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Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Lights the Way with New… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Lights the Way with New Multiwavelength Galaxy View
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy NGC 1559. ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, W. Yuan, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, A. Riess, K. Takáts, D. de Martin & M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble) The magnificent galaxy featured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1559. It is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Reticulum, approximately 35 million light-years from Earth. The brilliant light captured in the current image offers a wealth of information.
This picture is composed of a whopping ten different Hubble images, each filtered to collect light from a specific wavelength or range of wavelengths. It spans Hubble’s sensitivity to light, from ultraviolet through visible light and into the near-infrared spectrum. Capturing such a wide range of wavelengths allows astronomers to study information about many different astrophysical processes in the galaxy: one notable example is the red 656-nanometer filter used here. Ionized hydrogen atoms emit light at this particular wavelength, called H-alpha emission. New stars forming in a molecular cloud, made mostly of hydrogen gas, emit copious amounts of ultraviolet light that the cloud absorbs, ionizing the hydrogen gas causing it to glow with H-alpha light. Using Hubble’s filters to detect only H-alpha light provides a reliable way to detect areas of star formation (called H II regions). These regions are visible in this image as bright red and pink patches filling NGC 1559’s spiral arms.
These ten images come from six different Hubble observing programs, spanning from 2009 all the way up to 2024. Teams of astronomers from around the world proposed these programs with a variety of scientific goals, ranging from studying ionized gas and star formation, to following up on a supernova, to tracking variable stars as a contribution to calculating the Hubble constant. The data from all of these observations lives in the Hubble archive, available for anyone to use. This archive is regularly used to generate new science, but also to create spectacular images like this one! This new image of NGC 1559 is a reminder of the incredible opportunities that Hubble provided and continues to provide.
Along with Hubble’s observations, astronomers are using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to continue researching this galaxy. This Webb image from February showcases the galaxy in near- and mid-infrared light.
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 19, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Science Behind the Discoveries
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
SpaceX Crew-9 members (from left) Mission Specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov from Roscosmos and Commander Nick Hague from NASA pose for an official crew portrait at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.NASA/Josh Valcarel NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are preparing to launch on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station.
The flight is the ninth crew rotation mission with SpaceX to the station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The duo will lift off aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which previously flew NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4, Axiom Mission 2 and Axiom Mission 3, from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Once aboard the space station, Hague and Gorbunov will become members of the Expedition 72 crew and perform research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities. The pair will join NASA astronauts Don Petitt, Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
Wilmore and Williams, who launched aboard the Starliner spacecraft in June, will fly home with Hague and Gorbunov in February 2025.
Launch preparations are underway, and teams are working to integrate the spacecraft and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, including checkouts of a second flight rocket booster for the mission. The integrated spacecraft and rocket will then be rolled to the pad and raised to the vertical position for a dry dress rehearsal with the crew and an integrated static fire test prior to launch.
The Crew
Nick Hague will serve as crew commander for Crew-9, making this his third launch and second mission to the space station. During his first launch in October 2018, Hague and his crewmate, Roscosmos’ Alexey Ovchinin, experienced a rocket booster failure, resulting in an in-flight, post-launch abort, ballistic re-entry, and safe landing in their Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. Five months later, Hague launched aboard Soyuz MS-12 and served as a flight engineer aboard the space station during Expeditions 59 and 60. Hague has spent 203 days in space and conducted three spacewalks to upgrade space station power systems and install a docking adapter for commercial spacecraft.
Born in Belleville, Kansas, Hague earned a bachelor’s degree in Astronautical Engineering from the United States Air Force Academy and a master’s degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hague was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2013. An active-duty colonel in the U.S. Space Force, Hague completed a developmental rotation at the Defense Department and served as the Space Force’s director of test and evaluation from 2020 to 2022. In August 2022, Hague resumed duties at NASA, working on the Boeing Starliner Program until this flight assignment.
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Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will embark on his first trip to the space station as a mission specialist for Crew-9. Born in Zheleznogorsk, Kursk region, Russia, he studied engineering with qualifications in spacecraft and upper stages from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Gorbunov graduated from the military department with a specialty in operating and repairing aircraft, helicopters, and aircraft engines. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, he worked as an engineer for Rocket Space Corp. Energia and supported cargo spacecraft launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Gorbunov will serve as a flight engineer during Expedition 71/72 aboard the space station.
Mission Overview
After liftoff, Dragon will accelerate to approximately 17,500 mph to dock with the space station.
Once in orbit, flight control teams from NASA’s Mission Control Center at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, will monitor a series of automatic maneuvers that will guide Dragon to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. The spacecraft is designed to dock autonomously, but the crew can take control and pilot manually if necessary.
After docking, Expedition 71 will welcome Hague and Gorbunov inside the station and conduct several days of handover activities with the departing astronauts of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission. After a handover period, NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin of Crew-8 will undock from the space station and splash down off the coast of Florida.
Crew-9 will conduct new scientific research to prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and benefit humanity on Earth. Experiments include the impact of flame behavior on Earth, studying cells and platelets during long-duration spaceflight, and a B vitamin that could reduce Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome. They’ll also work on experiments that benefit life on Earth, like studying the physics of supernova explosions and monitoring the effects of different moister treatments on plants grown aboard the station. These are just a few of over 200 scientific experiments and technology demonstrations taking place during their mission.
While aboard the orbiting laboratory, Crew-9 will welcome two Dragon spacecraft, including NASA’s SpaceX’s 31st commercial resupply services mission and NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10, and two Roscosmos-led cargo deliveries on Progress 90 and 91.
In February, Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore, and Williams will climb aboard Dragon and autonomously undock, depart the space station, and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. After splashdown off Florida’s coast, a SpaceX recovery vessel will pick up the spacecraft and crew, who then will be helicoptered back to shore.
Commercial crew missions enable NASA to maximize use of the space station, where astronauts have lived and worked continuously for more than 23 years testing technologies, performing research, and developing the skills needed to operate future commercial destinations in low Earth orbit, and explore farther from Earth. Research conducted on the space station provides benefits for people on Earth and paves the way for future long-duration trips to the Moon and beyond through NASA’s Artemis missions.
Get breaking news, images, and features from the space station on Instagram, Facebook, and X.
Learn more about the space station, its research, and crew, at https://www.nasa.gov/station.
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Last Updated Sep 19, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Koss, A, Barth This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 4709 located around 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium. Hubble beautifully captures its faint halo and swirling disk filled with stars and dust bands. The compact region at its core might be the most remarkable sight. It holds an active galactic nucleus (AGN).
If IC 4709’s core just held stars, it wouldn’t be nearly as bright. Instead, it hosts a gargantuan black hole, 65 million times more massive than our Sun. A disk of gas spirals around and eventually into this black hole, crashing together and heating up as it spins. It reaches such high temperatures that it emits vast quantities of electromagnetic radiation, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet light and X-rays. A lane of dark dust, just visible at the center of the galaxy in the image above, obscures the AGN in IC 4709. The dust lane blocks any visible light emission from the nucleus itself. Hubble’s spectacular resolution, however, gives astronomers a detailed view of the interaction between the quite small AGN and its host galaxy. This is essential to understanding supermassive black holes in galaxies much more distant than IC 4709, where resolving such fine details is not possible.
This image incorporates data from two Hubble surveys of nearby AGNs originally identified by NASA’s Swift telescope. There are plans for Swift to collect new data on these galaxies. Swift houses three multiwavelength telescopes, collecting data in visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light. Its X-ray component will allow SWIFT to directly see the X-rays from IC 4709’s AGN breaking through the obscuring dust. ESA’s Euclid telescope — currently surveying the dark universe in optical and infrared light — will also image IC 4709 and other local AGNs. Their data, along with Hubble’s, provides astronomers with complementary views across the electromagnetic spectrum. Such views are key to fully research and better understand black holes and their influence on their host galaxies.
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. The mission is targeting an Oct. 10, 2024, launch.NASA/JPL-Caltech The first NASA spacecraft dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth, Europa Clipper aims to find out if the ice-encased moon Europa could be habitable.
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, the largest the agency has ever built for a planetary mission, will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Europa, an intriguing icy moon of Jupiter. The spacecraft’s launch period opens Thursday, Oct. 10.
Learn more about how NASA’s Europa Clipper came together – and how it will explore an ocean moon of Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Data from previous NASA missions has provided scientists with strong evidence that an enormous salty ocean lies underneath the frozen surface of the moon. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter and conduct 49 close flybys of the moon to gather data needed to determine whether there are places below its thick frozen crust that could support life.
Here are eight things to know about the mission:
1. Europa is one of the most promising places to look for currently habitable conditions beyond Earth.
There’s scientific evidence that the ingredients for life — water, the right chemistry, and energy — may exist at Europa right now. This mission will gather the information scientists need to find out for sure. The moon may hold an internal ocean with twice the water of Earth’s oceans combined, and it may also host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface. If the mission determines that Europa is habitable, it would mean there may be more habitable worlds in our solar system and beyond than we have imagined.
2. The spacecraft will fly through one of the most punishing radiation environments in our solar system — second only to the Sun’s.
Jupiter is surrounded by a gigantic magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. As the field spins, it captures and accelerates charged particles, creating radiation that can damage spacecraft. Mission engineers designed a spacecraft vault to shield sensitive electronics from radiation, and they plotted orbits that will limit the time Europa Clipper spends in most radiation-heavy areas around Jupiter.
3. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter, studying Europa while flying by the moon dozens of times.
The spacecraft will make looping orbits around Jupiter that bring it close to Europa for 49 science-dedicated flybys. On each orbit, the spacecraft will spend less than a day in Jupiter’s dangerous radiation zone near Europa before zipping back out. Two to three weeks later, it will repeat the process, making another flyby.
4. Europa Clipper features NASA’s most sophisticated suite of science instruments yet.
To determine if Europa is habitable, Europa Clipper must assess the moon’s interior, composition, and geology. The spacecraft carries nine science instruments and a gravity experiment that uses the telecommunications system. In order to obtain the best science during each flyby, all the science instruments will operate simultaneously on every pass. Scientists will then layer the data together to paint a full picture of the moon.
5. With antennas and solar arrays fully deployed, Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission.
The spacecraft extends 100 feet (30.5 meters) from one end to the other and about 58 feet (17.6 meters) across. That’s bigger than a basketball court, thanks in large part to the solar arrays, which need to be huge so they can collect enough sunlight while near Jupiter to power the instruments, electronics, and other subsystems.
6. It’s a long journey to Jupiter.
Jupiter is on average some 480 million miles (about 770 million kilometers) from Earth; both planets are in motion, and a spacecraft can carry only a limited amount of fuel. Mission planners are sending Europa Clipper past Mars and then Earth, using the planets’ gravity as a slingshot to add speed to the spacecraft’s trek. After journeying about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) over 5½ years, the spacecraft will fire its engines to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.
7. Institutions across the U.S. and Europe have contributed to Europa Clipper.
Currently, about a thousand people work on the mission, including more than 220 scientists from both the U.S. and Europe. Since the mission was officially approved in 2015, more than 4,000 people have contributed to Europa Clipper, including teams who work for contractors and subcontractors.
8. More than 2.6 million of us are riding along with the spacecraft, bringing greetings from one water world to another.
As part of a mission campaign called “Message in a Bottle,” the spacecraft is carrying a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, cosigned by millions of people from nearly every country in the world. Their names have been stenciled onto a microchip attached to a tantalum metal plate that seals the spacecraft’s electronics vault. The plate also features waveforms of people saying the word “water” in over 100 spoken languages.
More About Europa Clipper
Europa Clipper’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The main spacecraft body was designed by APL in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
Find more information about Europa here:
https://europa.nasa.gov
Europa Clipper Teachable Moment See Europa’s Chaos Terrain in Crisp Detail Europa Clipper Gets Its Super-Size Solar Arrays News Media Contacts
Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-6215
gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 17, 2024 Related Terms
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4 min read NASA’s Artemis II Crew Uses Iceland Terrain for Lunar Training
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble Finds More… Missions Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 4 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Finds More Black Holes than Expected in the Early Universe
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. The image required 800 exposures taken over 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004. Credits:
NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team With the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help scientists understand how supermassive black holes were created.
Currently, scientists do not have a complete picture of how the first black holes formed not long after the big bang. It is known that supermassive black holes, that can weigh more than a billion suns, exist at the center of several galaxies less than a billion years after the big bang.
“Many of these objects seem to be more massive than we originally thought they could be at such early times — either they formed very massive or they grew extremely quickly,” said Alice Young, a PhD student from Stockholm University and co-author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This is a new image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The first deep imaging of the field was done with Hubble in 2004. The same survey field was observed again by Hubble several years later, and was then reimaged in 2023. By comparing Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 near-infrared exposures taken in 2009, 2012, and 2023, astronomers found evidence for flickering supermassive black holes in the hearts of early galaxies. One example is seen as a bright object in the inset. Some supermassive black holes do not swallow surrounding material constantly, but in fits and bursts, making their brightness flicker. This can be detected by comparing Hubble Ultra Deep Field frames taken at different epochs. The survey found more black holes than predicted. NASA, ESA, Matthew Hayes (Stockholm University); Acknowledgment: Steven V.W. Beckwith (UC Berkeley), Garth Illingworth (UC Santa Cruz), Richard Ellis (UCL); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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Black holes play an important role in the lifecycle of all galaxies, but there are major uncertainties in our understanding of how galaxies evolve. In order to gain a complete picture of the link between galaxy and black hole evolution, the researchers used Hubble to survey how many black holes exist among a population of faint galaxies when the universe was just a few percent of its current age.
Initial observations of the survey region were re-photographed by Hubble after several years. This allowed the team to measure variations in the brightness of galaxies. These variations are a telltale sign of black holes. The team identified more black holes than previously found by other methods.
The new observational results suggest that some black holes likely formed by the collapse of massive, pristine stars during the first billion years of cosmic time. These types of stars can only exist at very early times in the universe, because later-generation stars are polluted by the remnants of stars that have already lived and died. Other alternatives for black hole formation include collapsing gas clouds, mergers of stars in massive clusters, and “primordial” black holes that formed (by physically speculative mechanisms) in the first few seconds after the big bang. With this new information about black hole formation, more accurate models of galaxy formation can be constructed.
“The formation mechanism of early black holes is an important part of the puzzle of galaxy evolution,” said Matthew Hayes from the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University and lead author of the study. “Together with models for how black holes grow, galaxy evolution calculations can now be placed on a more physically motivated footing, with an accurate scheme for how black holes came into existence from collapsing massive stars.”
Image Before/After Astronomers are also making observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to search for galactic black holes that formed soon after the big bang, to understand how massive they were and where they were located.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
Matthew Hayes
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
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Last Updated Sep 17, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Black Holes Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Missions The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble Science Highlights
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Hubble Focus: Dark Universe
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