HubbleSite

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

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-like filaments extending above the bright white blob of the gamma-ray fireball. View the full article

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

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. While it has been known for decades that small amounts of water-bearing minerals exist on the planet's surface, the reddish regions in this image indicate areas of enhanced concentrations of these as-yet-unidentified deposits. View the full article

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 the last visible remains of a galaxy that was cannibalized by NGC 1316. View the full article

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 are extremely young stars, buried in the centers of these pictures. The wisps of material surrounding the young stars are glowing from reflected starlight. View the full article

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

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

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 and of the fraction of galaxies that are old or dust-obscured at early epochs. View the full article

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 the nebula; the dying central star is floating in a blue haze of hot gas. View the full article

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

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

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 Milky Way. View the full article

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

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 away from the central star at a speed of 9 miles per second. View the full article

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

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 subtracted, revealing a nearly complete ring of infrared light. 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. View the full article

The Hubble telescope has shown us that the shrouds of gas surrounding dying, Sun-like stars (called planetary nebulae) come in a variety of strange shapes, from an "hourglass" to a "butterfly" to a "stingray." With this image of NGC 6210, the Hubble telescope has added another bizarre form to the rogues' gallery of planetary nebulae: a turtle swallowing a seashell. Giving this dying star such a weird name is less of a challenge than trying to figure out how dying stars create those unusual shapes. The larger image shows the entire nebula; the inset picture captures the complicated structure surrounding the dying star. View the full article

A vibrant celestial photo album of some of NASA Hubble Space Telescope's most stunning views of the universe is being unveiled today on the Internet. Called the Hubble Heritage Program, this technicolor gallery is being assembled by a team of astronomers at Hubble's science operations center, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. The four images released today are (top row, left to right) spiral galaxy NGC 7742, Saturn, and (bottom row, left to right) the Sagittarius Star Cloud and the Bubble Nebula. View the full article

Using powerful ground- and space-based telescopes, scientists have obtained a moving look at some of the wildest, weirdest weather in the solar system. Combining simultaneous observations of Neptune made with the Hubble telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a team of scientists has captured the most insightful images to date of a planet whose blustery weather bewilders scientists. On Neptune, winds blow at 900 miles per hour and huge storms – some the sizes of Earth itself – come and go with regularity. View the full article

A Hubble telescope infrared view of Uranus reveals that the planet is surrounded by its four major rings and by 10 of its 17 known satellites. Hubble recently found about 20 clouds - nearly as many clouds on Uranus as the previous total in the history of modern observations. The orange-colored clouds near the prominent bright band circle the planet at more than 300 mph (500 km/h). One of the clouds on the right-hand side is brighter than any other cloud ever seen on Uranus. View the full article

The popular National Public Radio program "The Marc Steiner Show" (WJHU, FM 88.1) and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., will again team up to take listeners on a tour of the cosmos via the Internet on October 14, 1998. This is the second in a series of programs in which host Marc Steiner's discussion and interview with his guests will be made available on the World Wide Web, courtesy of the institute's Office of Public Outreach. This is also the first time the institute will utilize multimedia technology to stream video of the science images along with real-time audio from the radio show. View the full article

Stretching the Hubble telescope's vision farther across space and further back into time than ever before, astronomers have peered into a previously unseen realm of the universe. A "long-exposure" infrared image has uncovered the faintest galaxies ever seen. Astronomers believe some of these galaxies could be the farthest objects ever seen. A powerful new generation of telescopes will be needed to confirm the suspected distances. The picture on the left contains over 300 galaxies, which have spiral, elliptical, and irregular shapes. The two images on the right represent close-up views of objects that may be over 12 billion light-years away, the farthest galaxies ever seen. Each faraway galaxy is centered in the frame. View the full article

A survey of galaxy clusters by the Hubble telescope has found what could be some of the most distant clusters ever seen. If ground-based telescopes confirm the distances and masses of the clusters, the survey may hold clues to how galaxies quickly formed into massive, large-scale structures after the Big Bang, which could provide answers for the universe's eventual fate. According to theoretical models, if the clusters turn out to be massive and very distant, it could imply that the cosmos does not contain enough matter for gravity to stop the expansion of the universe. These models predict that such a low-density universe would have built most of its galaxy clusters long ago. These images represent three of the faraway clusters of galaxies. These galaxies were selected from a catalog of 92 new clusters uncovered during a six-year Hubble observing program known as the Medium Deep Survey. View the full article

A Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer has found the equivalent of the proverbial 900-pound gorilla in deep space. The "gorilla" is an extremely massive cluster of galaxies - the weight of several thousand of our Milky Ways - that existed when the universe was half its present age. Paradoxically, the unexpected discovery of this ancient, heavyweight cluster is one of the strongest pieces of evidence yet that we live in a lightweight universe, one that doesn't have enough bulk to provide the gravity necessary to halt the expansion of space. Using X-ray satellites and ground-based telescopes to probe the remote regions of space, the Institute astronomer discovered MS1054-0321, a hefty galaxy cluster containing thousands of galaxies and many trillions of stars. The image on the left, taken by ground-based and X-ray observatories, shows the entire galaxy cluster surrounded by background and foreground galaxies. The image on the right, taken by Hubble's visible-light camera, provides a clearer view of the galaxies in the heart of the cluster. View the full article