Hubble

Hubble has photographed a disturbingly beautiful galaxy that acts as a huge laser

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To send 2016 off properly, Hubble has captured the most detailed image to date of the mysterious galaxy IRAS 16399-0937, which acts as a giant, astronomical laser.

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But it’s not your standard laser. Instead of blasting out visible light, the galaxy pumps out an intense and constant stream of microwave radiation. “This galaxy has a far more exciting and futuristic classification than most – it hosts a megamaser,” explains NASA (microwave + laser = maser).

Masers are found throughout the Universe, wherever molecular clouds of dust amplify any microwave radiation that passes through, enhancing and focussing the amount that’s emitted on the other side.

There are even some masers in our own galaxy, but megamaser IRAS 16399-0937 is a lot brighter – 100 million times brighter, to be specific, and almost the entire galaxy acts as a maser, rather than just one or two molecular clouds.

 

Although scientists have long known about the galaxy, which is located 370 million light-years away from Earth, this is the most detailed look at its internal structure to date. And don’t be fooled by how serene the image above looks, in reality, IRAS 16399-0937 is actually a galaxy in turmoil.

The image was taken across a range of wavelengths by two of Hubble’s instruments: the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, and it reveals that the galaxy actually has a double nucleus.

That means that the galaxy formed as a result of two galaxies smashing into each other, and those two cores are still in the process of merging.

You can see these two bright cores glowing orange in the image above. And although the whole system looks pretty tight, the two cores sit more than 11,000 light-years apart. For perspective, the closest neighbouring star to Earth is 4.3 light-years away.

The two galactic cores also appear to be very different. The northern one has been named IRAS 16399N, and the southern core is IRAS 16399S. While IRAS 16399S appears to be a hugely active starburst region, with new stars being born at an enormous rate, the northern core is pretty much the opposite, with just a huge field of weakly-ionised neutral gas.

But IRAS 16399N does contain something noteworthy – the Hubble image reveals an enormous black hole that’s 100 million times the mass of the Sun.

If you want a little perspective on just how big that is, check out the video below, and prepare to have your mind crushed.

watch the video. URL:https://youtu.be/QgNDao7m41M

 

Hubble has spotted mysterious balls of plasma shooting from a star.

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NASA’s Hubble space telescope has detected plasma balls roughly twice the size of Mars being ejected near a dying star at speeds so rapid, it would take them only 30 minutes to travel from Earth to the Moon.

This mysterious ‘cannon fire’ has been detected in the region once every 8.5 years for at least the past 400 years, but this is the first time it’s ever been seen in action, and researchers think they might finally know where it’s coming from.

 Plasma is super-hot ionised gas, and the reason these blasts are so confusing for astronomers is that there’s no way they can be coming from the dying star they originate near.

The star in question, called V Hydrae, is a bloated red giant that’s 1,200 light-years away, and it’s dying. It’s already shed at least half of its mass into space in its final death throes, and is now exhausting the rest of its nuclear fuel as it burns out – hardly a likely source of super hot, giant blobs of charged gas.

But the new Hubble data provide researchers with some insight into the strange phenomenon, and it turns out that these plasma cannonballs might explain another space mystery – planetary nebulae.

Planetary nebulae aren’t like regular nebula, which are the birthplace of stars. Instead, they’re swirling rings of glowing gas that are expelled by dead or dying stars. Each one is unique, but no one has been able to explain how they form.

Now NASA researchers suggest that the cannonballs may play a key role.

“We knew this object had a high-speed outflow from previous data, but this is the first time we are seeing this process in action,” said lead researcher Raghvendra Sahai, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

 

“We suggest that these gaseous blobs produced during this late phase of a star’s life help make the structures seen in planetary nebulae.”

To figure this out, the team pointed the Hubble telescope at V Hydrae over an 11-year period, between 2002 and 2013.

This allowed them to capture the latest cannonball eruption back in 2011, using spectroscopy imaging to reveal information on the plasma’s velocity, temperature, location, and motion.

They were able to show a whole string of the huge plasma balls erupting from the region, each with a temperature of more than 9,400 degrees Celsius (17,000 degrees Fahrenheit) – almost twice as hot as the surface of the Sun.

While the team monitored these news cannonballs, they also mapped the distribution of old plasma blobs fired out as long ago as 1986, some of which were already 60 billion km  (37 billion miles) away from V Hydrae.

These plasma balls cool down and expand the further they get until they’re no longer detectable by Hubble.

So where are they coming from? Based on all this new data, the NASA team modelled several scenarios, and the one that made the most sense is that the cannonballs are being launched by an unseen companion star that orbits close to V Hydrae every 8.5 years, but isn’t seen by Hubble.

The model suggests that as the companion star enters V Hydrae’s outer atmosphere, it gobbles up all the material that V Hydrae is shedding in its death throes, and this material then settles around the companion star as an accretion disk that shoots out balls of plasma.

The researchers have recreated what that would look like below. Step 1 is the two stars orbiting each other. Step 2 shows the companion star orbiting into the red giant’s bloated  atmosphere and sucking up its material into an accretion disk.

In steps 3 and 4, blobs of hot plasma are being ejected from this accretion disk. This happens every 8.5 years as the companion star orbits into V Hydrae’s atmosphere.

hubblecannoball webNASA, ESA & A. Feild (STScI)

Not only could this explain the strange balls, it could also explain how bloated dying stars turn into beautiful, glowing planetary nebulae within just 200 to 1,000 years – which is an astronomical blink of an eye.

Hubble has captured images of planetary nebulae with a range of knotty structures with them, which looked a lot like jets of material ejected from accretion discs. But red giants don’t have accretion discs, so it never quite made sense. Now it’s possible that the knotty structures are produced by hidden companion stars.

“This model provides the most plausible explanation,” said Sahai. 

Another surprise from the study was that the plasma balls aren’t fired in the same direction every 8.5 years, it flip-flops slightly from side to side and back and forth, suggesting that there’s a wobble in the accretion disk.

This wobble means that sometimes the cannonballs would be shot out in front of V Hydrae (from Hubble’s perspective) and sometimes behind, and could explain why the star is obscured from view every 17 years.

“This discovery was quite surprising, but it is very pleasing as well because it helped explain some other mysterious things that had been observed about this star by others,” said Sahai.

More research is needed to verify this new hypothesis, and figure out the ultimate fate of the potential companion star and V Hydrae. But NASA will be watching closely to see what happens as the red giant eventually turns into a beautiful planetary nebula. There are worse ways to go.

Hubble discovers moon orbiting the dwarf planet Makemake

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This artist's concept shows the distant dwarf planet Makemake and its newly discovered moon. Makemake and its moon, nicknamed MK 2, are more than 50 times farther away than Earth is from the Sun. The pair resides in the Kuiper Belt, a vast reservoir of frozen material from the construction of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Makemake is covered in bright, frozen methane that is tinted red by the presence of complex organic material. Its moon is too small to retain ices as volatile as methane, even given the feeble heating by the very distant Sun, and likely has a much darker surface. MK 2 is orbiting 13,000 miles from the dwarf planet, and its estimated diameter is roughly 100 miles. Makemake is 870 miles wide. Illustration credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker (Southwest Research Institute).
This artist’s concept shows the distant dwarf planet Makemake and its newly discovered moon. Makemake and its moon, nicknamed MK 2, are more than 50 times farther away than Earth is from the Sun. The pair resides in the Kuiper Belt, a vast reservoir of frozen material from the construction of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Makemake is covered in bright, frozen methane that is tinted red by the presence of complex organic material. Its moon is too small to retain ices as volatile as methane, even given the feeble heating by the very distant Sun, and likely has a much darker surface. MK 2 is orbiting 13,000 miles from the dwarf planet, and its estimated diameter is roughly 100 miles. Makemake is 870 miles wide. Illustration credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker (Southwest Research Institute).

Peering to the outskirts of our solar system, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a small, dark moon orbiting Makemake, the second brightest icy dwarf planet — after Pluto — in the Kuiper Belt.

The moon — provisionally designated S/2015 (136472) 1 and nicknamed MK 2 — is more than 1,300 times fainter than Makemake. MK 2 was seen approximately 13,000 miles from the dwarf planet, and its diameter is estimated to be 100 miles. Makemake is 870 miles wide. The dwarf planet, discovered in 2005, is named for a creation deity of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.

The Kuiper Belt is a vast reservoir of leftover frozen material from the construction of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago and home to several dwarf planets. Some of these worlds have known satellites, but this is the first discovery of a companion object to Makemake. Makemake is one of five dwarf planets recognised by the International Astronomical Union.

The observations were made in April 2015 with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Hubble’s unique ability to see faint objects near bright ones, together with its sharp resolution, allowed astronomers to pluck out the moon from Makemake’s glare. The discovery was announced today in a Minor Planet Electronic Circular.

The observing team used the same Hubble technique to observe the moon as they did for finding the small satellites of Pluto in 2005, 2011, and 2012. Several previous searches around Makemake had turned up empty. “Our preliminary estimates show that the moon’s orbit seems to be edge-on, and that means that often when you look at the system you are going to miss the moon because it gets lost in the bright glare of Makemake,” said Alex Parker of Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, who led the image analysis for the observations.

A moon’s discovery can provide valuable information on the dwarf-planet system. By measuring the moon’s orbit, astronomers can calculate a mass for the system and gain insight into its evolution.

Uncovering the moon also reinforces the idea that most dwarf planets have satellites.

“Makemake is in the class of rare Pluto-like objects, so finding a companion is important,” Parker said. “The discovery of this moon has given us an opportunity to study Makemake in far greater detail than we ever would have been able to without the companion.”

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI). Acknowledgment: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker (Southwest Research Institute).
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI). Acknowledgment: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker (Southwest Research Institute).

Finding this moon only increases the parallels between Pluto and Makemake. Both objects are already known to be covered in frozen methane. As was done with Pluto, further study of the satellite will easily reveal the density of Makemake, a key result that will indicate if the bulk compositions of Pluto and Makemake are also similar. “This new discovery opens a new chapter in comparative planetology in the outer solar system,” said team leader Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

The researchers will need more Hubble observations to make accurate measurements to determine if the moon’s orbit is elliptical or circular. Preliminary estimates indicate that if the moon is in a circular orbit, it completes a circuit around Makemake in 12 days or longer.

Determining the shape of the moon’s orbit will help settle the question of its origin. A tight circular orbit means that MK 2 is probably the product of a collision between Makemake and another Kuiper Belt Object. If the moon is in a wide, elongated orbit, it is more likely to be a captured object from the Kuiper Belt. Either event would have likely occurred several billion years ago, when the solar system was young.

The discovery may have solved one mystery about Makemake. Previous infrared studies of the dwarf planet revealed that while Makemake’s surface is almost entirely bright and very cold, some areas appear warmer than other areas. Astronomers had suggested that this discrepancy may be due to the Sun warming discrete dark patches on Makemake’s surface. However, unless Makemake is in a special orientation, these dark patches should make the dwarf planet’s brightness vary substantially as it rotates. But this amount of variability has never been observed.

These previous infrared data did not have sufficient resolution to separate Makemake from MK 2. The team’s reanalysis, based on the new Hubble observations, suggests that much of the warmer surface detected previously in infrared light may, in reality, simply have been the dark surface of the companion MK 2.

There are several possibilities that could explain why the moon would have charcoal-black surface, even though it is orbiting a dwarf planet that is as bright as fresh snow. One idea is that, unlike larger objects such as Makemake, MK 2 is small enough that it cannot gravitationally hold onto a bright, icy crust, which sublimates, changing from solid to gas, under sunlight. This would make the moon similar to comets and other Kuiper Belt objects, many of which are covered with very dark material.

When Pluto’s moon Charon was discovered in 1978, astronomers quickly calculated the mass of the system. Pluto’s mass was hundreds of times smaller than the mass originally estimated when it was found in 1930. With Charon’s discovery, astronomers suddenly knew something was fundamentally different about Pluto. “That’s the kind of transformative measurement that having a satellite can enable,” Parker said.

Star blows blue cosmic bubble in new Hubble photo shared to celebrate 26 years in space

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Blue cosmic bubble

NASA has shared this beautiful Hubble photograph of a star blowing a blue cosmic bubble.

The massive star, captured in amazing quality, is 7,100 light-years from Earth.

The star has the catchy name BD +60º2522 and is about “45 times more massive than our sun”.

The  Bubble Nebula is formed by gas escaping from the star’s outer layers, pushed outward by the stellar wind at 4 million miles per hour, NASA said.

This bubble is over 10 light-years in diameter and was created by intense stellar wind generated by a bright massive star within.

The space agency said: “This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble much like a snowplough piles up snow in front of it as it moves forward”.

International Space Station

879 days
Russian Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka holds the record for spending the most time in space
$150,000,000,000
The cost of the ISS
17,100 mph
The average speed of the ISS
200-250 miles
The distance the ISS orbits above the Earth. That’s about the same distance as a drive from London to Liverpool or Scarborough
90%
At that distance, the force of gravity is still about 90 percent what it is here on the surface. The astronauts appear ‘weightless’ because of orbital motion

Star blows blue cosmic bubble in new Hubble photo shared to celebrate 26 years in space

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NASA has shared this beautiful Hubble photograph of a star blowing a blue cosmic bubble.

The massive star, captured in amazing quality, is 7,100 light-years from Earth.

The star has the catchy name BD +60º2522 and is about “45 times more massive than our sun”.

The  Bubble Nebula is formed by gas escaping from the star’s outer layers, pushed outward by the stellar wind at 4 million miles per hour, NASA said.

This bubble is over 10 light-years in diameter and was created by intense stellar wind generated by a bright massive star within.

The space agency said: “This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble much like a snowplough piles up snow in front of it as it moves forward”.

Previous photos of the star show a beautiful and colorful view of the nebula, however this 26th anniversary image is special because it reveals  intricate lines of dust stretching through the nebula.

It was posted ahead of the weekend, which marks the 26th year in orbit for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble was launched on April 24, 1990, aboard the Shuttle Discovery.

The telescope could spend many more years in space – it’s expected that Hubble could function into the 2020s, even though its successor, the James Webb Space Telescops is expected to start functioning in 2018.

Hubble has given a lot of beautiful pictures to us – and  lot of important information to scientists.

It has seen more deeply into the cosmos than ever before, helped scientists figure out the age of the universe and found new moons of Pluto, as well as many more important discoveries.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/22/star-blows-blue-cosmic-bubble-in-new-hubble-photo-shared-to-cele/?cid=sf24816362&cid=sf24816684&sf24816362=1&sf24816684=1

Hubble captures stunning images of Bubble Nebula.

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To mark the coming 26th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA has released new photos of the distinctive Bubble Nebula, National Geographic reports. The nebula, an expanding sphere of hot gas 8000 light-years away, is one of the first objects Hubble photographed after its launch on 24 April 1990. At the time, the satellite’s camera could not focus properly and captured only part of the nebula. Two upgrades and 26 years later, Hubble can now capture the entirety of the bubble in stunning clarity as it expands into space at nearly 99,800 kilometers per hour.

Hubble

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/hubble-captures-stunning-images-bubble-nebula?utm_source=newsfromscience&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=bubblenebula-3813

Hubble Looks Into a Cosmic Kaleidoscope

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Pink, purple and blue colliding galaxy clusters

At first glance, this cosmic kaleidoscope of purple, blue and pink offers a strikingly beautiful — and serene — snapshot of the cosmos. However, this multi-colored haze actually marks the site of two colliding galaxy clusters, forming a single object known as MACS J0416.1-2403 (or MACS J0416 for short).

MACS J0416 is located about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Eridanus. This image of the cluster combines data from three different telescopes: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (showing the galaxies and stars), the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory (diffuse emission in blue), and the NRAO Jansky Very Large Array (diffuse emission in pink). Each telescope shows a different element of the cluster, allowing astronomers to study MACS J0416 in detail.

As with all galaxy clusters, MACS J0416 contains a significant amount of dark matter, which leaves a detectable imprint in visible light by distorting the images of background galaxies. In this image, this dark matter appears to align well with the blue-hued hot gas, suggesting that the two clusters have not yet collided; if the clusters had already smashed into one another, the dark matter and gas would have separated. MACS J0416 also contains other features — such as a compact core of hot gas — that would likely have been disrupted had a collision already occurred.

Together with five other galaxy clusters, MACS J0416 is playing a leading role in the Hubble Frontier Fields program, for which this data was obtained. Owing to its huge mass, the cluster is in fact bending the light of background objects, acting as a magnifying lens. Astronomers can use this phenomenon to find galaxies that existed only hundreds of million years after the big bang.

Beyond Hubble: Will Future Space Telescope Seek Alien Life by 2030?

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The iconic Hubble Space Telescope turns 25 this month, and getting the ball rolling on a life-hunting successor instrument would be a fitting birthday present, one prominent researcher argues.

Hubble Space Telescope in Orbit

Hubble, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), blasted off aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Spacewalking astronauts fixed a serious problem with the telescope’s optics in 1993, and Hubble has been transforming astronomers’ understanding of the cosmos — and bringing gorgeous images of the universe into laypeople’s lives —ever since.

“It has really allowed people to participate in the excitement of discovery,” said Mario Livio, an astrophysicist based at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which operates Hubble’s science program.

“Hubble images have become part of our culture,” Livio told Space.com. “I regard this as an incredible contribution.”

While the venerable Hubble will likely be able to keep studying the heavens for at least five more years, it’s now time to start planning out a future space telescope that will tackle the next big frontier in space science, Livio says — the search for signs of life beyond our neck of the cosmic woods.

“Hubble has taught us that to answer the most intriguing questions in astrophys­ics, we must think big and put scientific ambi­tion ahead of budgetary concerns,” he wrote in a commentary piece published online today (April 15) in the journal Nature.

“In my view, the next priority should be the search for life beyond our solar system,” Livio added. “A powerful space telescope that can spot biological signatures in the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets would be a worthy successor.”

Hubble’s immediate successor is NASA’s $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is due to launch in 2018. The infrared-optimized JWST will be able to study the atmospheres of some nearby planets discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which NASA aims to launch in 2017.

The agency is also developing a potential space-telescope mission called WFIRST/AFTA (short for Wide Field Infra­red Survey Telescope–Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets). WFIRST/AFTA, which could launch around 2024 if it gets the final go-ahead, would continue the hunt for biosignatures, among several other major tasks.

But Livio has something more ambitious in mind: A space telescope with a primary mirror at least 39 feet (12 meters) wide, with vision 25 times sharper than that of Hubble. (For comparison, the main mirrors of Hubble, WFIRST/AFTA and JWST are 7.9 feet [2.4 m], 7.9 feet and 21.3 feet [6.5 m] wide, respectively.)

Such a powerful instrument could scan the skies of enough Earthlike exoplanets to place “meaningful statistical constraints” on the abundance or rarity of alien life throughout the Milky Way galaxy, according to Livio.

“A large sample of planets — around 50 — would have to be tested,” he wrote in the Nature commentary. “Calculations show, for example, that if no biosignatures are detected in more than about three dozen Earth analogues, the probability of remotely detectable extrasolar life in our galactic neighborhood is less than about 10 percent.”

The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy is expected to release a report this June on such a potential telescope, Livio wrote, urging the community to take action to help make the mission a reality.

“First, NASA, ESA and other potential international partners should convene a panel to examine such a project,” he wrote. “Technology-development studies should be accelerated to make a launch around 2030 plausible. The search for life must be prioritized in the next U.S. and international decadal surveys that guide national funding decisions about missions.”

Livio said he’s not advocating any particular design for such a space telescope; he just wants to inspire his colleagues to “think big,” and to build some momentum for a mission that could help humanity better understand its place in the universe.

“Many scientists would agree that the question of, ‘Is there extrasolar life?’ is one of the most intriguing questions in science today.” Livio told Space.com. “So let’s try to actually answer that question, and do what it takes to answer it, as opposed to maybe taking baby steps that would just push the answer into the more distant future.”

 

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Hubble Celebrates 24th Anniversary with Infrared Image of Nearby Star Factory.

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Hubble images of the Monkey Head Nebula
This colorful collection of Hubble Space Telescope images of portion of the Monkey Head Nebula reveals a collection of carved knots of gas and dust silhouetted against glowing gas. The cloud is sculpted by ultraviolet light eating into the cool hydrogen gas.

In celebration of the 24th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have captured infrared-light images of a churning region of star birth 6,400 light-years away.

The collection of images reveals a shadowy, dense knot of gas and dust sharply contrasted against a backdrop of brilliant glowing gas in the Monkey Head Nebula (also known as NGC 2174 and Sharpless Sh2-252).

The image demonstrates Hubble’s powerful infrared vision and offers a tantalizing hint of what scientists can expect from the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
Observations of NGC 2174 were taken in February, 2014.

Massive newborn stars near the center of the nebula (and toward the right in this image) are blasting away at dust within the nebula. The ultraviolet light emitted by these bright stars helps shape the dust into giant pillars.

This carving action occurs because the nebula is mostly composed of hydrogen gas, which becomes ionized by the ultraviolet radiation. As the dust particles are warmed by the ultraviolet light of the stars, they heat up and begin to glow at infrared wavelengths.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington.

Hubble captures giant asteroid’s disintegration.

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In a never-seen-before incident in the asteroid belt, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recorded break-up of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces.

“This is a rock, and seeing it fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing,” said David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles.

The crumbling asteroid, named ‘P/2013 R3’, was first noticed as an unusual, fuzzy-looking object late last year.

This combination image made available by NASA on Thursday, March 6, 2014 shows a series of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope recording the disintegration of an asteroid from Oct. 29, 2013 to Jan. 14, 2014.

A follow-up observation revealed three bodies moving together in an envelope of dust nearly the diameter of earth.

“With its superior resolution, space telescope observations showed there were really 10 embedded objects, each with comet-like dust tails. The four largest rocky fragments are up to 400 yards in diameter, about four times the length of a football field,” explained Jewitt.

It is unlikely the asteroid is disintegrating because of a collision with another asteroid.

This leaves a scenario in which the asteroid is disintegrating due to a subtle effect of sunlight, which causes the rotation rate of the asteroid to gradually increase.

For this scenario to occur, ‘P/2013 R3’ must have a weak, fractured interior — probably as the result of numerous non-destructive collisions with other asteroids.

The asteroid’s remnant debris, weighing about 200,000 tonnes, would provide a rich source of meteoroids in the future.

Most would eventually plunge into the sun, but a small fraction of the debris may one day blaze across the Earth’s skies as meteors, scientists say.