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Hubble Photo Gallery of Jupiter's Galilean Satellites


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Located approximately a half billion miles away, the moons are so small that, in visible light, they appear as fuzzy disks in the largest ground-based telescopes. Hubble can resolve surface details seen previously only by the Voyager space probes in the early 1980s. While the Voyager probes provided close-up snapshots of the satellites, Hubble can now follow changes on the moons and reveal other characteristics at ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths.

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      Hubble Captures an Edge-On Spiral with Curve Appeal
      This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features spiral galaxy UGC 10043. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Windhorst, W. Keel
      Download this image

      This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043. We don’t see the galaxy’s spiral arms because we are seeing it from the side. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that we see edge-on.
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      Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
      Claire Andreoli
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
      claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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      Last Updated Nov 21, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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      An artist’s concept of the early stages of the young star FU Orionis (FU Ori) outburst, surrounded by a disk of material. Credits:
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      “We were hoping to validate the hottest part of the accretion disk model, to determine its maximum temperature, by measuring closer to the inner edge of the accretion disk than ever before,” said Lynne Hillenbrand of Caltech in Pasadena, California, and a co-author of the paper. “I think there was some hope that we would see something extra, like the interface between the star and its disk, but we were certainly not expecting it. The fact we saw so much extra — it was much brighter in the ultraviolet than we predicted — that was the big surprise.”
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      Download this image

      The enhanced infall rate and proximity of the accretion disk to the star make FU Ori objects much brighter than a typical T Tauri star. In fact, during an outburst, the star itself is outshined by the disk. Furthermore, the disk material is orbiting rapidly as it approaches the star, much faster than the rotation rate of the stellar surface. This means that there should be a region where the disk impacts the star and the material slows down and heats up significantly. 
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      Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
      Abigail Major, Ray Villard
      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
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      To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
      The guitar shape in the “Guitar Nebula” comes from bubbles blown by particles ejected from the pulsar through a steady wind as it moves through space. A movie of Chandra (red) data taken in 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2021 has been combined with a single image in optical light from Palomar. X-rays from Chandra show a filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles, about two light-years long, blasting away from the pulsar (seen as the bright white dot). The movie shows how this filament has changed over two decades. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries et al.; Optical full field: Palomar Obs./Caltech & inset: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare) Normally found only in heavy metal bands or certain post-apocalyptic films, a “flame-throwing guitar” has now been spotted moving through space. Astronomers have captured movies of this extreme cosmic object using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.
      The new movie of Chandra (red) and Palomar (blue) data helps break down what is playing out in the Guitar Nebula. X-rays from Chandra show a filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles, about two light-years or 12 trillion miles long, blasting away from the pulsar (seen as the bright white dot connected to the filament).
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      X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries et al.; Optical: (Hubble) NASA/ESA/STScI and (Palomar) Hale Telescope/Palomar/CalTech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare At the tip of the guitar is the pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star left behind after the collapse of a massive star. As it hurtles through space it is pumping out a flame-like filament of particles and X-ray light that astronomers have captured with Chandra.
      How does space produce something so bizarre? The combination of two extremes — fast rotation and high magnetic fields of pulsars — leads to particle acceleration and high-energy radiation that creates matter and antimatter particles, as electron and positron pairs. In this situation, the usual process of converting mass into energy, famously determined by Albert Einstein’s E = mc2 equation, is reversed. Here, energy is being converted into mass to produce the particles.
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      The new movie shows the pulsar and the filament flying towards the upper left of the image through Chandra data taken in 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2021. The movie has the same optical image in each frame, so it does not show changes in parts of the “guitar.” A separate movie obtained with data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (obtained in 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2021) shows the motion of the pulsar and the smaller structures around it.
      To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
      Hubble Space Telescope data: 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2021.X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries et al.; Optical full field: Palomar Obs./Caltech & inset: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare) A study of this data has concluded that the variations that drive the formation of bubbles in the hydrogen nebula, which forms the outline of the guitar, also control changes in how many particles escape to the right of the pulsar, causing subtle brightening and fading of the X-ray filament, like a cosmic blow torch shooting from the tip of the guitar.
      The structure of the filament teaches astronomers about how electrons and positrons travel through the interstellar medium. It also provides an example of how this process is injecting electrons and positrons into the interstellar medium.
      A paper describing these results was published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available here.
      NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
      Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
      Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
      https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
      https://chandra.si.edu
      Visual Description:
      This release features two short videos and a labeled composite image, all featuring what can be described as a giant flame-throwing guitar floating in space.
      In both the six second multiwavelength Guitar Nebula timelapse video and the composite image, the guitar shape appears at our lower left, with the neck of the instrument pointing toward our upper left. The guitar shape is ghostly and translucent, resembling a wispy cloud on a dark night. At the end of the neck, the guitar’s headstock comes to a sharp point that lands on a bright white dot. This dot is a pulsar, and the guitar shape is a hydrogen nebula. The nebula was formed when particles being ejected by the pulsar produced a cloud of bubbles. The bubbles were then blown into a curvy guitar shape by a steady wind. The guitar shape is undeniable, and is traced by a thin white line in the labeled composite image.
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      A 12 second video is also included in this release. It features four images that focus on the headstock of the guitar shape. These images were captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2021. When played in sequence, the images show the headstock shape expanding. A study of this data has concluded that the variations that drive the formation of bubbles in the hydrogen nebula also control changes in the pulsar’s blast filament. Meaning the same phenomenon that created the cosmic guitar also created the cosmic blowtorch shooting from the headstock.
      View the full article
    • By NASA
      4 min read
      NASA Satellites Reveal Abrupt Drop in Global Freshwater Levels
      Earth (ESD) Earth Home Explore Climate Change Science in Action Multimedia Data For Researchers GRACE satellites measure gravity as they orbit the planet to reveal shifting levels of water on the Earth (artist’s concept). NASA/JPL-Caltech An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth’s continents have entered a persistently drier phase.
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      During times of drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped. The reduction in available water puts a strain on farmers and communities, potentially leading to famine, conflicts, poverty, and an increased risk of disease when people turn to contaminated water sources, according to a UN report on water stress published in 2024.
      The team of researchers identified this abrupt, global decrease in freshwater using observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, operated by the German Aerospace Center, German Research Centre for Geosciences, and NASA. GRACE satellites measure fluctuations in Earth’s gravity on monthly scales that reveal changes in the mass of water on and under the ground. The original GRACE satellites flew from March 2002 to October 2017. The successor GRACE–Follow On (GRACE–FO) satellites  launched in May 2018.
      This map shows the years that terrestrial water storage hit a 22-year minimum (i.e., the land was driest) at each location, based on data from the GRACE and GRACE/FO satellites. A significantly large portion of the global land surface reached this minimum in the nine years since 2015, which happen to be the nine warmest years in the modern temperature record. Image by NASA Earth Observatory/Wanmei Liang with data courtesy of Mary Michael O’Neill The decline in global freshwater reported in the study began with a massive drought in northern and central Brazil, and was followed shortly by a series of major droughts in Australasia, South America, North America, Europe, and Africa. Warmer ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific from late 2014 into 2016, culminating in one of the most significant El Niño events since 1950, led to shifts in atmospheric jet streams that altered weather and rainfall patterns around the world. However, even after El Niño subsided, global freshwater failed to rebound.  In fact, Rodell and team report that 13 of the world’s 30 most intense droughts observed by GRACE occurred since January 2015. Rodell and colleagues suspect that global warming might be contributing to the enduring freshwater depletion.
      Global warming leads the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which results in more extreme precipitation, said NASA Goddard meteorologist Michael Bosilovich. While total annual rain and snowfall levels may not change dramatically, long periods between intense precipitation events allow the soil to dry and become more compact. That decreases the amount of water the ground can absorb when it does rain. 
      “The problem when you have extreme precipitation,” Bosilovich said, “is the water ends up running off,” instead of soaking in and replenishing groundwater stores. Globally, freshwater levels have stayed consistently low since the 2014-2016 El Niño, while more water remains trapped in the atmosphere as water vapor. “Warming temperatures increase both the evaporation of water from the surface to the atmosphere, and the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere, increasing the frequency and intensity of drought conditions,” he noted.
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      It remains to be seen whether global freshwater will rebound to pre-2015 values, hold steady, or resume its decline. Considering that the nine warmest years in the modern temperature record coincided with the abrupt freshwater decline, Rodell said, “We don’t think this is a coincidence, and it could be a harbinger of what’s to come.”
      By James R. Riordon
      NASA’s Earth Science News Team
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      Last Updated Nov 15, 2024 Editor James Riordon Contact James Riordon james.r.riordon@nasa.gov Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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      This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image depicts the cosmic tangle that is MCG+05-31-045, a pair of interacting galaxies located 390 million light-years away and a part of the Coma galaxy cluster.
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      Claire Andreoli
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
      claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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      Details
      Last Updated Nov 14, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
      Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies 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.


      Galaxy Details and Mergers



      Hubble’s Galaxies



      Explore the Night Sky


      View the full article
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