of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers and visualization specialists from NASA's Universe of Learning program have created a new three-dimensional fly-through movie of the Orion nebula, a nearby stellar nursery.
It's beginning to look a lot like the holiday season in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a blizzard of stars, which resembles a swirling snowstorm in a snow globe. The stars are residents of the globular star cluster Messier 79 (also known as M79 or NGC 1904), located 41,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Lepus.
Astronomers around the world will have immediate access to early data from specific science observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which will be completed within the first five months of Webb’s science operations. These observing programs were chosen from a Space Telescope Science Institute call for early release science proposals.
A movie assembled from more two years’ worth of Hubble images reveals an expanding shell of light from a supernova explosion sweeping through interstellar space three years after the stellar blast was discovered. The “echoing” light looks like a ripple expanding on a pond. The supernova, called SN 2014J, was discovered on Jan. 21, 2014.
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