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By European Space Agency
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have signed a Memorandum of Intent (MoI) to harness space technology for humanitarian assistance worldwide. The partnership will combine ESA's space expertise with ICRC's humanitarian reach to develop space-enabled solutions that can help protect and assist communities affected by disasters and conflicts across Europe and beyond.
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By NASA
Explore Hubble 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 Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Spots a Supernova
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a supernova in the constellation Gemini. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz) The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a supernova-hosting galaxy located about 600 million light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Hubble captured this image roughly two months after a supernova named SN 2022aajn was discovered. The supernova is visible as a blue dot at the center of the image, brightening the hazy body of the galaxy.
Other than the announcement of its discovery in November 2022, SN 2022aajn has never been the subject of published research. Why then would Hubble observe this supernova? SN 2022aajn is what’s known as a Type Ia supernova, which results from the explosion of the core of a dead star. Supernovae of this type help astronomers measure the distance to faraway galaxies. This is possible because Type Ia supernovae have the same intrinsic luminosity — no matter how bright they seem from Earth, they put out the same amount of light as other Type Ia supernovae. By comparing the observed brightness to the known intrinsic brightness, researchers can calculate the distance to the supernova and its host galaxy.
This seemingly simple way of measuring distances is complicated by cosmic dust. The farther away a supernova is, the fainter and redder it will appear — but intergalactic dust can make a supernova appear fainter and redder as well. To understand this complication, researchers will use Hubble to survey a total of 100 Type Ia supernovae in seven wavelength bands from ultraviolet to near-infrared. This image combines data taken at four infrared wavelengths. Infrared light passes through dust more easily than visible or ultraviolet light. By comparing the brightness of the sampled supernovae across different wavelengths, researchers can disentangle the effects of dust and distance, helping to improve measurements of galaxies billions of light-years away.
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The Death Throes of Stars
Homing in on Cosmic Explosions
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Jan 30, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Stars Supernovae Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge
Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble’s 35th Anniversary
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A massive hotspot — larger the Earth’s Lake Superior — can be seen just to the right of Io’s south pole in this annotated image taken by the JIRAM infrared imager aboard NASA’s Juno on Dec. 27, 2024, during the spacecraft’s flyby of the Jovian moon. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM Even by the standards of Io, the most volcanic celestial body in the solar system, recent events observed on the Jovian moon are extreme.
Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission have discovered a volcanic hot spot in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter’s moon Io. The hot spot is not only larger than Earth’s Lake Superior, but it also belches out eruptions six times the total energy of all the world’s power plants. The discovery of this massive feature comes courtesy of Juno’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, contributed by the Italian Space Agency.
“Juno had two really close flybys of Io during Juno’s extended mission,” said the mission’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “And while each flyby provided data on the tormented moon that exceeded our expectations, the data from this latest — and more distant — flyby really blew our minds. This is the most powerful volcanic event ever recorded on the most volcanic world in our solar system — so that’s really saying something.”
The source of Io’s torment: Jupiter. About the size of Earth’s Moon, Io is extremely close to the mammoth gas giant, and its elliptical orbit whips it around Jupiter once every 42.5 hours. As the distance varies, so does the planet’s gravitational pull, which leads to the moon being relentlessly squeezed. The result: immense energy from frictional heating that melts portions of Io’s interior, resulting in a seemingly endless series of lava plumes and ash venting into its atmosphere from the estimated 400 volcanoes that riddle its surface.
Close Flybys
Designed to capture the infrared light (which isn’t visible to the human eye) emerging from deep inside Jupiter, JIRAM probes the gas giant’s weather layer, peering 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below its cloud tops. But since NASA extended Juno’s mission, the team has also used the instrument to study the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Images of Io captured in 2024 by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno show signif-icant and visible surface changes (indicated by the arrows) near the Jovian moon’s south pole. These changes occurred between the 66th and 68th perijove, or the point during Juno’s orbit when it is closest to Jupiter.Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Jason Perry During its extended mission, Juno’s trajectory passes by Io every other orbit, flying over the same part of the moon each time. Previously, the spacecraft made close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of its surface. The latest flyby took place on Dec. 27, 2024, bringing the spacecraft within about 46,200 miles (74,400 kilometers) of the moon, with the infrared instrument trained on Io’s southern hemisphere.
Io Brings the Heat
“JIRAM detected an event of extreme infrared radiance — a massive hot spot — in Io’s southern hemisphere so strong that it saturated our detector,” said Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. “However, we have evidence what we detected is actually a few closely spaced hot spots that emitted at the same time, suggestive of a subsurface vast magma chamber system. The data supports that this is the most intense volcanic eruption ever recorded on Io.”
The JIRAM science team estimates the as-yet-unnamed feature spans 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometers). The previous record holder was Io’s Loki Patera, a lava lake of about 7,700 square miles (20,000 square kilometers). The total power value of the new hot spot’s radiance measured well above 80 trillion watts.
Picture This
The feature was also captured by the mission’s JunoCam visible light camera. The team compared JunoCam images from the two previous Io flybys with those the instrument collected on Dec. 27. And while these most recent images are of lower resolution since Juno was farther away, the relative changes in surface coloring around the newly discovered hot spot were clear. Such changes in Io’s surface are known in the planetary science community to be associated with hot spots and volcanic activity.
An eruption of this magnitude is likely to leave long-lived signatures. Other large eruptions on Io have created varied features, such as pyroclastic deposits (composed rock fragments spewed out by a volcano), small lava flows that may be fed by fissures, and volcanic-plume deposits rich in sulfur and sulfur dioxide.
Juno will use an upcoming, more distant flyby of Io on March 3 to look at the hot spot again and search for changes in the landscape. Earth-based observations of this region of the moon may also be possible.
“While it is always great to witness events that rewrite the record books, this new hot spot can potentially do much more,” said Bolton. “The intriguing feature could improve our understanding of volcanism not only on Io but on other worlds as well.”
More About Juno
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Italian Space Agency (ASI) funded the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft. Various other institutions around the U.S. provided several of the other scientific instruments on Juno.
More information about Juno is available at:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
Deb Schmid
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
210-522-2254
dschmid@swri.org
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Last Updated Jan 28, 2025 Related Terms
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4 min read NASA Space Tech’s Favorite Place to Travel in 2025: The Moon!
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By NASA
3 min read
January’s Night Sky Notes: The Red Planet
by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Have you looked up at the night sky this season and noticed a bright object sporting a reddish hue to the left of Orion? This is none other than the planet Mars! January will be an excellent opportunity to spot this planet and some of its details with a medium-sized telescope. Be sure to catch these three events this month.
Martian Retrograde
Mars entered retrograde (or backward movement relative to its usual direction) on December 7, 2024, and will continue throughout January into February 23, 2025. You can track the planet’s progress by sketching or photographing Mars’ position relative to nearby stars. Be consistent with your observations, taking them every few nights or so as the weather permits. You can use free software like Stellarium or Stellarium Web (the browser version) to help you navigate the night as Mars treks around the sky. You can find Mars above the eastern horizon after 8:00 PM local time.
This mid-January chart shows the path of Mars from September 2024 to June 2025 as it enters and then exits in retrograde motion. Mars appears to change its direction of motion in the sky because Earth is passing the slower-moving Mars in its orbit. Stellarium Hide and Seek
On the night of January 13th, you can watch Mars ‘disappear’ behind the Moon during an occultation. An occultation is when one celestial object passes directly in front of another, hiding the background object from view. This can happen with planets and stars in our night sky, depending on the orbit of an object and where you are on Earth, similar to eclipses.
A simulated view of the Moon as Mars begins its occultation on January 13, 2025. Stellarium Depending on where you are within the contiguous United States, you can watch this event with the naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope. The occultation will happen for over an hour in some parts of the US. You can use websites like Stellarium Web or the Astronomical League’s ‘Moon Occults Mars’ chart to calculate the best time to see this event.
Closer and Closer
As you observe Mars this month to track its retrograde movement, you will notice that it will increase in brightness. This is because Mars will reach opposition by the evening of January 16th. Opposition happens when a planet is directly opposite the Sun, as seen from Earth. You don’t need to be in any specific city to observe this event; you only need clear skies to observe that it gets brighter. It’s also when Mars is closest to Earth, so you’ll see more details in a telescope.
Want a quick and easy way to illustrate what opposition is for Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, or other outer worlds? Follow the instructions on our Toolkit Hack: Illustrating Opposition with Exploring the Solar System page using our Exploring Our Solar System activity!
A mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft. The mosaic is composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech Mars has fascinated humanity for centuries, with its earliest recorded observations dating back to the Bronze Age. By the 17th century, astronomers were able to identify features of the Martian surface, such as its ice caps and darker regions. Since the 1960s, exploration of the Red Planet has intensified with robotic missions from various space organizations. Currently, NASA has five active missions, including rovers and orbiters, with the future focused on human exploration and habitation. Mars will always fill us with a sense of wonder and adventure as we reach for its soil through initiatives such as the Moon to Mars Architecture and the Mars Sample Return campaign.
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By NASA
Peering through the window of the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image on Oct. 7, 2024 of the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft as vivid green and pink aurora swirled through Earth’s atmosphere while the International Space Station soared 273 miles above the Indian Ocean.
Visit Dominick’s photography on station to experience the wonders of space through his eyes, enriched by his remarkable journey of orbiting the Earth 3,760 times.
To see a short-term forecast of the location and intensity of the next aurora check this link: Aurora – 30 Minute Forecast and also NASA’s Guide to Finding and Photographing Auroras.
Image Credit: NASA/Matthew Dominick
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