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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4302-4303: West Side of Upper Gediz Vallis, From Tungsten Hills to the Next Rocky Waypoint
This photo taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity of ‘Balloon Dome’ covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks. This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera aboard Curiosity on Sol 4301 — Martian day 4,301 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Sept. 11, 2024, at 09:14:42 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024
The rover is on its way from the Tungsten Hills site to the next priority site for Gediz Vallis channel exploration, in which we plan to get in close enough for arm science to one of the numerous large dark-toned “float” blocks in the channel and also to one of the light-toned slabs. We have seen some dark blocks in the channel that seem to be related to the Stimson formation material that the rover encountered earlier in the mission, but some seem like they could be something different. We don’t think any of them originated in the channel so they have to come from somewhere higher up that the rover hasn’t been, and we’re interested in how they were transported down into the channel.
We aren’t there yet, but the 4302-4303 plan’s activities include some important longer-range characterization of the dark-toned and light-toned materials via imaging. Context for the future close-up science on the dark-toned blocks will be provided by the Mastcam mosaics named “Bakeoven Meadow” and “Balloon Dome.” The broad Balloon Dome mosaic also covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks (pictured). Smaller mosaics will cover a pair of targets that include contacts where other types of light-toned and dark-toned material occur next to each other in the same block: “Rattlesnake Creek” which appears to be in place, and “Casa Diablo Hot Springs,” which is a float.
The rover’s arm workspace provided an opportunity for present-day aeolian science on the sandy-looking ripple, Sandy Meadow. Mastcam stereo imaging will document the shape of the ripple, while a suite of high-resolution MAHLI images will tell us something about the particle size of the grains in it. The modern environment will also be monitored via a suprahorizon observation, a dust devil survey, and imaging of the rover deck to look for dust movement.
The workspace included small examples of the dark float blocks, so the composition of one of them will be measured by both APXS and ChemCam LIBS as targets “Lucy’s Foot Pass” and “Colt Lake” respectively.
In the meantime, the Mastcam Boneyard Meadow mosaic will provide a look back at the Tungsten Hills dark rippled block along its bedding plane to try to narrow down the origin of the ripples and the potential roles of water vs. wind in their formation.
Communication remains a challenge for the rover in this location. During planning, the rover’s drive was shifted from the second sol to the first sol in order to increase the downlink data volume available for the post-drive imaging, thereby enabling better planning at the science waypoint we expect to reach in the weekend plan. However, maintaining communications will require the rover to end its drive in a narrow range of orientations, which could make approaching our next science target a bit tricky. We’ll find out on Friday!
Written by: Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Edited by: Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Last Updated Sep 13, 2024 Related Terms
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Week in images: 09-13 September 2024
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Examines a Spiral Star… 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 Examines a Spiral Star Factory
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 5668. ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo named NGC 5668. It is relatively near to us at 90 million light-years from Earth and quite accessible for astronomers to study with both space- and ground-based telescopes. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a remarkable galaxy. It is around 90,000 light-years across, similar in size and mass to our own Milky Way galaxy, and its nearly face-on orientation shows open spiral arms made of cloudy, irregular patches.
One noticeable difference between the Milky Way galaxy and NGC 5668 is that this galaxy is forming new stars 60% more quickly. Astronomers have identified two main drivers of star formation in NGC 5668. Firstly, this high-quality Hubble view reveals a bar at the galaxy’s center, though it might look more like a slight oval shape than a real bar. The bar appears to have affected the galaxy’s star formation rate, as central bars do in many spiral galaxies. Secondly, astronomers tracked high-velocity clouds of hydrogen gas moving vertically between the disk of the galaxy and the spherical, faint halo which surrounds it. These movements may be the result of strong stellar winds from hot, massive stars, that would contribute gas to new star-forming regions.
The enhanced star formation rate in NGC 5668 comes with a corresponding abundance of supernova explosions. Astronomers have spotted three in the galaxy, in 1952, 1954, and 2004. In this image, Hubble examined the surroundings of the Type II SN 2004G, seeking to study the kinds of stars that end their lives as this kind of supernova.
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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 Sep 12, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Missions Spiral Galaxies The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble, Chandra… 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 5 min read
NASA’s Hubble, Chandra Find Supermassive Black Hole Duo
This is an artist’s depiction of a pair of active black holes at the heart of two merging galaxies. They are both surrounded by an accretion disk of hot gas. Some of the material is ejected along the spin axis of each black hole. Confined by powerful magnetic fields, the jets blaze across space at nearly the speed of light as devastating beams of energy. NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
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Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These black holes, buried deep within a pair of colliding galaxies, are fueled by infalling gas and dust, causing them to shine brightly as active galactic nuclei (AGN).
This AGN pair is the closest one detected in the local universe using multiwavelength (visible and X-ray light) observations. While several dozen “dual” black holes have been found before, their separations are typically much greater than what was discovered in the gas-rich galaxy MCG-03-34-64. Astronomers using radio telescopes have observed one pair of binary black holes in even closer proximity than in MCG-03-34-64, but without confirmation in other wavelengths.
AGN binaries like this were likely more common in the early universe when galaxy mergers were more frequent. This discovery provides a unique close-up look at a nearby example, located about 800 million light-years away.
A Hubble Space Telescope visible-light image of the galaxy MCG-03-34-064. Hubble’s sharp view reveals three distinct bright spots embedded in a white ellipse at the galaxy’s center (expanded in an inset image at upper right). Two of these bright spots are the source of strong X-ray emission, a telltale sign that they are supermassive black holes. The black holes shine brightly because they are converting infalling matter into energy, and blaze across space as active galactic nuclei. Their separation is about 300 light-years. The third spot is a blob of bright gas. The blue streak pointing to the 5 o’clock position may be a jet fired from one of the black holes. The black hole pair is a result of a merger between two galaxies that will eventually collide. NASA, ESA, Anna Trindade Falcão (CfA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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The discovery was serendipitous. Hubble’s high-resolution imaging revealed three optical diffraction spikes nested inside the host galaxy, indicating a large concentration of glowing oxygen gas within a very small area. “We were not expecting to see something like this,” said Anna Trindade Falcão of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lead author of the paper published today in The Astrophysical Journal. “This view is not a common occurrence in the nearby universe, and told us there’s something else going on inside the galaxy.”
Diffraction spikes are imaging artifacts caused when light from a very small region in space bends around the mirror inside telescopes.
Falcão’s team then examined the same galaxy in X-rays light using the Chandra observatory to drill into what’s going on. “When we looked at MCG-03-34-64 in the X-ray band, we saw two separated, powerful sources of high-energy emission coincident with the bright optical points of light seen with Hubble. We put these pieces together and concluded that we were likely looking at two closely spaced supermassive black holes,” said Falcão.
In a surprise finding, astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of M87, a huge galaxy 54 million light years away, seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but in a dangerous area near it.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris To support their interpretation, the researchers used archival radio data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array near Socorro, New Mexico. The energetic black hole duo also emits powerful radio waves. “When you see bright light in optical, X-rays, and radio wavelengths, a lot of things can be ruled out, leaving the conclusion these can only be explained as close black holes. When you put all the pieces together it gives you the picture of the AGN duo,” said Falcão.
The third source of bright light seen by Hubble is of unknown origin, and more data is needed to understand it. That might be gas that is shocked by energy from a jet of ultra high-speed plasma fired from one of the black holes, like a stream of water from a garden hose blasting into a pile of sand.
“We wouldn’t be able to see all of these intricacies without Hubble’s amazing resolution,” said Falcão.
The two supermassive black holes were once at the core of their respective host galaxies. A merger between the galaxies brought the black holes into close proximity. They will continue to spiral closer together until they eventually merge — in perhaps 100 million years — rattling the fabric of space and time as gravitational waves.
The National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has detected gravitational waves from dozens of mergers between stellar-mass black holes. But the longer wavelengths resulting from a supermassive black hole merger are beyond LIGO’s capabilities. The next-generation gravitational wave detector, called the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, will consist of three detectors in space, separated by millions of miles, to capture these longer wavelength gravitational waves from deep space. ESA (European Space Agency) is leading this mission, partnering with NASA and other participating institutions, with a planned launch in the mid-2030s.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge, Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts. Northrop Grumman Space Technologies in Redondo Beach, California was the prime contractor for the spacecraft.
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 Contacts:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
Anna Trindade Falcão
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA
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Last Updated Sep 09, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Active Galaxies Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Chandra X-Ray Observatory Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Marshall Space Flight Center Missions Spiral Galaxies The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
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By European Space Agency
Week in images: 02-06 September 2024
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