Astronomy and Stars
Discussions about astronomy and stars. As we look further out what can we find in the universe beyond Earth's atmosphere?
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Astronomers using the Hubble telescope have discovered an enormous cyclonic storm system raging in the northern polar regions of the planet Mars. Nearly four times the size of the state of Texas, the storm is composed of water ice clouds like storm systems on Earth, rather than dust typically found in Martian storms. The system is similar to so-called "spiral" storms observed more than 20 years ago by NASA's Viking Orbiter spacecraft, but it is nearly three times as gigantic as the largest previously detected Martian spiral storm system. The storm is nearly 1,100 miles across in the east-west direction and 900 miles in the north-south direction. The eye of the storm is …
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A Hubble telescope survey of the sky has uncovered exotic patterns, rings, arcs, and crosses that are all mirages produced by a gravitational lens, nature's equivalent of having a giant magnifying glass in space. A gravitational lens is created when the gravity of a massive foreground object, such as a galaxy or a black hole, bends the light coming from a far more distant galaxy directly behind it. This "gravitational muscle" focuses the light to give multiple or distorted images of the background object as seen by the observer. Shown are 10 examples from the survey. View the full article
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Located about 130 million light-years away, NGC 4650A is one of only 100 known polar-ring galaxies. Their unusual disk-ring structure is not yet understood fully. One possibility is that polar rings are the remnants of colossal collisions between two galaxies sometime in the distant past, probably at least 1 billion years ago. What is left of one galaxy has become the rotating inner disk of old red stars in the center. Meanwhile, another smaller galaxy, which ventured too close, was probably severely damaged or destroyed. During the collision the gas from the smaller galaxy would have been stripped off and captured by the larger galaxy, forming a new ring of dust, gas, …
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While hunting for volcanic plumes on Io, the Hubble telescope captured these images of the volatile moon sweeping across the giant face of Jupiter. Only a few weeks before these dramatic pictures were taken, the orbiting telescope snapped a portrait of one of Io's volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide "snow." These stunning images of the planetary duo are being released to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Hubble telescope's launch on April 24, 1990. The three overlapping snapshots show in crisp detail Io passing above Jupiter's turbulent clouds. The close-up picture of Io [bottom right] reveal a 120-mile-high (200-kilometer) plume of sulfur dioxide "snow" emanating f…
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The Maryland Science Center's new Outer Space Place offers visitors a chance to explore the wonders of the universe as seen through the eyes of the Hubble telescope. In collaboration with the Space Telescope Science Institute, the latest findings from Hubble are colorfully showcased and explained in a permanent exhibit gallery and high-tech space information center. The Maryland Science Center first established a permanent Hubble exhibit in 1990. Hubble has made many discoveries since then, and the science center has now upgraded its Hubble exhibit to display and interpret the very latest Hubble telescope findings. View the full article
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In a change of venue from peering at the distant universe, the Hubble telescope has taken a look at Earth's closest neighbor in space, the Moon. Hubble was aimed at one of the Moon's most dramatic and photogenic targets, the 58-mile-wide (93-kilometer) impact crater Copernicus. The image was taken while the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was aimed at a different part of the moon to measure the colors of sunlight reflected off the Moon. The picture at upper left is a full view of the moon taken by a terrestrial telescope. The wide, central image is Hubble's crisp, bird's-eye view, which clearly shows the ray pattern of bright dust ejected out of the crater over one…
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In the most active starburst region in the local universe resides a cluster of brilliant, massive stars, known to astronomers as Hodge 301. Hodge 301, seen in the lower right hand corner of this image, lives inside the Tarantula Nebula, which resides in our galactic neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Many of the stars in Hodge 301 are so old that they have exploded as supernovae. These exploded stars are blasting material into the surrounding region at speeds of almost 200 miles per second. The high-speed matter is plowing into the surrounding Tarantula Nebula, shocking and compressing the gas into a multitude of sheets and filaments, seen in the upper left portion o…
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If springtime on Earth were anything like it will be on Uranus, we would be experiencing waves of massive storms, each one covering the country from Kansas to New York, with temperatures of 300 degrees below zero. A dramatic new time-lapse movie by the Hubble telescope shows for the first time seasonal changes on the planet. Once considered one of the blander-looking planets, Uranus is now revealed as a dynamic world with the brightest clouds in the outer solar system and a fragile ring system that wobbles like an unbalanced wagon wheel. The clouds are probably made of crystals of methane, which condense as warm bubbles of gas well up from deep in the planet's atmospher…
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Astronomers have used the Hubble telescope to produce an infrared "photo essay" of spiral galaxies. By penetrating the dust clouds swirling around the centers of these galaxies, the telescope's infrared vision is offering fresh views of star birth. These six images, taken with Hubble's infrared camera, showcase different views of spiral galaxies, from a face-on picture of an entire galaxy to a close-up of a core. The top row shows spirals at diverse angles, from face-on, [left]; to slightly tilted, [center]; to edge-on, [right]. The bottom row shows close-ups of the hubs of three galaxies. View the full article
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Here are Hubble telescope views of the rapidly fading visible-light fireball from the most powerful cosmic explosion recorded to date. For a brief moment the light from the blast was equal to the radiance of 100 million billion stars. The initial explosion began as an intense burst of gamma rays, which happened on Jan. 23, 1999. The blast had already faded to one four-millionth of its original brightness when Hubble made observations on February 8 and 9 [image on left]. Hubble captured the fading fireball embedded in a galaxy located two-thirds of the way to the horizon of the observable universe. The picture on the right is a close-up view of the galaxy, the finger-lik…
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The Hubble telescope image is a typical Milky Way star field in the constellation Centaurus. Such snapshots can be used to study the evolution of stars that make up our galaxy. Most of the stars in this image lie near the center of our galaxy some 25,000 light-years distant. But one object, the blue curved streak [top right], is something much closer. An uncatalogued, mile-wide bit of rocky debris - an asteroid - orbiting the Sun only light-minutes away strayed into Hubble's field of view. An analysis of this asteroid indicates this asteroid's orbit could cross Mars's path. View the full article
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Hubble telescope images of Mars detail a rich geologic history and provide further evidence for water-bearing minerals on the planet's surface. These pictures showcase the planet in both visible and infrared light. In the image on the left, taken in visible light, Mars appears in natural color or as we would see it close-up. The multicolor picture on the right was taken in infrared light, which is invisible to the eye. Therefore, astronomers have assigned false colors to highlight important features that cannot be seen in visible light. Hubble's unique infrared view illustrates variations in the abundance and distribution of unknown water-bearing minerals on the planet.…
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This beautiful, eerie silhouette of dark dust clouds against the glowing nucleus of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1316 may represent the aftermath of a 100-million-year-old cosmic collision between the elliptical and a smaller companion galaxy. Hubble's superb resolution has enabled the identification of a class of small and very faint star clusters in this galaxy's central region. Many of these clusters are so small that they are barely held together by the mutual gravity of their constituent stars. Though such clusters are common in spiral galaxies like our Milky Way, they have rarely been seen in elliptical galaxies. The astronomers conclude that these clusters are among…
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Dramatic pictures of eerie disks of dust encircling young stars are giving astronomers a new look at what may be the early formative stages of planetary systems. Although these pictures from the Hubble telescope don't show planets, the edge-on disks seen by the telescope provide some of the clearest views to date of potential planetary construction zones, say researchers. The images also offer a peek at what happened 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth and other planets in our solar system began to condense out of a pancake-shaped disk of dust and gas centered on the young Sun. These images were taken by Hubble's infrared camera. All of the objects in these pictures ar…
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Glittering stars and wisps of gas create a breathtaking backdrop for the self-destruction of a massive star, called supernova 1987A, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy. Astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere witnessed the brilliant explosion of this star on Feb. 23, 1987. Shown in this Hubble telescope image, the supernova remnant, surrounded by inner and outer rings of material, is set in a forest of ethereal, diffuse clouds of gas. View the full article
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their first views of a dust ring around the star HR 4796A and a dark gap dividing an immense dust disk around the star HD 141569. These images may provide important clues to possible planet formation. View the full article
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This narrow, deep view of the universe reveals a plethora of faint galaxies, as seen in visible and infrared light by the Hubble telescope. The reddish galaxies are glowing in infrared light; the bluish galaxies are glowing in visible light. Several distinctive types of galaxies can be seen in these views: blue dwarf galaxies, disk galaxies, and very red elliptical galaxies. A bright, nearby, face-on spiral galaxy appears at upper right. Some of the brightest objects in the field are foreground stars in the halo of our own Milky Way Galaxy. By combining views in infrared and visible light, astronomers have a better idea of the shapes of galaxies in the remote universe a…
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Astronomers using the Hubble telescope have obtained the sharpest view yet of a glowing loop of gas called the Ring Nebula (M57), first cataloged more than 200 years ago by French astronomer Charles Messier. The pictures reveal that the "Ring" is actually a cylinder of gas seen almost end-on. Such elongated shapes are common among other planetary nebulae, because thick disks of gas and dust form a waist around a dying star. This "waist" slows down the expansion of material ejected by the doomed object. The easiest escape route for this cast-off material is above and below the star. This photo reveals dark, elongated clumps of material embedded in the gas at the edge of …
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If civilizations exist around other stars they are likely to be just emerging across our Galaxy right now: like an apple orchard suddenly maturing and ripening in the autumn sun. So concludes Space Telescope Science Institute theorist Mario Livio, in a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. Livio emphasizes that his theoretical work doesn't necessarily mean extraterrestrial civilizations really do exist, but it shows they cannot be dismissed either. View the full article
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NGC 253 is a large, almost edge-on spiral galaxy, and is one of the nearest galaxies beyond our local neighborhood of galaxies. This dramatic galaxy shows complex structures such as clumpy gas clouds, darkened dust lanes, and young, luminous central star clusters. These elements are typical of spiral galaxies. Caroline Herschel discovered NGC 253 in 1783 while looking for comets. The galaxy's closeness to Earth makes it an ideal target for amateur astronomers who can see the southern sky and for astronomers interested in learning more about the makeup of these stunning cities of stars. View the full article
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Turning its penetrating vision toward southern skies, the Hubble telescope has peered down a 12- billion-light-year-long corridor loaded with a dazzling assortment of thousands of never-before-seen galaxies. The observation, called the Hubble Deep Field South, doubles the number of far-flung galaxies available to astronomers for deciphering the history of the universe. This new far-look complements the original Hubble "deep field" taken in late 1995, when Hubble was aimed at a small patch of space near the Big Dipper. Hubble's sharp vision allows astronomers to sort galaxy shapes. The image is dominated by beautiful pinwheel-shaped disk galaxies, which are like our Milk…
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The anticipated celestial bombardment called the Leonid meteor storm on the afternoon of November 17th, 1998 won't deter the Hubble telescope from its key mission of gazing far across the universe - as long as the view is in the opposite direction of the incoming meteor swarm. Using the brilliant glow of a distant quasar located near the southern boundary of the constellation Aquarius, Hubble will probe galaxy formation and the distribution of matter in space. The Hubble data will become immediately available to the astronomical community. View the full article
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NGC 3132 is a striking example of a planetary nebula. This expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star is known to amateur astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere as the "Eight-Burst" or the "Southern Ring" Nebula. The name "planetary nebula" refers only to the round shape that many of these objects show when examined through a small telescope. In reality, these nebulae have little or nothing to do with planets, but are instead huge shells of gas ejected by stars as they near the ends of their lifetimes. NGC 3132 is nearly half a light year in diameter, and at a distance of about 2,000 light-years is one of the nearest known planetary nebulae. The gases are expanding…
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Resembling an aerial fireworks explosion, this dramatic Hubble telescope picture of the energetic star WR124 reveals that it is surrounded by hot clumps of gas being ejected into space at speeds of over 100,000 mph. Also remarkable are vast arcs of glowing gas around the star, which are resolved into clumps, yet with no overall global shell structure. Though the existence of clumps in the winds of hot stars has been deduced through spectroscopic observations, Hubble resolves them directly in the nebula M1-67 around WR124 as 100-billion-mile-wide glowing gas blobs. View the full article
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Astronomers who are using the Hubble telescope to observe the gravitational lensing of light from distant quasars have discovered new evidence about the rate at which the universe is expanding. The lensing study shows that the universe is expanding at rates slightly slower than, but similar to, rates calculated from the Hubble Key Project to measure the size and age of the universe. The distance scale was one of the primary science problems that Hubble was built to address. In the infrared picture on the left, the light from the quasar PG 1115+080 is split and distorted. In the infrared picture on the right, the four quasar images and the lens galaxy have been subtracte…
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