Hubble

Hubble Detects Uber-Strong Radio Transmission From Ancient “Blob”

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“It’s these types of environments — these weird ones — that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs.”

On the Radio

The humble Hubble Space Telescope has been instrumental in observing something remarkable: the possible and highly unusual birthplace of the most distant fast radio burst (FRB), extremely powerful and unresolved flashes of radio frequency, ever observed.

The FRB was first discovered 18 months ago by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope.

Scientists were excited, if not stumped, by the super-strong energy burst — more than four times more energetic than other FRBs that have been detected — and subsequent observations revealed that it came from an extremely distant location, dating back to when the universe was just five billion years old.

When it was first detected, this radio burst seemed to originate near, as a press release describes it, “an unidentifiable, amorphous blob.” Early on, researchers speculated that the blob could be a group of up to three galaxies.

When Hubble took on the case, however, the FRB’s probable origin became clearer: a group of at least seven galaxies that existed when the Universe itself was only five billion years old — a highly unusual conclusion that could force us to reconsider what we know about the unusual phenomenon.

Credit: Carl Knox (OzGrav/Swinburne University)

Explosive Interactions

The finding caught scientists studying the Hubble observations by surprise.

“It required Hubble’s keen sharpness and sensitivity to pinpoint exactly where the FRB came from,” said Northwestern graduate student Alexa Gordon, lead author of a recent study about the research, in the statement. “Without Hubble’s imaging, it would still remain a mystery as to whether this was originating from one monolithic galaxy or from some type of interacting system.”

Gordon and her colleagues also noted that there is a likelihood that the galaxies in question may be in the process of merging, which could contribute to the FRB’s strength.

“This interaction could trigger bursts of star formation,” Gordon said in the statement. “That might indicate that the progenitor of FRB 20220610A is associated with a fairly recent population of stars, which matches what we’ve learned from other FRBs.”

“Despite hundreds of FRB events discovered to date, only a fraction of those have been pinpointed to their host galaxies,” added study co-author and NSF graduate research fellow Yuxin Dong. “Within that small fraction, only a few came from a dense galactic environment, but none have ever been seen in such a compact group. So, its birthplace is truly rare.”

As one might imagine, FRBs are a persistent space enigma — and scientists who’ve worked on this discovery are hopeful that it will contribute to their understanding of how these strange transmissions work.

“It’s these types of environments — these weird ones — that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs,” Gordon said.

Hubble Detects Uber-Strong Radio Transmission From Ancient “Blob”

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“It’s these types of environments — these weird ones — that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs.”

On the Radio

The humble Hubble Space Telescope has been instrumental in observing something remarkable: the possible and highly unusual birthplace of the most distant fast radio burst (FRB), extremely powerful and unresolved flashes of radio frequency, ever observed.

The FRB was first discovered 18 months ago by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope.

Scientists were excited, if not stumped, by the super-strong energy burst — more than four times more energetic than other FRBs that have been detected — and subsequent observations revealed that it came from an extremely distant location, dating back to when the universe was just five billion years old.

When it was first detected, this radio burst seemed to originate near, as a press release describes it, “an unidentifiable, amorphous blob.” Early on, researchers speculated that the blob could be a group of up to three galaxies.

When Hubble took on the case, however, the FRB’s probable origin became clearer: a group of at least seven galaxies that existed when the Universe itself was only five billion years old — a highly unusual conclusion that could force us to reconsider what we know about the unusual phenomenon.

Explosive Interactions

The finding caught scientists studying the Hubble observations by surprise.

“It required Hubble’s keen sharpness and sensitivity to pinpoint exactly where the FRB came from,” said Northwestern graduate student Alexa Gordon, lead author of a recent study about the research, in the statement. “Without Hubble’s imaging, it would still remain a mystery as to whether this was originating from one monolithic galaxy or from some type of interacting system.”

Gordon and her colleagues also noted that there is a likelihood that the galaxies in question may be in the process of merging, which could contribute to the FRB’s strength.

“This interaction could trigger bursts of star formation,” Gordon said in the statement. “That might indicate that the progenitor of FRB 20220610A is associated with a fairly recent population of stars, which matches what we’ve learned from other FRBs.”

“Despite hundreds of FRB events discovered to date, only a fraction of those have been pinpointed to their host galaxies,” added study co-author and NSF graduate research fellow Yuxin Dong. “Within that small fraction, only a few came from a dense galactic environment, but none have ever been seen in such a compact group. So, its birthplace is truly rare.”

As one might imagine, FRBs are a persistent space enigma — and scientists who’ve worked on this discovery are hopeful that it will contribute to their understanding of how these strange transmissions work.

“It’s these types of environments — these weird ones — that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs,” Gordon said.

Hubble finds universe will double in size in 10 billion years.

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https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/universe-expanding-mysteriously-will-double-in-size-in-10-billion-years-finds-hubble-1951827-2022-05-20?utm_source=fb_IA&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=May22&fbclid=IwAR0y0I3JaM1p0vREbk5ZWSoLXuh33pUvXTmheAzj5ptVRl8YibLf2SH30ps

Hubble Captures a Peculiar Pair.

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https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-captures-a-peculiar-pair

How James Webb will reveal what Hubble missed.

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https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-hubble/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1653026890

Hubble telescope captures cosmic tug-of-war between two galaxies in deep space.

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Hubble telescope captures cosmic tug-of-war between two galaxies in deep space – SCIENCE News https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/hubble-telescope-captures-cosmic-tug-of-war-between-two-galaxies-in-deep-space-1917373-2022-02-24?utm_source=fb_IA&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Feb22&fbclid=IwAR3AyDYvfguJj4dmOkO9Y9uqRfbfpbtDPUxim7kwQWRNEb9_mxeajcPRjQc

NASA successfully launches revolutionary space telescope to seek answers on origin of universe

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Named after the man who oversaw NASA through most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and our place in it.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, built to give the world its first glimpse of the universe as it existed when the earliest galaxies formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from the northeastern coast of South America, opening a new era of astronomy.

The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, described by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was carried aloft inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket that blasted off at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) launch base in French Guiana.

The flawless Christmas Day launch, with a countdown conducted in French, was carried live on a joint NASA-ESA webcast. The liftoff capped a project decades in the making, coming to fruition after years of repeated delays and cost over-runs.

“From a tropical rain forest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe,” a NASA commentator said as the two-stage launch vehicle, fitted with double solid-rocket boosters, roared off its launch pad into cloudy skies.

After a 27-minute, hypersonic ride into space, the 14,000-pound instrument was released from the upper stage of the French-built rocket about 865 miles above the Earth, and should gradually unfurl to nearly the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days as it sails onward on its own.

Live video captured by a camera mounted on the rocket’s upper stage showed the Webb gliding gently away after it was jettisoned, drawing cheers and applause from jubilant flight engineers in the mission control centre.

Flight controllers confirmed moments later, as the Webb’s solar-energy array was deployed, that its power supply was working.

Coasting through space for two more weeks, the Webb telescope will reach its destination in solar orbit 1 million miles from Earth – about four times farther away than the moon. And Webb’s special orbital path will keep it in constant alignment with the Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.

By comparison, Webb’s 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits the Earth from 340 miles away, passing in and out of the planet’s shadow every 90 minutes.
Named after the man who oversaw NASA through most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100https://df2d4dc256f043f3fbe2eb509defa701.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and our place in it.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, striking a spiritual tone as he addressed the launch webcast by video link, quoted the Bible and hailed the new telescope as a “time machine” that will “capture the light from the very beginning of the creation.”

Webb mainly will view the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born, while Hubble has operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

The new telescope’s primary mirror – consisting of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal – also has a much bigger light-collecting area, enabling it to observe objects at greater distances, thus farther back into time, than Hubble or any other telescope.

That, astronomers say, will bring into view a glimpse of the cosmos never previously seen – dating to just 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set in motion the expansion of the observable universe an estimated 13.8 billion years ago.

Hubble’s view reached back to roughly 400 million years following the Big Bang, a period just after the very first galaxies – sprawling clusters of stars, gases and other interstellar matter – are believed to have taken shape.

While Hubble caught glimmers of “toddler” galaxies, Webb will reveal those objects in greater detail while also capturing even fainter, earlier “infant” galaxies, astrophysicist Eric Smith, NASA’s Webb program scientist, told Reuters hours before the launch.

Aside from examining the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies, astronomers are eager to study super-massive black holes believed to occupy the centers of distant galaxies.

Webb’s instruments also make it ideal to search for evidence of potentially life-supporting atmospheres around scores of newly documented exoplanets – celestial bodies orbiting distant stars – and to observe worlds much closer to home, such as Mars and Saturn’s icy moon Titan.

The telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies. Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N) was the primary contractor. The Arianespace launch vehicle is part of the European contribution

“The world gave us this telescope, and we handed it back to the world today,” Gregory Robinson, Webb program director for NASA told reporters at a post-launch briefing.

Webb was developed at a cost of $8.8 billion, with operational expenses projected to bring its total price tag to about $9.66 billion, far higher than planned when NASA was previously aiming for a 2011 launch. read more 
Astronomical operation of the telescope, to be managed from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is expected to begin in the summer of 2022, following about six months of alignment and calibration of Webb’s mirrors and instruments.

It is then that NASA expects to release the initial batch of images captured by Webb. Webb is designed to last up to 10 years.

The World’s First Space Telescope

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50 years ago, astronomers launched the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, whose descendants include the Hubble, Spitzer and James Webb telescopes

The World's First Space Telescope
Credit: NASA

In July 1958, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison named Arthur “Art” Code received a telegram from the fledgling Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences. The agency wanted to know what he and his colleagues would do if given the opportunity to launch into Earth’s orbit an instrument weighing up to 100 pounds.

Code, newly-minted director of the University’s Washburn Observatory, had something in mind. His department was already well known for pioneering a technique for measuring the light emitted by celestial objects, called photoelectric photometry, and Code had joined the university with the intent of adapting it to the burgeoning field of space astronomy.

He founded the Space Astronomy Laboratory at UW–Madison and, with his colleagues, proposed to launch a small telescope equipped with a photoelectric photometer, designed to measure the ultraviolet (UV) energy output of stars—a task impossible from Earth’s surface. Fifty years ago, on December 7, 1968, that idea culminated in NASA’s launch of the first successful space-based observatory: the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, or OAO-2.

With it was born the era of America’s Great Observatories, bearing the Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra and Compton space telescopes, a time during which our understanding of the universe repeatedly deepened and transformed. Today, dwindling political appetite and lean funding threaten our progress. Contemporary projects like the James Webb Space Telescope flounder, and federal budgets omit promising projects like the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

In celebrating the half century since OAO-2’s launch, we are reminded that major scientific achievements like it become part of the public trust, and to make good on the public trust, we must repay our debt to history by investing in our future. Advances like those made by Hubble are possible only through sustained, publicly-funded research.

These first investments originated in the late 1950s, during the space race between the U.S. the USSR. They led to economic gains in the private sector, technological and scientific innovations, and the birth of new fields of exploration.

Astronomer Lyman Spitzer, considered the father of the Hubble Space Telescope, first posited the idea of space-based observing seriously in a 1946 RAND Corporation study. By leaving Earth’s atmosphere, he argued, astronomers could point telescopes at and follow nearly anything in the sky, from comets to galaxy clusters, and measure light in a broader range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

When Code pitched Wisconsin’s idea to the Space Board, the result was NASA funding to create part of the scientific payload for OAO. The agency went to work planning a spacecraft that could support these astronomical instruments. The Cook Electric Company in Chicago and Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation in New York won contracts to help pull it off.

The payload, named the Wisconsin Experiment Package (WEP), bundled five telescopes equipped with photoelectric photometers and two scanning spectrophotometers, all with UV capabilities. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a package of X-ray and gamma detectors.

Scientists and engineers had to make the instruments on OAO both programmable and capable of operating autonomously between ground contacts. Because repairs were impossible once in orbit, they designed redundant systems and operating modes. Scientists also had to innovate systems for handling complex observations, transmitting data to Earth digitally (still a novelty in those days), and for processing data before they landed in the hands of astronomers.

The first effort, OAO-1, suffered a fatal power failure after launch in 1966, and the scientific instruments were never turned on. But NASA reinvested, and OAO-2 launched with a new WEP from Wisconsin, and this time a complementary instrument from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, called Celescope, that used television camera technology to produce images of celestial objects emitting UV light. Expected to operate just one year, OAO-2 continued to make observations for four years.

 

Numerous “guest” astronomers received access to the instruments during the extended mission. Such collaborations ultimately led to the creation of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which Code helped organize as acting director in 1981.

And the data yielded many scientific firsts, including a modern understanding of stellar physics, surprise insights into stellar explosions called novae, and exploration of a comet that had far-reaching implications for theories of planet formation and evolution.

To be responsible beneficiaries of such insights, we must remember that just as we are yesterday’s future, the firsts of tomorrow depend on today. We honor that public trust only by continuing to fund James Webb, WFIRST, and other projects not yet conceived.

In the forward of a 1971 volume publishing OAO-2’s scientific results, NASA’s Chief of Astronomy Nancy G. Roman wrote: “The performance of this satellite has completely vindicated the early planners and has rewarded … the entire astronomical community with many exciting new discoveries and much important data to aid in the unravelling of the secrets of the stars.”

Let’s keep unraveling these stellar secrets.

NASA Is Testing the Telescope That Will Revolutionize Our View of the Cosmos

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IN BRIEF

The James Webb Space Telescope, the highly anticipated successor of Hubble, recently successfully completed cryogenic vacuum testing. This round of testing is one of the last major milestones before the telescope is finally launched.

TELESCOPE TESTING

In 2017, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) successfully completed cryogenic vacuum testing that lasted for over 100 days, solidifying the instrument’s capabilities and potential as a full observatory. In a NASA media briefing on January 10, officials at the Johnson Space Center in Houston discussed these efforts and the magnitude of this successful testing. The “world’s largest space freezer,” as described by Mark Voyton, Webb telescope Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module (OTIS) manager at Goddard, allowed the team to successfully test the instrument and its pieces at the extreme temperatures it will endure in its missions.

Additionally, this testing showed that all mirrors and instrument models were aligned, with the primary mirror’s 18 segments all operating as one monolithic mirror. The tests also allowed NASA to exercise operations as they would occur in orbit, confirm that the integrated fine guiding system can track a star through the optical system, and ensure that the telescope could maintain correct observatory pointing. This laundry list of successful testing puts the JWST right on schedule to move forward and open our eyes to previously unseen corners of the universe.

The Webb testing was completed in Chamber A, a thermal-vacuum test facility that was first made famous in testing the Apollo spacecraft. While the Apollo tests were completed with both extreme heat and cold in mind, the chamber was heavily modified for the JWST. The Apollo craft were tested at temperatures as low as 100 Kelvin, but with these modifications, testing commenced at temperatures as low as 40 Kelvin with no high-temperature testing.

The success of this testing is not only a significant milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope and its highly-anticipated 2019 launch; it’s also a testament to the human spirit. This cryogenic testing occurred 24/7 throughout Hurricane Harvey, uninterrupted, as its international teams worked together in a collaborative effort.

MOVING FORWARD

After the success of this testing, the JWST will be transported for integration into a complete observatory and to undergo final environmental testing before traveling to its launch site. While there was a delay that pushed the launch from 2018 to 2019, the telescope is currently right on track to successfully make its launch window.

Artist conception of the James Webb Space Telescope observing the cosmos.
Artist conception of the James Webb Space Telescope observing the cosmos. 

The capabilities of the JWST will far surpass anything that has been created before. This mammoth telescope, described by Voyton as “the world’s most magnificent time machine,” proved a piece of this capability in testing: it detected, with all four instruments, the light of a simulated star for the first time. The fine guidance subsystem was successful in not only generating the position of the light, but also in tracking its movement. This was a first in testing, and it shows the remarkable applications that this telescope will have.

Because it is an infrared telescope, as opposed to a visual light telescope like Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope requires a cold environment such as the one it was tested in. This will allow it to observe light from some of the earliest moments of the universe. Additionally, it will give us clarity in viewing exoplanets that we’ve only before dreamed of, closely observing Earth-like planets that could hold the promise of solidifying the existence of extraterrestrial life.

It hasn’t even left Earth yet, but this phenomenal instrument continues to inspire.

More Than 30 Billion Light-Years Away, Hubble Captures the Most Distant Galaxy Ever Found

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IN BRIEF

A new image taken using the Hubble Space Telescope has given us an image of the farthest galaxy ever imaged. More than 30 billion light-years away, we see it as it was 13.4 billion years in the past.
GOING THE EXTRA MILE

While much has been said about the planned successors to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (WFIRST and the James Webb), Hubble has shown that it can still perform admirably. In fact, a recent announcement has just added another notch to the list of Hubble’s achievements.

An international team of astronomers has used the space telescope to shatter the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This bright, infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past (just 400 million years after the Big Bang).

“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three percent of its current age,” explained principal investigator Pascal Oesch.

 Astronomers are trying to focus on the first galaxies that formed in the universe and, with this discovery, they are closing in on them. The observations brought astronomers to a realm of galaxies that was previously thought to be reachable only with NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
LOOKING BACK IN TIME

Scientists measure astronomical distances by determining the “redshift” of a galaxy, which is a result of the expansion of the universe. To break this down a bit, redshift is a result of light being stretched to longer (and consequently redder) wavelengths as space expands as the light travels to our telescope. By measuring this redshift, we are able to obtain a precise measure of where the light traveled from.

The previous galaxy that was a record holder had a redshift of 8.68, which means we see it as it was some 13.2 billion years in the past. GN-z11, in comparison, has a redshift of 11.1, which puts it at the aforementioned 13.4 billion years and 200 million years closer to the Big Bang. The researchers estimate that the record could only be surpassed with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Notably, scientists at Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austinpreviously found galaxy z8_GND_5296, which is a staggering 30 billion light-years away. Thanks to the expansions of the universe, GN-z11 is (at the present time) even more distant than this.

SO, WHAT’S THE GALAXY LIKE?

Even though it is far away, we still know a lot about it (relatively speaking).

The imaging of GN-z11 reveals it is 25 times smaller than our galaxy and has one percent of our galaxy’s mass in stars. It is growing fast, forming stars at a rate 20 times greater than our galaxy. This is part of the reason why the galaxy is unexpectedly bright when imaged.

The results also provide new clues about the nature of the very early universe, but while these results are exciting, it is but a tantalizing preview of the observations that the James Webb Space Telescope could offer after it is launched into space in 2018.

GN-z11 Farthest Galaxy
The Galaxy GN-z11 as imaged by the researchers. Credit: NASA