Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

NASAs Hubble Telescope has captured some of the universes brightest infrared galaxies on camera, thanks to some closer galaxies that act like magnifying glasses.

These luminous galaxies are up to 10,000 times brighter than our Milky Way galaxy, and we are able to see them because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Galaxies or clusters of galaxies with large gravitational fields create a lense that magnifies what is behind them.

Gravitational lensing magnifies them so that you can see small details that otherwise are unimaginable, said said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in a NASA article. We can see features as small as about 100 light-years or less across.

Gravitational lenses also come with their problems. Like looking at something magnified through water, researchers must first understand how gravitational lensing is distorting the image.

The bright and distant galaxies are also incredibly industrious star factories, churning out 5,000 to 10,000 times the number of stars as the Milky Way. What is strange is that theyre doing it with the same amount of gas as the Milky Way. NASA researchers have a few theories as how this can be, but so far no answers.

Weve known for two decades that some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe are very dusty and massive, and theyre undergoing bursts of star formation, Lowenthal said. But theyve been very hard to study because the dust makes them practically impossible to observe in visible light. Theyre also very rare: they dont appear in any of Hubbles deep-field surveys. They are in random parts of the sky that nobodys looked at before in detail. Thats why finding that they are gravitationally lensed is so important.

As of June 6, Lowenthals team was halfway through its Hubble survey of 22 galaxies.

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NASA Gets Images of Ultra Bright, Distant Galaxies Thanks to Other ... - The Epoch Times

Aaron Dickens

Jun 14th 2017 4:28PM

The Hubble telescope captures the brightest galaxies ever seen in the universe.

Times Square isn't the only place you can catch the glitz and glam. NASA's famous Hubble Telescope got a front row seat using what's called "gravitational lensing."

Thousands of galaxies act like lenses that magnify light, making them appear super bright.

RELATED: Best photos from NASA's Hubble telescope

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Best photos from NASA's Hubble telescope

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The many sides of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. Located 10,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a once massive star that died in a violent supernova explosion 325 years ago. Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Spitzer Space Telescope.

(Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen, NGC 6543, nicknamed the ?Cat's Eye Nebula.? Hubble reveals surprisingly intricate structures including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas and unusual Lock-induced knots of gas. Estimated to be 1,000 years old, the nebula is a visual ?fossil record? of the dynamics and late evolution of a dying star. A preliminary interpretation suggests that the star might be a double-star system. The suspected companion star also might be responsible for a pair of high-speed jets of gas that lie at right angles to this equatorial ring.

(Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed the pillar on Feb. 1-2, 2010.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout)

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002. The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a pulse of light, somewhat similar to setting off a flashbulb in a darkened room. The dust may have been ejected during a previous explosion, similar to the 2002 event.

(Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

By pushing NASAs Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major.

(Photo via NASA)

This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a peculiar galaxy known as NGC 1487, lying about 30 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Eridanus.

Rather than viewing it as a celestial object, it is actually better to think of this as an event. Here, we are witnessing two or more galaxies in the act of merging together to form a single new galaxy. Each galaxy has lost almost all traces of its original appearance, as stars and gas have been thrown by gravity in an elaborate cosmic whirl.

Unless one is very much bigger than the other, galaxies are always disrupted by the violence of the merging process. As a result, it is very difficult to determine precisely what the original galaxies looked like and, indeed, how many of them there were. In this case, it is possible that we are seeing the merger of several dwarf galaxies that were previously clumped together in a small group.

Although older yellow and red stars can be seen in the outer regions of the new galaxy, its appearance is dominated by large areas of bright blue stars, illuminating the patches of gas that gave them life. This burst of star formation may well have been triggered by the merger.

(Photo viaESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt, Caption viaEuropean Space Agency)

These blue-white stars are burning their hydrogen fuel so ferociously they will explode as supernovae in just a few million years. The combination of outflowing stellar winds and, ultimately, supernova blast waves will carve out cavities in nearby clouds of gas and dust. These fireworks will kick-start the beginning of a new generation of stars in an ongoing cycle of star birth and death.

(Photo viaNASA, ESA, and J. Maz Apellniz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain), Acknowledgment: N. Smith (University of Arizona))

Most galaxies possess a majestic spiral or elliptical structure. About a quarter of galaxies, though, defy such conventional, rounded aesthetics, instead sporting a messy, indefinable shape. Known as irregular galaxies, this group includes NGC 5408, the galaxy that has been snapped here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The galaxy resembles a giant maelstrom of glowing gas, rippled with dark dust that swirls inwards towards the nucleus. Messier 96 is a very asymmetric galaxy; its dust and gas are unevenly spread throughout its weak spiral arms, and its core is not exactly at the galactic center. Its arms are also asymmetrical, thought to have been influenced by the gravitational pull of other galaxies within the same group as Messier 96.

(Photo:ESA/Hubble & NASA and the LEGUS)

It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such. However, it is in fact a new galaxy in the process of forming. Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure.

Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe

The farthest and one of the very earliest galaxies ever seen in the universe appears as a faint red blob in this ultra-deepfield exposure taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This is the deepest infrared image taken of the universe. Based on the object's color, astronomers believe it is 13.2 billion light-years away.

(Photo Credit:NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz and Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team)

(Photo:ESA/Hubble & NASA)

The Veil Nebula, left behind by the explosion of a massive star thousands of years ago, is one of the largest and most spectacular supernova remnants in the sky. This is only a small section of it.

(Photo credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage)

A ribbon of gas, a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago, floats in our galaxy. The supernova that created it was probably the brightest star ever seen by humans.

(Photo credit: NASA, ESA & the Hubble Heritage team)

This image from Hubbles Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 showcases NGC 1501, a complex planetary nebula located in the large but faint constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, NGC 1501 is a planetary nebula that is just under 5,000 light-years away from us. Astronomers have modeled the three-dimensional structure of the nebula, finding it to be a cloud shaped as an irregular ellipsoid filled with bumpy and bubbly regions. It has a bright central star that can be seen easily in this image, shining brightly from within the nebulas cloud. This bright pearl embedded within its glowing shell inspired the nebulas popular nickname: the Oyster Nebula.

(Photo: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Marc Canale)

At first glance, Jupiter looks like it has a mild case of the measles. Five spots one colored white, one blue, and three black are scattered across the upper half of the planet. Closer inspection by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals that these spots are actually a rare alignment of three of Jupiter's largest moons Io, Ganymede, and Callisto across the planet's face. In this image, the telltale signatures of this alignment are the shadows [the three black circles] cast by the moons. Io's shadow is located just above center and to the left; Ganymede's on the planet's left edge; and Callisto's near the right edge. Only two of the moons, however, are visible in this image. Io is the white circle in the center of the image, and Ganymede is the blue circle at upper right. Callisto is out of the image and to the right.

(Photo: NASA, ESA andE. Karkoschka)

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the region around a star known as R Sculptoris, a red giant located 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sculptor.Recent observationshave shown that the material surrounding R Sculptoris actually forms a spiral structure a phenomenon probably caused by a hidden companion star orbiting the star. Systems with multiple stars often lead to unusual or unexpected morphologies, as seen, for example, in the wide range of strikingplanetary nebulae that Hubble has imaged.

(Photo: ESA/Hubble & NASA)

This image shows the center of the globular cluster Messier 22, also known as M22, as observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are spherical collections of densely packed stars, relics of the early years of the Universe, with ages of typically 12 to 13 billion years. This is very old considering that the Universe is only 13.8 billion years old.

(Photo: ESA/Hubble & NASA)

In a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud, young stars are spewing radiation thats eating away at the cloud of gas and dust that gave birth to them not too long ago. This Hubble image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows that scene.

The cluster of blue stars, called NGC 602, formed when a large part of the gas cloud collapsed under gravity and became very dense. The fierce radiation now being produced by these hot, young stars is sculpting the inner rim of the gaseous nebula. Parts of the nebula resist this erosion better than others, leaving tall pillars that point toward the source of the radiation the stars.

(Photo:NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) - ESA/Hubble Collaboration )

The giant nebula NGC 3603 is a prominent star-forming region in the Carina spiral arm of our galaxy, about 20,000 light-years away. Discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1834, it is the largest nebula seen in visible light in the Milky Way. Within its core is nestled a stellar jewel box of thousands of sparkling young stars, one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy.

(Photo:NASA, ESA, R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), F. Paresce (National Institute for Astrophysics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Universities Space Research Association/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun. As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is formed, analogous to the bow wave of a boat moving through water or a plane traveling at supersonic speed. The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of center is LL Ori's cosmic bow shock, measuring about half a light-year across. The slower gas is flowing away from the Orion Nebula's hot central star cluster, the Trapezium, located off the upper left corner of the picture. In three dimensions, LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge. The beautiful picture is part of a large mosaic view of the complex stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a myriad of fluid shapes associated with star formation.

(NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team/ABACAPRESS.COM)

An undated handout picture by NASA/ESA shows around 5,500 galaxies seen through the Hubble telescope. The time exposure titled 'Hubble extreme Deep Field' (XDF reveals galaxies up to 13.2 billion light-years from earth.

(Photo: NASA/ESA/G. Illingworth/D. Magee/P. Oesch/R. Bouwens/HUDF09 Team)

Sun Seasons: Our sun is constantly changing. It goes through cycles of activity - swinging between times of relative calm and times when frequent explosions on its surface can fling light, particles and energy out into space. This activity cycle peaks approximately every 11 years. New research shows evidence of a shorter time cycle as well, with activity waxing and waning over the course of about 330 days. Understanding when to expect such bursts of solar activity is crucial to successfully forecast the sun's eruptions, which can drive solar storms at Earth. These space weather events can interfere with satellite electronics, GPS navigation, and radio communications. The quasi-annual variations in space weather seem to be driven by changes in bands of strong magnetic field that are present in each solar hemisphere.

(NASA)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image. Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble the wider view. The towering pillars about are 5 light-years tall. The new image was taken with Hubble's versatile and sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3. The pillars are bathed in blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) #nasagoddard #space #Hubble #hd

Star V838 Monocerotis's (V838 Mon) light echo, which is about six light years in diameter, is seen from the Hubble Space Telescope in this February 2004 handout photo released by NASA on December 4, 2011. Light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of Monoceros the unicorn. It became the brightest star in the Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002 when its outer surface greatly expanded suddenly.

(REUTERS/ NASA, ESA, H. E. Bond (STScI)/Handout)

This false-color composite image shows the Cartwheel galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope.

(Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

In this composite image provided by NASA, ESA, globular star cluster Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) in the Centaurus constellation and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, is pictured July 15, 2009 in Space. Today, September 9, 2009, NASA released the first images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope since its repair in the spring.

(Photo by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team via Getty Images)

What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

(Photo by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team/MCT/MCT via Getty Images)

The galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, is pictured in this undated handout Hubble Telescope image surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther. The photo unveils the effect of space warping due to gravity. The huge mass of the cluster distorts and magnifies the light from galaxies that lie far behind it due to an effect called gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein a century ago.

(NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)/Handout via REUTERS)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this photo, released on March 1, 2007, of Jupiter with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on February 17, 2007, using the planetary camera detector. Jupiter's trademark belts and zones of high- and low-pressure regions appear in crisp detail. Circular convection cells can be seen at high northern and southern latitudes.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

The sky is seen at night just before the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, in this NASA photo illustration released May 31, 2012. About 3.75 billion years from now, Andromeda's disk will fill the field of view and its gravity will begin to create tidal distortions in the Milky Way. The view is inspired by dynamical computer modeling of the future collision between the two galaxies. The two galaxies collide about 4 billion years from now and merge to form a single galaxy about 6 billion years from now.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel)

The central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra.

(Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The photo, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years (1690 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The turbulent gases in this photo of Gaseous Nebula in the Milky Way Galaxy shows roughly 1.9.arcminutes (3.1 light-years or 0.95 parsecs) across. The image is being released to commemorate the 13th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990.

(NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU)

UNSPECIFIED - 1992: Composite image, taken by Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field & Planetary Camera, of hypersonic shock wave (lower right) of material (clouds of dust) moving through Orion Nebula, surrounding (relatively) newborn stars.

(C.R. O'Dell/Rice UniversityNASA/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

The Hubble Space telescope's soon-to-be decommissioned Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 photographed this image of planetary nebula K 4-55 as its final image, released by NASA May 10, 2009. This Hubble image was taken by WFPC2 on May 4, 2009. The colors represent the makeup of the various emission clouds in the nebula: red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen. K 4-55 is nearly 4,600 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, in this undated image, has released on April 24, 2007, one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras, a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of a star's birth and death is taking place.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout)

An image of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet in seen this image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope February 24, 2009 and released by NASA March 17, 2009. In this view, the giant orange moon Titan casts a large shadow onto Saturn's north polar hood. Below Titan, near the ring plane and to the left, is the moon Mimas, casting a much smaller shadow onto Saturn's equatorial cloud tops. Farther to the left, and off Saturn's disk, are the bright moons Dione and the fainter Enceladus.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

Planetary nebula NGC 2818 in the southern constellation of Pyxis (The Compass). Glowing layers and shell of gas were created when a star shed its outer layers into space after running out of nuclear fuel.

(Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Hubble image of Arp 148 is the staggering aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion. The collision between the two parent galaxies produced a shockwave effect that first drew matter into the center and then caused it to propagate outwards in a ring. The elongated companion perpendicular to the ring suggests that Arp 148 is a unique snapshot of an ongoing collision. Infrared observations reveal a strong obscuration region that appears as a dark dust lane across the nucleus in optical light. Arp 148 is nicknamed "Mayall's object" and is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, approximately 500 million light-years away. This interacting pair of galaxies is included in Arp's catalog of peculiar galaxies as number 148. This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on April 24, 2008.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team)

Thousands of sparkling young stars nestled within the giant nebula NGC 3603. This stellar 'jewel box' is one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 3603 is a prominent star-forming region in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, about 20,000 light-years away. This image shows a young star cluster surrounded by a vast region of dust and gas. The image reveals stages in the life cycle of stars. The nebula was first discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1834. The image spans roughly 17 light-years.

(NASA/MCT via Getty Images)

The barred spiral galaxy M83, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, is seen in a NASA Hubble Space Telescope mosaic released January 9, 2014. The Hubble photograph captures thousands of star clusters, hundreds of thousands of individual stars, and "ghosts" of dead stars called supernova remnants.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout via Reuters)

IN SPACE - This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra.The International Astronomical Union announced on August 24, 2006 that it no longer considers Pluto a planet, a status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The announcement reduces the solar system from nine planets to eight.

(Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

A new view of the Whirlpool Galaxy, one of the largest and sharpest images Hubble Space Telescope has ever taken, is released by NASA. A new view of the Eagle Nebula, one of the two largest and sharpest images Hubble Space Telescope has ever taken, is released by NASA on Hubble's 15th anniversary April 25, 2005. The new Eagle Nebula image reveals a tall, dense tower of gas being sculpted by ultraviolet light from a group of massive, hot stars. During the 15 years Hubble has orbited the Earth, it has taken more than 700,000 photos of the cosmos.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout)

Galaxy Ngc 5866, Image Of The Disk Galaxy Ngc 5866 Taken With The Advanced Camera For Surveys (Acs) On The Hubble Space Telescope, November 2005.

(Encyclopaedia Britannica/UIG Via Getty Images)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope catches the Boomerang Nebula in this image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in early 2005 and released on September 13, 2005. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes of matter that are being ejected from a central star. Each lobe of the nebula is nearly one light-year in length, making the total length of the nebula half as long as the distance from the Sun to the nearest neighbors-the Alpha Centauri stellar system, located roughly 4 light-years away. The Boomerang Nebula resides 5,000 light-years from Earth. Hubble's sharp view is able to resolve patterns and ripples in the nebula very close to the central star that are not visible from the ground.

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Hubble Telescope reveals new discovery of universe's brightest galaxies - AOL

These six Hubble Space Telescope images reveal a jumble of misshapen-looking galaxies punctuated by exotic patterns such as arcs, streaks, and smeared rings. These unusual features are the stretched shapes of the universe's brightest infrared galaxies that are boosted by natural cosmic magnifying lenses. Some of the oddball shapes also may have been produced by spectacular collisions between distant, massive galaxies. The faraway galaxies are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than our Milky Way. The galaxies existed between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago.

NASA, ESA, and J. Lowenthal (Smith College)

Just like water distorting the view of objects beneath its surface, gravitational fields have warped images of some of the universes brightest infrared galaxies that were recently captured by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope.

This process, known as gravitational lensing, occurs when the intense gravity of a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies magnifies the light of fainter, more distant background sources.

While the phenomenon had been seen before, it is shown off to rare effect in the new Hubble Telescope snapshots.

The images are also particularly important because they show relatively tiny details of ultra-luminous starburst galaxies that would be unimaginable without the magnification provided by gravity.

These galaxies are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way and are ablaze with star formation, churning out more than 10,000 new stars in a year.

The reason for this frenzied star production is unknown, however, and these galaxies have traditionally been very difficult to study in visible light because of the dust that they create which cloaks them from view.

Thanks to the magnification provided by gravity in the new images of these galaxies, scientists now have a novel opportunity to examine their inner workings more closely and develop a better understanding of how galaxy and star formation occurs.

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Hubble views luminous galaxies through gravitational lens - Cosmos

NASA's Hubble space telescope has captured a series of stunning images of some of the universe's brightest galaxies.

Only a few dozen of these bright infrared galaxies - which are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way - exist in the universe.

They reside in unusually dense regions of space that somehow triggered rapid star formation in the early universe.

Hubble was able to capture the images thanks to a natural phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which occurs when the intense gravity of a massive galaxy magnifies the light of fainter, more distant background sources.

In this case, the distant galaxies have been magnified to reveal a tangled web of misshapen objects, punctuated by exotic patterns such as rings and arcs.

NASA scientists believe that the unusual forms may have been produced by spectacular collisions between distant, massive galaxies in a sort of "cosmic demolition derby".

"We have hit the jackpot of gravitational lenses," said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

"These ultra-luminous, massive, starburst galaxies are very rare. Gravitational lensing magnifies them so that you can see small details that otherwise are unimaginable. We can see features as small as about 100 light-years or less across.

"We want to understand what's powering these monsters, and gravitational lensing allows us to study them in greater detail."

Part of the reason that the galaxies are so bright is that they are pumping out more than 10,000 new stars a year.

The star-birth frenzy creates lots of dust, which enshrouds the galaxies, making them too faint to detect in visible light. But they glow fiercely in infrared light, shining with the brilliance of 10 trillion to 100 trillion suns.

The distance of the galaxies from Earth means that the scenes captured by Hubble actually took place between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago, at the peak of the universe's star-making boom.

However, the galaxies' star-birth production is still 5,000 to 10,000 times higher than that of our Milky Way, raising the question of what powered the prodigious star birth.

One possible explanation is that their star-making output is stoked by the merger of two spiral galaxies.

However, Lowenthal said that computer simulations of the birth and growth of galaxies show that major mergers occur at a later epoch than the one in which these galaxies are seen.

Best photos taken by Hubble telescope

Another suggestion is that lots of gas - the material that makes stars - is flooding into the faraway galaxies.

"The early universe was denser, so maybe gas is raining down on the galaxies, or they are fed by some sort of channel or conduit, which we have not figured out yet," Lowenthal said.

The research team plans to use Hubble and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to analyse the details of the monster galaxies, in the hope of shedding more light on their formation.

Link:
Hubble telescope uses 'cosmic magnifying-glass' to capture stunning photos of Universe's brightest galaxies - Mirror.co.uk

NASA Hubble Space Telescope found a new moon in our solar system. It orbits around the third largest dwarf planet of the system, which is known as 2007 OR10 or Snow White.

Astronomers have used three different space observatories to validate that this dwarf planet has actually a moon. This discovery helps researchers to know how moons are formed.

The discovery of satellites around all of the known large dwarf planets except for Sedna means that at the time these bodies formed billions of years ago, collisions must have been more frequent, and thats a constraint on the formation models, said Csaba Kiss of the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, Hungary. If there were frequent collisions, then it was quite easy to form these satellites, Kiss added.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low earth orbit in 1990. Along the years it has discovered several celestial bodies in the solar system and outside of it too. This time, it showed the moon that orbits the 2007 OR10 planet, which is one of the dwarf planets of the solar system. This planet is located in the Kuiper Belt, a freezing area on the outskirts of our solar system that was created about 4.6 million years ago. The Kuiper Belt is beyond Neptune, near where Pluto and other frozen celestial bodies live.

Snow White, as it is also called, is the third largest dwarf planet. It is 1,530 kilometer-wide (950 mile). Its newly discovered moon is about 240-400 kilometers in diameter. Scientists were alerted by the observations made by the agencys Kepler Telescope.

According to NASA, there are 9 dwarf planets and Snow White is one of them. Dwarf planets are like really small planets; however, they cannot be considered like that because they dont have all the needed technical criteria to be classified as small planets.

According to previous images and research, 2007 OR10, didnt have a Moon before. Scientists believe this moon was created since the objects in that area slammed into each other more often because it is crowded by smaller bodies.

Scientists also think that the density of these bodies could be moderate. The speed of collision is also an important factor to consider since it has to be precise in order to create this new moon. Had it been too slow, it would only have created an impact crater. Had it been too fast, the collision would have produced a lot of space debris that would probably have escaped out ofthe Solar System. Their speed has a lot to do with the gravitational force made by larger celestial bodies.

According to John Stansberry, a member of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, This gravitational force of dense celestial bodies may have bumped them out of their respective orbits and also contributed to the increment of their velocities, which may later have resulted in crashes.

Source: The Cake

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Hubble Telescope finds new moon in the Solar System - Pulse Headlines

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled to take off next year and astronomers believe the super-powerful spier is experts' best hope to date of finding life beyond Earth.

The JWST is the successor to the Hubble Telescope and is much more powerful.

The successor will be able to see further into space, as well as more accurately measure the content of water, carbon dioxide and other components in the atmosphere of an exoplanet a planet outside of our solar system as well as tell scientists more about the size and distance these planets are from their host stars.

As a result, the giant telescope which sports a huge mirror to garner light, is being heralded as the best chance of finding alien life.

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With a launch scheduled for next year, scientists feel that it is only a matter of time before alien life is discovered.

Matt Mountain, director and Webb telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said: What we didn't know five years ago is that perhaps 10 to 20 per cent of stars around us have Earth-size planets in the habitable zone.

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"It's within our grasp to pull off a discovery that will change the world forever.

It is going to take a continuing partnership between NASA, science, technology, the US and international space endeavours, as exemplified by the James Webb Space Telescope, to build the next bridge to humanity's future.

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Bubble Nebula, also known as NGC 7653, which is an emission nebula located 11 000 light-years away

Mr Mountain added: "Just imagine the moment, when we find potential signatures of life.

Imagine the moment when the world wakes up and the human race realises that its long loneliness in time and space may be over - the possibility we're no longer alone in the universe.

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However, the 6billion telescope is expected to last just five years, so its underling, Hubble, is already shortlisting planets for the newcomer to examine as scientists face a race against time, Kevin Stevenson at the University of Chicago told New Scientist.

He said: A training set is probably a good way of looking at it.

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Alien life to be discovered NEXT YEAR? James Webb Telescope 'will change world forever' - Express.co.uk

Belleville News-Democrat (blog)

Hubble Telescope sees a supernova only a fraction of a second before we do Belleville News-Democrat (blog) But since light travels at approximately 186,000 miles a second, your Hubble advance alert would be only a fraction of a millisecond (350 divided by 186,000), Kyle Stumbaugh, a science instructor and Astronomy Club adviser at Southwestern Illinois ...

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Hubble Telescope sees a supernova only a fraction of a second before we do - Belleville News-Democrat (blog)

An unexpected design flaw almost made the Hubble Space Telescope into a $1.5 billion joke, but a daring rescue mission orchestrated by the La Caada Flintridge-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory created a legend out of the blunder.

On Tuesday, JPL and Caltech will host a screening of To the Rescue, an hour long JPL-produced documentary detailing the space agencys efforts to save Hubble and three other missions that similarly went awry after launch.

It begins in the 1990s theyve ended the Cold War and NASA is trying to reinvent how it goes about its missions, to make them, particularly, less expensive. Its launching this highly anticipated mission, theres tremendous expectations, said Blaine Bagget, the documentarys director. Then, shortly after launch, they get the first images down and theyre blurry.

The head of JPL, Michael Watkins, will introduce the documentary at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Caltechs Beckman Auditorium. The event includes remarks from Baggett and former JPL leader, Ed Stone.

Seating is free on a first-come, first served basis.

The problem, they would learn, was caused by spherical aberration, a term that meant Hubbles primary mirror was slightly too shallow. The mirrors prescription was off by a 50th of the width of a human hair, Baggett said.

The bus-sized Hubble telescope was in orbit for a month after its April 1990 launch before NASA learned of the aberration. The agency was suddenly facing a disaster that had turned this flagship mission into fodder for late-night comedians and put their scientific goals at risk.

It was like climbing to the top of Mount Everest and then suddenly, within a couple of months, sinking to the bottom of the Dead Sea the lowest point on Earth, said Ed Weiler, program scientist for Hubble at launch, in a 2009 statement recalling the mission.

But within three years, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory fixed the mistake through a complicated repair that used astronauts to install a piano-sized replacement camera that would eventually capture some of the most iconic images of our Universe ever produced. The replacement camera would be subsequently swapped out in yet another mission.

In the documentary, the efforts to save Hubble bookend tales of other ingenious solutions for NASAs Magellan, Galileo and Mars Observer missions. However, not all of them made it.

One of those three missions does not survive, but the sort of heroics the teams do on all three of those missions plus Hubble to try to fix them, is what the program is all about, Baggett said. How do you save a spacecraft that you cant touch, thats millions of miles away?

To the Rescue is seventh episode in a documentary series created by Baggett to detail JPLs history. Baggett began the work nearly 10 years ago and says theres still a few more stories left to tell.

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These are some of the greatest adventures in all of humanity and we must capture the first person accounts of these first explorers, Baggett said.

JPL plans to distribute the entire series once its finished, he said.

What: A screening of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-produced documentary To the Rescue.

Where: Beckman Auditorium, 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, CA

When: 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 23

Cost: Tickets are free, but seating is available only on a first come, first served basis.

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Learn how JPL saved the Hubble Telescope at this Caltech screening - The Pasadena Star-News

Published time: 15 May, 2017 19:06 Edited time: 15 May, 2017 20:37

Scientists exploring the origins of the universe have photographed a cluster of galaxies six billion light years away and the result is more than a little mind-bending.

Researchers working on Frontier Fields, a project aimed at gathering the earliest images of the cosmos, have used the Hubble telescope to capture images of Abell 370 and the distant field of galaxies behind it.

Hubbles picture, which is reminiscent of a beautiful piece of modern art, shows mysterious arcs of blue light bending around hundreds of yellow-white and elliptical galaxies. These arcs are the result of a phenomenon known as 'gravitational lensing', when the collective gravity of the hundreds of billions of stars warps space. The warping bends the light traveling through the cluster and drags it toward Earth.

These far-flung galaxies are too faint for Hubble to see directly, a statement on the Hubble website read. Instead, the cluster acts as a huge lens in space that magnifies and stretches images of background galaxies like a funhouse mirror. The massive gravitational field of the foreground cluster produces this phenomenon.

Abell 370 is found in the constellation Cetus, commonly known as the Sea Monster.

Light from far flung galaxies takes billions of years to reach Earth, meaning Hubbles pictures are in fact images of the distant past.

Albert Einstein first predicted in 1912 that the gravity of large objects could bend light. Later, in 1937, astronomer Fritz Zwicky suggested the phenomenon would eventually be a means for scientists to view galaxies hidden behind massive clusters.

The Hubble telescope, which celebrated the 27th anniversary of its launch last month, has been used to unlock the mysteries of the universe and, in recent times, has aided in the search for other Earth-like planets beyond our solar system.

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Hubble telescope captures spectacular image of light bending ... - RT

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May 15th, 2017

The James Webb Space Telescope is pushed into the clean room of Building 32. Building 32 houses Chamber A, the thermal vacuum chamber where the telescope will have its final thermal vacuum testing. Photo & Caption Credit: Chris Gunn / NASA

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continued its long and meandering journey to space with a stop in Houston, Texas. The telescope has been moved to Johnson Space Center so it can undergo the last cryogenic test before the massive observatory is launched into space in 2018.

According to a NASA press release, the tests are designed to ensure the telescope can operate in the frigid temperatures of deep space. JWST will be placed inside Johnson Space Centers Chamber A, the same cryogenic vacuum unit used by NASA to test Apollo mission hardware.

The James Webb Space Telescope arrives at Ellington Field, in Houston, Texas, from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Photo Credit: Chris Gunn / NASA

This will be the longest and final cryogenics test for the telescope. It is a critical end-to-end test verifying the performance of the entire vehicle. Once JWST is launched and deployed, it will be stationed nearly one million miles (1.5million kilometers) from Earth at the Earth-Sun L2 (Lagrange) point a distance that makes servicing missions nearly impossible to complete.

The telescope is currently inside a NASA clean room awaiting systems checks before it will be moved into Chamber A. Once in position inside the chamber, JWST will spend 100 days in near vacuum at, according to Spaceflight Now, temperatures colder than minus 370degrees Fahrenheit (minus 190degrees Celsius).

JWST is a joint project of NASA, theEuropean Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. It will be used to peer deep into the universe looking for the first stars that formed after the big bang or study the atmospheres of extra-solar planets.

The Webb telescope has been in development since 1996. The incredibly complex observatory is a scientific successor to the Hubble telescope but not a direct replacement. Unlike Hubble, JWST operates in infrared, looking at objects that are deeper in space than Hubble could achieve.

Moreover, JWST will have a much larger primary mirror surface area of just over 21 feet (6.5 meters), compared to Hubbles eightfeet (2.4 meters).

The telescope had previously been at Goddard Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Its transportationrequired a combination of slow trucking and cargo flights while housed inside a protective cocoon-like enclosure.

The Webb team packaged the telescope for its highway migration to Joint Base Andrews, located just 23 miles south of Goddard. Once there,the entire truck and trailer were then loaded onto a U.S. Air Force C-5C Galaxy aircraft destined for Ellington Field in Houston. The telescope then traveled by truck to Johnson Space Center, arriving at Building 32.

Cryogenic testing is done to evaluate the ability of the large mirror array to withstand space temperatures without losing any mirror surface integrity. If any adjustment is required after launch, the mirror actuators behind each segment allow for the slightest adjustment to the focal plane. So precise are the actuators they can adjust the surface to within 1/10,000th of the width of a human hair.

Artists rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope in space. Image Credit: Northrop Grumman

The space-bound mirror surface area is what makes JWST unique, and the construction of the mirrors required a number of scientists and technicians at numerous facilities with various specialties and capabilities.

The total surface area specified by the designers required a unique honeycomb design allowing the telescope to conform to the dimensions of a rocket fairing. Additionally, the total weight of the telescope as cargo mass (about 15,000 pounds or 6,800 kilograms) demanded each mirror component only have a weight of about 90 pounds (40 kilograms).

To achieve this requirement, beryllium was used not only because of its light weight attribute but also its fantastic strength at space temperatures. This allows the mirrors to withstand the strain of launch as well asendure the temperature of space.

The mirrors are also coated in pure gold powder to allow for improved reflection of infrared light. The gold layer requires a very thin layer of glass to help protect its soft, vulnerable characteristics further complicating the mirror construction.

The previous test performed on JWST was the center of curvature test, an important optical measurement of Webbs fully assembled primary mirror. The process of assembly and testing means the telescope components traveled around the country to states including Utah, Alabama, California, Colorado, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas.

Subsequently, the Webb telescope will then be sent along a 1,600-mile (2,600-kilometer) journey to Redondo Beach, California, where Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems will prepare the telescope system for further testing once the package is married to the spacecraft bus and sunshield.

The telescope looks at infrared light and so sunshield deployment is essential in protecting the mirror array from any undesired heat, including the warm spacecraft bus.

ESA will be providing launch services on its Ariane 5 rocket which will launch out of ELA-3 near Kourou, French Guiana. Liftoff is scheduled for October 2018.

This article was written by Joe Latrell and Jerome Strach.

Tagged: ESA James Webb Space Telescope Johnson Space Center NASA Northrop Grumman The Range

SpaceFlight Insider is a space journal working to break the pattern of bias prevalent among other media outlets. Working off a budget acquired through sponsors and advertisers, SpaceFlight Insider has rapidly become one of the premier space news outlets currently in operation. SFI works almost exclusively with the assistance of volunteers.

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James Webb Space Telescope prepares for deep freeze - SpaceFlight Insider