Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

Courtesy photo - NASA The Hubble cameras revisited the Pillars of Creation, originally pictured in 1995. The result was clearer sharper images. Stars are forming inside the towering structures of cold gas and dust. The pillars are located some 6,500 light-years away, in the Eagle Nebula, toward the constellation of Serpens.

New Mexico Museuam of Space History Education Director Dave Dooling will discuss the accomplishments that resulted from the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dooling is familiar Hubble since its inception. He worked as science reporter for Huntsville Times in Alabama and for Perkin-Elmer who built the telescope. He wrote documentation for maintenance and refurbishment of the telescope in space.

Although planning for Hubble started in the early 70s, it wasn't launched until 1990. Since then, the Hubble has sent back more than 45 terabytes of information. For those unfamiliar with a terabyte, one terabyte equals 1,023 gigabytes.

The Hubble space telescope was launched into low Earth orbit on April 24, 1990. It remains operational. With a mirror measuring nearly 8 feet, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra.

The telescope was named after astronomer Edward Hubble. He proposed the expanding universe theory state. Hubble's findings fundamentally changed the scientific view of the universe.

The Hubble telescope has led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe.

Dooling said he would be hard pressed to pick out what was the most important discovery made. He explained if he were to try and pick out the top 10 at a conference, there would be an outcry as scientists came up with 10 others of equal import.

Dooling said that one of the most stunning occurred when astronomers pointed Hubble at an empty area of sky near Ursa Major, just above the Big Dipper, and discovered hundreds of distant here-to-fore galaxies. "They did this in December of 1995 for a 10-day period," he said. "They stacked the images, taking 342 images with 43 hours of exposure time. Over 900 scientific papers have cited this single discovery."

The portion of sky scrutinized was small yet it not only proved the enormity of the universe but just how crowded a place it was.

See original here:
Launch Pad Lecture: Celebrating Hubble's 25th Anniversary

NASA officials have told Congress that the Hubble Space Telescopes successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is currently on-time and budget after early delays and cost overruns threatened to doom the project. The JWST offers a number of improvements and enhancements over the Hubble, though NASA has said publicly that it prefers to think of the next-generation telescope as a successor rather than a replacement.

The JWSTs primary mirror is far larger than Hubbles, at over 21 feet in diameter, compared with about 8 feet for Hubble. The new telescopes collecting area is more than 7x larger, and it uses a new type of mirror thats never been deployed at this scale in a space-based telescope. Each pane of beryllium (there are 18 in total) can be adjusted independently of the others. Hubble, in contrast, deployed a conventionally ground mirror.

Despite the vast difference in size, Webbs mirror actually weighs a fraction of what Hubbles does. The conventional mirror aboard the Hubble clocks in at 2,200 lbs, compared to just 1,375 lbs for the JWST.

Webbs mirror design and larger gathering area will allow it to peer farther back in time all the way back to 100 million to 250 million years after the Big Bang, compared with 800 million to 1 billion years for Hubble. The Webb isnt optimized for optical wavelengths its specialization is the infrared spectrum but itll be capable of imaging in spectrums friendly to the human eye, and with far greater resolution than what Hubble can achieve. The image below is a simulation of how the Webb is expected to perform compared with Hubble.

The James Webbs detectable spectrum is also much larger than its predecessors. While still tiny next the largest Earth-based telescopes, the deep infrared capabilities of the Webb telescope and its location should allow it to assist in the ongoing search for habitable planets and even alien life.

The James Webb telescope is years behind schedule, and substantially over its originally proposed budget, which raises the question of whether the telescope can overcome these initial obstacles and achieve successful results. Many of these issues originally plagued the Hubble telescope. Originally, the HST was meant to launch in 1983, but a similar morass of technical issues and the unexpected loss of the Challenger delayed deployment until 1990. After launch, NASA discovered that the HSTs main mirror had been incorrectly ground. For three years, Hubbles mission was severely curtailed, as NASA built a corrective lens to be installed over the improperly ground mirror.

With the James Webb, there will be no such margin for error. Unlike Hubble, which was placed in Earth orbit and designed to be serviced by the shuttle, the Webb will be placed in Sun-Earth L2 LaGrange points. LaGrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational pull of large masses equal the centripetal force required for a small object (in this case, a telescope) to move with them. An object in Earths L2 point remains in approximately the same position relative to our planet and the Sun, and can maintain its location with minimal use of fuel.

More than 20 years after deployment, the Hubble Space Telescope has become one of the most enduring missions NASA has ever launched. For many people, the images Hubble beams back of our universe are the public face of NASA, and thats a mission every bit as critical as scientific research. The James Webb telescope will inherit that mantle when it launches in 2018 heres hoping for a smooth debut and a long, storied career.

Read the rest here:
NASA confirms Hubble telescope successor is on-time, on-budget for 2018

Gordon Lyles - A Star (Acoustic Session)
Copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved BMI Video Footage Provided By: Nasa, International Space Station, The Space Shuttle Endevour The Hubble Telescope.

By: Gordon Lyles

The rest is here:
Gordon Lyles - A Star (Acoustic Session) - Video

Satellite Eye
Guster #39;s popular tune seen from the Ultimate Venue: Space ... The recording is from The Internet Archive. The images are from the Hubble Telescope, electron microscopes and other scientific...

By: Jamie Jobb

Read this article:
Satellite Eye - Video

Astronomers have used data from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to find that dark matter interacts with itself less than previously thought. In an effort to learn more about dark matter, astronomers observed how galaxy clusters collide with each other -- an event that could hold clues about the mysterious invisible matter that makes up most of the mass of the universe.

As part of a new study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, researchers used the Hubble telescope to map the distribution of stars and dark matter after a collision. They also used the Chandra observatory to detect the X-ray emission from colliding gas clouds.

Dark matter is an enigma we have long sought to unravel, John Grunsfeld, assistant administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement. With the combined capabilities of these great observatories, both in extended mission, we are ever closer to understanding this cosmic phenomenon.

According to scientists, galaxy clusters are made of three main components -- galaxies, gas clouds and dark matter. During collisions, the gas clouds bump into each other and gradually slow down. Galaxies, on the other hand, are much less affected by this process, and because of the huge gaps between the stars within them, galaxies do not slow each other down.

We know how gas and stars react to these cosmic crashes and where they emerge from the wreckage, David Harvey of the cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and the studys lead author, said in the statement. Comparing how dark matter behaves can help us to narrow down what it actually is.

The researchers studied 72 large galaxy cluster collisions and found that, like galaxies, the dark matter continued straight through the collisions without slowing down much, meaning that dark matter do not interact with visible particles.

There are still several viable candidates for dark matter, so the game is not over. But we are getting nearer to an answer, Harvey said.

Read this article:
What Is Dark Matter? Colliding Galaxy Clusters May Help Find Answer

Hubble Telescope - Space Images
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, and remains in operation. With a 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) mirror, Hubble #39;s four main instruments...

By: Samuel Cernuto

Here is the original post:
Hubble Telescope - Space Images - Video

A view of the Whirlpool Galaxy taken by the Hubble Telescope. The Bradford Robotic Telescope offers you the chance to search it for supernovas over the next month Photograph: HO/Reuters

The Bradford Robotic Telescope sits more than a mile above sea level on the rim of an old volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The telescope, part of the Teide Observatory, captures stunning images of the night sky from one of the best sites for astronomy in the world.

From 24th March, for a month, we are making the telescope available free to Guardian readers to look at objects that feature prominently in the sky. To use the telescope yourself, just click here and register for free observing.

So what objects can you take a look at? Below I describe some of the more striking features that the telescope can take images of in the coming month, that you might want to explore.

Jupiter has more than 60 moons. The four largest, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are known as the Galilean moons after Galileo Galilei, who observed them in the early 17th century. Through the telescope website, you can submit a number of requests for images that will capture the moons spread out on each side and crossing the face of Jupiter, revealing them as they appeared to Galileo.

Discovered in 1764 by Charles Messier, the Dumbbell Nebula lies 1,360 light years from Earth in the constellation of Vulpecula. The nebula is what remains of a star that once resembled our own sun. The gas stretches across 4.5 light years of space and is heated by an Earth-sized hot central core, called a white dwarf. A spoonful of the core weights a tonne.

A spiral galaxy with arms of stars and dust, the Whirlpool galaxy lies 30 million light years from Earth. The galaxy is in the process of merging with a smaller galaxy, a fate that lies ahead for the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, though not for another two billion years. A supernova was spotted in the outer regions of the Whirlpool galaxy on June 2nd 2011, another one in 2005 and one in 1997. Thats surprising. Perhaps you will spot one too.

A cluster of hundreds of thousands of stars crowded into a region 150 light years across. The cluster is 25,100 light years away and has at its heart a medium-sized black hole which catapults smaller black holes into the depths of space.

Take a number of images and watch it through the month. Where would you like to go on your lunar holiday? The Earth is the best view from the moon: four times the size that the moon appears to us, and much brighter with the cities visible in the dark part. From the moon, the Earth phases look just like those of the moon, but unlike our moon it doesnt appear to move. Instead it is visible in the same place in the sky all the time.

Take the full vista of the beautiful Tenerife sky with the constellations in view. Try Orion, followed by the dog star Sirius with its white dwarf companion. How would you fit the mythical gods into this?

See the article here:
Search the skies with the Bradford Robotic Telescope

A Hundred Million Stars in 3 Minutes
In January 2015, NASA released the largest image ever of the Andromeda galaxy, taken by the Hubble telescope. Totaling 1.5 billion pixels and requiring 4.3 gigabytes of disk space, this photo...

By: National Geographic

See the article here:
A Hundred Million Stars in 3 Minutes - Video

Images include theHorsehead Nebula, which is a cold, dark cloud of gas and dust 1,500 light years away Another remarkable image is of NGC 130, one of Hubble's largest images ever made of a complete galaxy Some of the most striking images beamed back from Hubble were created during the death throes of stars

By Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail.com

Published: 20:30 EST, 17 March 2015 | Updated: 10:05 EST, 18 March 2015

924 shares

123

View comments

More than any other telescope in orbit, Hubble has expanded the frontiers of human knowledge.

For 25 years, astronomers have used it to peer deep into distant galaxies with unrivalled clarity, revealing the breathtaking beauty of our universe.

In the April issue of National Geographic, some of the most stunning images beamed back for the telescope have been revealed.

The Horsehead Nebula is a cold, dark cloud of gas and dust, silhouetted against the bright nebula IC 434. The bright area at the top left edge is a young star still embedded in its nursery of gas and dust.The nebula is relatively close at 1,500 light years from Earth

View original post here:
Images showcase how Hubble telescope is transforming our ...

The ocean there is thought to extend to 10 times the depth of Earth's oceans

Scientists have also found that Ganymede's surface shows signs of flooding. Credit: NASA/ESA

A salty ocean is lurking beneath the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found.

The ocean onGanymedewhich is buried under a thick crust of icecould actually harbor more water than all of Earth's surface water combined, according to NASA officials. Scientists think the ocean is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) thick, 10 times the depth of Earth's oceans, NASA added. The new Hubble Space Telescope finding could also help scientists learn more about the plethora of potentially watery worlds that exist in the solar system and beyond.

"The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place," Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, said during a news teleconference today (March 12). Scientists are particularly interested in learning more about watery worlds because life as we know it depends on water to thrive. [See amazing photos of Ganymede]

Scientists have also found that Ganymede's surface shows signs of flooding. Youngparts of Ganymede seen in a videomap may have been formed by water bubbling up from the interior of the moon through faults or cryo-volcanos at some point in the moon's history, Green said.

Scientists have long suspected that there was an ocean of liquid water on Ganymedethe largest moon in the solar system, at about 3,273 miles (5,268 kilometers) acrosshas an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface. The Galileo probe measured Ganymede's magnetic field in 2002, providing somedata supporting the theory that the moon has an ocean. The newly announced evidence from the Hubble telescope is the most convincing data supporting the subsurface ocean theory yet, according to NASA.

Scientists used Hubble to monitor Ganymede's auroras, ribbons of light at the poles created by the moon's magnetic field. The moon'saurorasare also affected by Jupiter's magnetic field because of the moon's proximity to the huge planet.

When Jupiter's magnetic field changes, so does Ganymede's. Researchers were able to watch the two auroras "rock" back and forth with Hubble. Ganymede's aurora didn't rock as much as expected, so by monitoring that motion, the researchers concluded that a subsurface ocean was likely responsible for dampening the change in Ganymede's aurora created by Jupiter.

"I was always brainstorming how we could use a telescope in other ways," Joachim Saur, geophysicist and team leader of the new finding, said in a statement. "Is there a way you could use a telescope to look inside a planetary body? Then I thought, the aurorae! Because aurorae are controlled by the magnetic field, if you observe the aurorae in an appropriate way, you learn something about the magnetic field. If you know the magnetic field, then you know something about the moon's interior."

Go here to see the original:
Jupiter's Moon Ganymede Has a Salty Ocean with More Water Than Earth