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This artist’s concept shows a closeup of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is one of the Milky Way galaxy’s nearest neighbors. Credits:
NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) A story of survival is unfolding at the outer reaches of our galaxy, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is witnessing the saga.
The Large Magellanic Cloud, also called the LMC, is one of the Milky Way galaxy’s nearest neighbors. This dwarf galaxy looms large on the southern nighttime sky at 20 times the apparent diameter of the full Moon.
Many researchers theorize that the LMC is not in orbit around our galaxy, but is just passing by. These scientists think that the LMC has just completed its closest approach to the much more massive Milky Way. This passage has blown away most of the spherical halo of gas that surrounds the LMC.
Now, for the first time, astronomers been able to measure the size of the LMC’s halo – something they could do only with Hubble. In a new study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers were surprised to find that it is so extremely small, about 50,000 light-years across. That’s around 10 times smaller than halos of other galaxies that are the LMC’s mass. Its compactness tells the story of its encounter with the Milky Way.
“The LMC is a survivor,” said Andrew Fox of AURA/STScI for the European Space Agency in Baltimore, who was principal investigator on the observations. “Even though it’s lost a lot of its gas, it’s got enough left to keep forming new stars. So new star-forming regions can still be created. A smaller galaxy wouldn’t have lasted – there would be no gas left, just a collection of aging red stars.”
This artist’s concept shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, in the foreground as it passes through the gaseous halo of the much more massive Milky Way galaxy. The encounter has blown away most of the spherical halo of gas that surrounds the LMC, as illustrated by the trailing gas stream reminiscent of a comet’s tail. Still, a compact halo remains, and scientists do not expect this residual halo to be lost. The team surveyed the halo by using the background light of 28 quasars, an exceptionally bright type of active galactic nucleus that shines across the universe like a lighthouse beacon. Their light allows scientists to “see” the intervening halo gas indirectly through the absorption of the background light. The lines represent the Hubble Space Telescope’s view from its orbit around Earth to the distant quasars through the LMC’s gas. NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
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Though quite a bit worse for wear, the LMC still retains a compact, stubby halo of gas – something that it wouldn’t have been able to hold onto gravitationally had it been less massive. The LMC is 10 percent the mass of the Milky Way, making it heftier than most dwarf galaxies.
“Because of the Milky Way’s own giant halo, the LMC’s gas is getting truncated, or quenched,” explained STScI’s Sapna Mishra, the lead author on the paper chronicling this discovery. “But even with this catastrophic interaction with the Milky Way, the LMC is able to retain 10 percent of its halo because of its high mass.”
A Gigantic Hair Dryer
Most of the LMC’s halo was blown away due to a phenomenon called ram-pressure stripping. The dense environment of the Milky Way pushes back against the incoming LMC and creates a wake of gas trailing the dwarf galaxy – like the tail of a comet.
“I like to think of the Milky Way as this giant hairdryer, and it’s blowing gas off the LMC as it comes into us,” said Fox. “The Milky Way is pushing back so forcefully that the ram pressure has stripped off most of the original mass of the LMC’s halo. There’s only a little bit left, and it’s this small, compact leftover that we’re seeing now.”
As the ram pressure pushes away much of the LMC’s halo, the gas slows down and eventually will rain into the Milky Way. But because the LMC has just gotten past its closest approach to the Milky Way and is moving outward into deep space again, scientists do not expect the whole halo will be lost.
Only with Hubble
To conduct this study, the research team analyzed ultraviolet observations from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at STScI. Most ultraviolet light is blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere, so it cannot be observed with ground-based telescopes. Hubble is the only current space telescope tuned to detect these wavelengths of light, so this study was only possible with Hubble.
The team surveyed the halo by using the background light of 28 bright quasars. The brightest type of active galactic nucleus, quasars are believed to be powered by supermassive black holes. Shining like lighthouse beacons, they allow scientists to “see” the intervening halo gas indirectly through the absorption of the background light. Quasars reside throughout the universe at extreme distances from our galaxy.
This artist’s concept illustrates the Large Magellanic Cloud’s (LMC’s) encounter with the Milky Way galaxy’s gaseous halo. In the top panel, at the middle of the right side, the LMC begins crashing through our galaxy’s much more massive halo. The bright purple bow shock represents the leading edge of the LMC’s halo, which is being compressed as the Milky Way’s halo pushes back against the incoming LMC. In the middle panel, part of the halo is being stripped and blown back into a streaming tail of gas that eventually will rain into the Milky Way. The bottom panel shows the progression of this interaction, as the LMC’s comet-like tail becomes more defined. A compact LMC halo remains. Because the LMC is just past its closest approach to the Milky Way and is moving outward into deep space again, scientists do not expect the residual halo will be lost. NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
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The scientists used data from Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) to detect the presence of the halo’s gas by the way it absorbs certain colors of light from background quasars. A spectrograph breaks light into its component wavelengths to reveal clues to the object’s state, temperature, speed, quantity, distance, and composition. With COS, they measured the velocity of the gas around the LMC, which allowed them to determine the size of the halo.
Because of its mass and proximity to the Milky Way, the LMC is a unique astrophysics laboratory. Seeing the LMC’s interplay with our galaxy helps scientists understand what happened in the early universe, when galaxies were closer together. It also shows just how messy and complicated the process of galaxy interaction is.
Looking to the Future
The team will next study the front side of the LMC’s halo, an area that has not yet been explored.
“In this new program, we are going to probe five sightlines in the region where the LMC’s halo and the Milky Way’s halo are colliding,” said co-author Scott Lucchini of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “This is the location where the halos are compressed, like two balloons pushing against each other.”
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.
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Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Hubble Space Telescope Irregular Galaxies Spiral Galaxies The Milky Way Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
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ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A. Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble) This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy located 49 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado. This galaxy is a multi-talented light show, showing off an impressive array of different celestial lights. Like any spiral galaxy, shining stars fill its disk, giving the galaxy a beautiful glow. Along its two large arms, bubbles of hydrogen gas shine in a striking red light fueled by radiation from infant stars shrouded within. Near the galaxy’s center are some particularly spectacular stars embedded within a ring of hot gas. These newly formed and extremely hot stars emit powerful X-rays. Closer in, at the galaxy’s very center, sits an even brighter source of X-rays, an active galactic nucleus. This X-ray powerhouse makes NGC 1672 a Seyfert galaxy. It forms as a result of heated matter swirling in the accretion disk around NGC 1672’s supermassive black hole.
See more images of NGC 1672.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A. Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)
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Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Captures a Galaxy with… 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 2 min read
Hubble Captures a Galaxy with Many Lights
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the spiral galaxy NGC 1672 with a supernova. ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A. Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy located 49 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado. This galaxy is a multi-talented light show, showing off an impressive array of different celestial lights. Like any spiral galaxy, shining stars fill its disk, giving the galaxy a beautiful glow. Along its two large arms, bubbles of hydrogen gas shine in a striking red light fueled by radiation from infant stars shrouded within. Near the galaxy’s center are some particularly spectacular stars embedded within a ring of hot gas. These newly formed and extremely hot stars emit powerful X-rays. Closer in, at the galaxy’s very center, sits an even brighter source of X-rays, an active galactic nucleus. This X-ray powerhouse makes NGC 1672 a Seyfert galaxy. It forms as a result of heated matter swirling in the accretion disk around NGC 1672’s supermassive black hole.
Image Before/After Along with its bright young stars and X-ray core, a highlight of this image is the most fleeting and temporary of lights: a supernova, visible in just one of the six Hubble images that make up this composite. Supernova SN 2017GAX was a Type I supernova caused by the core-collapse and subsequent explosion of a giant star that went from invisible to a new light in the sky in just a matter of days. In the image above, the supernova is already fading and is visible as a small green dot just below the crook of the spiral arm on the right side. Astronomers wanted to look for any companion star that the supernova progenitor may have had — something impossible to spot beside a live supernova — so they purposefully captured this image of the fading supernova.
Recently, NGC 1672 was also among a crop of galaxies imaged with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, showing the ring of gas and the structure of dust in its spiral arms. The image below compares the Webb image with Hubble’s image.
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Last Updated Nov 08, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, firing up its engine for the first time. These engine-run tests start at low power and allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas NASA’s Quesst mission marked a major milestone with the start of tests on the engine that will power the quiet supersonic X-59 experimental aircraft.
These engine-run tests, which began Oct. 30, allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. In previous tests, the X-59 used external sources for power. The engine-run tests set the stage for the next phase of the experimental aircraft’s progress toward flight.
The X-59 team is conducting the engine-run tests in phases. In this first phase, the engine rotated at a relatively low speed without ignition to check for leaks and ensure all systems are communicating properly. The team then fueled the aircraft and began testing the engine at low power, with the goal of verifying that it and other aircraft systems operate without anomalies or leaks while on engine power.
Lockheed Martin test pilot Dan Canin sits in the cockpit of NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft in a run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California prior to its first engine run. These engine-run tests featured the X-59 powered by its own engine, whereas in previous tests, the aircraft depended on external sources for power. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The first phase of the engine tests was really a warmup to make sure that everything looked good prior to running the engine,” said Jay Brandon, NASA’s X-59 chief engineer. “Then we moved to the actual first engine start. That took the engine out of the preservation mode that it had been in since installation on the aircraft. It was the first check to see that it was operating properly and that all the systems it impacted – hydraulics, electrical system, environmental control systems, etc. – seemed to be working.”
The X-59 will generate a quieter thump rather than a loud boom while flying faster than the speed of sound. The aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which will gather data on how people perceive these thumps, providing regulators with information that could help lift current bans on commercial supersonic flight over land.
The engine, a modified F414-GE-100, packs 22,000 pounds of thrust, which will enable the X-59 to achieve the desired cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour) at an altitude of approximately 55,000 feet. It sits in a nontraditional spot – atop the aircraft — to aid in making the X-59 quieter.
Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. Because of the challenges involved with reaching this critical phase of testing, the X-59’s first flight is now expected in early 2025. The team will continue progressing through critical ground tests and address any technical issues discovered with this one-of-a-kind, experimental aircraft. The X-59 team will have a more specific first flight date as these tests are successfully completed.
The testing is taking place at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. During later phases, the team will test the aircraft at high power with rapid throttle changes, followed by simulating the conditions of an actual flight.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, prior to its first engine run. Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The success of these runs will be the start of the culmination of the last eight years of my career,” said Paul Dees, NASA’s deputy propulsion lead for the X-59. “This isn’t the end of the excitement but a small steppingstone to the beginning. It’s like the first note of a symphony, where years of teamwork behind the scenes are now being put to the test to prove our efforts have been effective, and the notes will continue to play a harmonious song to flight.”
After the engine runs, the X-59 team will move to aluminum bird testing, where data will be fed to the aircraft under both normal and failure conditions. The team will then proceed with a series of taxi tests, where the aircraft will be put in motion on the ground. These tests will be followed by final preparations for first flight.
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Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble, Webb… 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 6 Min Read NASA’s Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega
Teams of astronomers used the combined power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to revisit the legendary Vega disk. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona) In the 1997 movie “Contact,” adapted from Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, the lead character scientist Ellie Arroway (played by actor Jodi Foster) takes a space-alien-built wormhole ride to the star Vega. She emerges inside a snowstorm of debris encircling the star — but no obvious planets are visible.
It looks like the filmmakers got it right.
A team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson used NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes for an unprecedented in-depth look at the nearly 100-billion-mile-diameter debris disk encircling Vega. “Between the Hubble and Webb telescopes, you get this very clear view of Vega. It’s a mysterious system because it’s unlike other circumstellar disks we’ve looked at,” said Andras Gáspár of the University of Arizona, a member of the research team. “The Vega disk is smooth, ridiculously smooth.”
The big surprise to the research team is that there is no obvious evidence for one or more large planets plowing through the face-on disk like snow tractors. “It’s making us rethink the range and variety among exoplanet systems,” said Kate Su of the University of Arizona, lead author of the paper presenting the Webb findings.
[left] A Hubble Space Telescope false-color view of a 100-billion-mile-wide disk of dust around the summer star Vega. Hubble detects reflected light from dust that is the size of smoke particles largely in a halo on the periphery of the disk. The disk is very smooth, with no evidence of embedded large planets. The black spot at the center blocks out the bright glow of the hot young star.
[right] The James Webb Space Telescope resolves the glow of warm dust in a disk halo, at 23 billion miles out. The outer disk (analogous to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt) extends from 7 billion miles to 15 billion miles. The inner disk extends from the inner edge of the outer disk down to close proximity to the star. There is a notable dip in surface brightness of the inner disk from approximately 3.7 to 7.2 billion miles. The black spot at the center is due to lack of data from saturation. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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Webb sees the infrared glow from a disk of particles the size of sand swirling around the sizzling blue-white star that is 40 times brighter than our Sun. Hubble captures an outer halo of this disk, with particles no bigger than the consistency of smoke that are reflecting starlight.
The distribution of dust in the Vega debris disk is layered because the pressure of starlight pushes out the smaller grains faster than larger grains. “Different types of physics will locate different-sized particles at different locations,” said Schuyler Wolff of the University of Arizona team, lead author of the paper presenting the Hubble findings. “The fact that we’re seeing dust particle sizes sorted out can help us understand the underlying dynamics in circumstellar disks.”
The Vega disk does have a subtle gap, around 60 AU (astronomical units) from the star (twice the distance of Neptune from the Sun), but otherwise is very smooth all the way in until it is lost in the glare of the star. This shows that there are no planets down at least to Neptune-mass circulating in large orbits, as in our solar system, say the researchers.
Hubble acquired this image of the circumstellar disk around the star Vega using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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“We’re seeing in detail how much variety there is among circumstellar disks, and how that variety is tied into the underlying planetary systems. We’re finding a lot out about the planetary systems — even when we can’t see what might be hidden planets,” added Su. “There’s still a lot of unknowns in the planet-formation process, and I think these new observations of Vega are going to help constrain models of planet formation.”
Disk Diversity
Newly forming stars accrete material from a disk of dust and gas that is the flattened remnant of the cloud from which they are forming. In the mid-1990s Hubble found disks around many newly forming stars. The disks are likely sites of planet formation, migration, and sometimes destruction. Fully matured stars like Vega have dusty disks enriched by ongoing “bumper car” collisions among orbiting asteroids and debris from evaporating comets. These are primordial bodies that can survive up to the present 450-million-year age of Vega (our Sun is approximately ten times older than Vega). Dust within our solar system (seen as the Zodiacal light) is also replenished by minor bodies ejecting dust at a rate of about 10 tons per second. This dust is shoved around by planets. This provides a strategy for detecting planets around other stars without seeing them directly – just by witnessing the effects they have on the dust.
“Vega continues to be unusual,” said Wolff. “The architecture of the Vega system is markedly different from our own solar system where giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn are keeping the dust from spreading the way it does with Vega.”
Webb acquired this image of the circumstellar disk around the star Vega using the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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For comparison, there is a nearby star, Fomalhaut, which is about the same distance, age and temperature as Vega. But Fomalhaut’s circumstellar architecture is greatly different from Vega’s. Fomalhaut has three nested debris belts.
Planets are suggested as shepherding bodies around Fomalhaut that gravitationally constrict the dust into rings, though no planets have been positively identified yet. “Given the physical similarity between the stars of Vega and Fomalhaut, why does Fomalhaut seem to have been able to form planets and Vega didn’t?” said team member George Rieke of the University of Arizona, a member of the research team. “What’s the difference? Did the circumstellar environment, or the star itself, create that difference? What’s puzzling is that the same physics is at work in both,” added Wolff.
First Clue to Possible Planetary Construction Yards
Located in the summer constellation Lyra, Vega is one of the brightest stars in the northern sky. Vega is legendary because it offered the first evidence for material orbiting a star — presumably the stuff for making planets — as potential abodes of life. This was first hypothesized by Immanuel Kant in 1775. But it took over 200 years before the first observational evidence was collected in 1984. A puzzling excess of infrared light from warm dust was detected by NASA’s IRAS (Infrared Astronomy Satellite). It was interpreted as a shell or disk of dust extending twice the orbital radius of Pluto from the star.
In 2005, NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope mapped out a ring of dust around Vega. This was further confirmed by observations using submillimeter telescopes including Caltech’s Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and also the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Herschel Space Telescope, but none of these telescopes could see much detail. “The Hubble and Webb observations together provide so much more detail that they are telling us something completely new about the Vega system that nobody knew before,” said Rieke.
Two papers (Wolff et al. and Su et. al.) from the Arizona team will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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.
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Finding Planetary Construction Zones
The science paper by Schuyler Wolff et al., PDF (3.24 MB)
The science paper by Kate Su et al., PDF (2.10 MB)
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