Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

Watson

I spent my whole life in cities and suburbs where there is so much light pollution that youre lucky to see Orions Belt. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I thought I knew what the night sky looked like.

When I was 13 and my parents were planning our summer trip, they asked where I wanted to go. I voted for New York City so we went up to the Upper Peninsula and stayed in a cabin on Lake Superior.

While I was initially more than a little disappointed, I ended up loving the trip for many reasons. The UP is a really beautiful place to hike and explore. It was also the first time I was far enough away from a city to actually see the Milky Way. I almost lost my mind!

It never occurred to me that there were places where you could look up and see all of that. I just laid back on the grass and stared at the sky for hours. I saw my first shooting star on that trip. While I find the idea of going to space completely terrifying, I love to learn about it.

I had a similar experience at my first International Observe the Moon Night years ago. I know there are rings on Saturn. Ive seen pictures of them my whole life. Ive seen pictures from the Hubble Telescope. I follow the updates from the James Webb Telescope and stare at the images in awe.

But somehow all of that was trumped by actually looking through a telescope at the rings on Saturn up in the night sky.

International Observe the Moon Night is an annual event put on by NASA to bring together amateur lunar enthusiasts and celebrate all we have done in space exploration. Nearly every year the Greenwood Public Library celebrates Moon Night. There is always a crowd of space enthusiasts (a few of which are librarians) that are excited to get an up-close look at the moon, planets, and more.

Steve Haines and members of the Indiana Astronomical Society will be bringing a variety of awesome telescopes and answering all your astronomical questions at our International Observe the Moon Night on Saturday, Oct. 1st. Stop by between 7 and 9:30 p.m. for a chance to view the moon, visible planets, and stars through different types of telescopes.

I hope to see you there!

Aubrey Watson is an Adult Services Librarian at Greenwood Public Library. GPL staff members share in writing this bi-monthly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [emailprotected]

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JCPL Column: Looking to the stars - Daily Journal

1. Hubble Telescope Captures Spectacular Image of Spiral Galaxy  Greek Reporter
2. Hubble Telescope Captures An Insightful Image of AGN Galaxy  India Today
3. NASA's Hubble Telescope captures amazing image of spiral galaxy 'NGC 1961' Here's what it found  The Financial Express
4. Hubble and VLT discover spiraling structure of young stars, hints at star formation in early universe - NASASpaceFlight.com  NASASpaceflight.com
5. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Hubble Telescope Captures Spectacular Image of Spiral Galaxy - Greek Reporter

Like dogs, all galaxies are good galaxies. But there's just something about a spiral galaxy that gladdens my heart. Maybe it's the swirling sense of symmetry. Maybe it's because our own home Milky Way is a spiral. A new Hubble Space Telescope image of spiral galaxy NGC 1961 is giving me all the feels.

The scenic spiral is far away at a distance of 180 million light-years in the constellation Camelopardalis, also known as the Giraffe.

Here's the full Hubble view:

NGC 1961 in all its glory.

NASA shared the Hubble image on Wednesday. "Glittering, blue regions of bright young stars dot the dusty spiral arms winding around the galaxy's glowing center," the space agency said, showing a flair for poetic language.

There are different kinds of spiral galaxies. NASA classifies NGC 1961 as an intermediate spiral galaxy. The intermediate designation puts it in a gray area between spiral galaxies that have a notable bar of stars at their centers and those that don't. Check out this example of a barred galaxy appropriately called theGreat Barred Spiral Galaxy.

NGC 1961 is also an active galactic nuclei (AGN) galaxy. "AGN galaxies have very bright centers that often far outshine the rest of the galaxy at certain wavelengths of light," said NASA. "These galaxies likely have supermassive black holes at their cores churning out bright jets and winds that shape their evolution."

But back to why I'm so enamored of this galaxy. It's the glow, the glitter, the slight angle, the swirls, like a cosmic Charybdis posing for a glamor shot. It's a dream-like image showing how a telescope can deliver a work of art every bit as moving as a fine painting. In short, it's just beautiful.

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Hubble Telescope Captures What Might Be the Prettiest Spiral Galaxy Ever - CNET

Although the new James Webb Space Telescope has made headlines with its recent images of deep space, its predecessor, the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, is still operational and prompting new discoveries, for example, the March observation of Earendel, the farthest known star in the universe.

Few stars have their own names. In this case, the name Earendel derives from Old English words meaning morning star or rising light. Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien will remember that one of the characters in The Silmarillion goes by a very similar name Erendil , but this is pure coincidence.

The surprising thing about Earendel is its remoteness. The light that the Hubble telescope captured was emitted when the universe was less than a billion years old. In other words, the light had been traveling through space for almost 13 billion years before it was picked up by the Hubble.

Earendel can only be seen under very specific circumstances, which was why it was one of the main targets of the James Webb, which was launched on December 25, 2021. Fortunately, given the time of year, the telescope can see the southern Cetus constellation which contains Earendel. With its powerful resolution and infrared cameras, James Webb took a new, even more detailed image of the star and the arc of light surrounding it on July 30. This arc of light, which makes the star appear brighter, has also been given a name: the Sunrise Arc.

In December, the James Webb will once again point its mirrors at Earendel in order to carry out a spectral analysis to confirm or rule out the presence of heavy elements. So far, based solely on the Hubble and James Webb images, more than 4,700 scientific articles have been published about the star. It is the furthest individual object that we can currently distinguish in the cosmos although there are already reports of three or four more, very old stars that can be identified thanks to gravitational lensing.

With stars that are so remote, astronomers dont talk about distance but rather redshift, a measure of how much their light has been dilated as a result of the expansion of the universe. In the case of Earendel, that index is 6.2, meaning it is 28 billion light-years from Earth. The star that held the previous record nicknamed Icarus, in the constellation of Leo is not half that figure.

It seems like a paradox: how is it possible to see an object at that distance when the universe has only existed for around 13.8 billion years? The stars light should not have had time to reach us yet.

The answer to this paradox is that space is not static, but rather expanding at an accelerating rate. When Earendels light began its journey, the universe was very young and therefore much smaller than it is now. Since then, space has been expanding and the distance between galaxies has become greater and greater.

Whats also surprising about Earendel is that it is an isolated star, not a galaxy. The oldest galaxies do not appear in the Hubble photos as the pretty spirals we know, but as irregular masses of reddish-hued gas in which no structure can be distinguished. In reality, this color is the result of how the images have been rendered.

Earendel is a huge star or rather, it was, because it has been losing mass for eons. It may be a legendary Population III star, which were the first to appear after the Big Bang. These stars only contain primordial hydrogen and helium as atoms of other metals did not exist yet. These heavier atoms would form as a result of the nuclear reactions that occur during the evolution of these stars.

It is estimated that Earendels mass is between 50 and a hundred times greater than the Sun, and that it hsa a surface temperature of 20,000C (36,000F). That would make it extremely bright, with a bluish-white glow. But no matter how bright it is, an isolated star should be invisible from such a distance.

That we can see it is due to an unusual circumstance. Between the star and Earth there is a small group of galaxies whose gravity acts like a lens that both concentrates and distorts the light from more distant objects.

Whats more, Earendel is located precisely in a narrow area of that giant magnifying glass where the effect of the gravitational lens is greatest. Thanks to this effect, the stars light can be magnified between 1,000 and 40,000 times enough for it to be detected by the Hubble. That is, after the telescope has spent nine hours looking at the same region of the sky. Photon by photon, the telescope has captured the light from Earendel on its long journey across the universe.

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James Webb Telescope rediscovers Earendel, the farthest known star in the universe - EL PAS USA

Editorial writers discuss the baby formula shortage, abortion, and more.

The Washington Post:The Ongoing Baby Formula Shortage Is A Reminder Of A Disturbing Truth In AmericaRemember the baby formula crisis? Public attention has largely moved on, but the U.S. supply shortage isnt over and the scarcity continues to distress parents and doctors struggling to feed vulnerable infants. (Alyssa Rosenberg, 9/21)

Los Angeles Times:Fathers Writing Abortion Laws Are Showing No Mercy For DaughtersThis week CNN confirmed what the optics have long suggested: Male lawmakers, many of them fathers, are most eager to punish women for having an abortion.One state representative in Texas, Bryan Slaton, introduced a bill in 2021 that would have made getting an abortion punishable by death, saying in part that it is time for Texas to protect the natural right to life. (LZ Granderson, 9/22)

The Star Tribune:Biden's COVID InsincerityPresident Joe Biden finally dared to say it on Sunday, declaring in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" that the "pandemic is over." Various public-health eminences are saying he's wrong, but his comments recognize the reality of the disease at this stage and the public mood. The trouble is that his administration still hasn't lifted its official finding of a COVID public-health emergency. (9/21)

The CT Mirror:Monkeypox Stigma Hurts Us AllMonkeypox has been in the news a lot, and its being reported on as a gay disease. Calling it this is not only inaccurate, but dangerous to folks both in and outside of the gay community. (Kimberly Adamski, 9/22)

Chicago Tribune:Investing In Black-Led Community Groups Critical To Fighting HIVIn the face of innovations and advancements to better test, treat and prevent HIV, systemic racism continues to prevent Black-led community-based organizations, or CBOs, from accessing the funding and tools required to reach undersupported communities in areas of highest need. (Sista Yaa Simpson, 9/21)

Stat:What NASA Can Teach Public Health About Regaining Public TrustThe amazing images of the Cartwheel Galaxy captured by the James Webb Space Telescope this summer, and before them the spectacular images from the Hubble telescope, have amazed and inspired many people worldwide, who now look to NASA as a trusted federal agency. It hasnt always enjoyed such strong support. (Judy Monroe, 9/22)

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Viewpoints: The Formula Shortage Isn't Over; Male Lawmakers Aren't Doing Their Jobs As Fathers - Kaiser Health News

The Webb Telescope recently imaged a region of the Orion Nebula associated with star birth, and the result is about what weve come to expect from the cutting-edge space observatory.

Im not saying that the image is bad. Its quite nice! It was taken with the telescopes NIRCam instrument and captures an inner region of the Orion Nebula.

But, I must say, its not quite as thrilling asWebbs recent conquests: a deep field eight times larger than the telescopes first, the eerie tendrils of the Tarantula Nebula, and the observatorys first direct image of an exoplanet.

This image was taken as part of Webbs early science program by the PDRs4All scientific collaboration. The collaborations goal is to image Photo-Dissociation Regions (PDRs), where ultraviolet light from stars creates warm regions of gas and dust in space.

The predominant feature here is the Orion Bar, a massive belt of gas and dust, which appears brownish-yellow. Toward the center of the bar is a bright star, 2 Orionis A. The star is bright enough to be visible from Earth with the naked eye, if the observer is in a dark enough place.

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The image is peppered with hot, young stars, especially toward the upper right corner. These stars are collectively known as the Trapezium Cluster; their ultraviolet radiation is slowly eroding the Orion Bar. So an image that at first glance looks to capture a giant space mustache shows a more dynamic phenomenon than you might expect.

Set next to an earlier image of the Orion Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Webbs impressive quality is more apparent. The Webb image shows cooler material than Hubbles, where hot gas is the main attraction. Webbs infrared instruments are an improvement on Hubbles in that they can peer through clouds of dust and gas, to see star-forming regions and other areas of astrophysical intrigue.

When Webbs images debuted, they appeared almost shockingly resolved. Now, that novelty has faded a bit, as weve grown accustomed to seeing the cosmos in what was once unprecedented detail. But setting Webb images next to Hubble shotsno disrespect to Hubbleis a great reminder of how much our observational technology has improved. Its also a reminder of how our knowledge of the cosmos is only as good as our best technology.

More: Are the Colors in Webb Telescope Images Fake?

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What the Orion Nebula Looks Like to Webb Telescope Vs Hubble Telescope - Gizmodo

Title: Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field

Authors: Leonardo Ferreira, Nathan Adams, Christopher J. Conselice, Elizaveta Sazonova, Duncan Austin, Joseph Caruana, Fabricio Ferrari, Aprajita Verma, James Trussler, Tom Broadhurst, Jose Diego, Brenda L. Frye, Massimo Pascale, Stephen M. Wilkins, Rogier A. Windhorst, Adi Zitrin

First Authors Institution: University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Status: Accepted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, available on arXiv

Ever since the first data release of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in July, it has become clear that this telescope is going to completely transform our view of the distant Universe. Galaxies that looked like featureless blobs when viewed through the Hubble Space Telescope can now be resolved in incredible detail (see Figure 1), despite the fact that Hubble has been one of the worlds leading telescopes for the past 30 years.

Figure 1: Four galaxies from the SMACS 0723 field (the focus of todays paper), as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the James Webb Space Telescope (right). Each one displays features that were undetected with Hubble, but can easily be seen with JWST. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI.

Being able to measure the shapes of galaxies (known as their morphology) is vital if we want to understand how galaxies, including our own, were formed. Galaxies typically come in two shapes: thin, delicate disk-shaped galaxies, and spheroid-shaped elliptical galaxies, but it is still not really clear how and when these different galactic structures emerged. Todays paper uses early JWST observations of a large galaxy cluster, called SMACS 0723, to measure the shapes of very distant galaxies. With this exciting new data, the authors hope to expand our knowledge of galaxy evolution all the way to the very dawn of our Universe.

This photo of SMACS 0723 is one of the first images to be released from JWST. The cluster is located about four billion light years away at a redshift of 0.4, but todays paper actually looks at even more distant galaxies, in the background of this image many of these have been magnified by the gravitational lensing of the cluster. Specifically, it looks at 280 background galaxies at redshifts between 1.5 and 8, meaning we are seeing them just 1-4 billion years after the beginning of the Universe.

The authors firstly measure galaxy shapes using quantitative properties of galaxies, such as their concentration and asymmetry. Their really exciting findings, however, come from classifying these galaxies by eye, splitting them into three categories: disks, spheroids, and peculiars.

Galaxies in this third class have an irregular shape, which can be caused by processes such as starbursts or tidal interactions. Alternatively, collisions between galaxies (known as galaxy mergers) that are currently in-progress can lead to these peculiar galaxies. These violent events are thought to play a major role in galaxy evolution: in the early Universe mergers allow large amounts of mass to clump together, which can later form a galactic disk. Later on, they can destroy these fragile disk structures, turning disk galaxies into featureless ellipticals.

It turns out that at high redshifts (between 3 and 6), about half of galaxies have a disk shape (Figure 2). This is much higher than we previously thought the data from the Hubble telescope shows that it found a disk fraction of less than 10% at similar redshifts! Interestingly, according to JWST, the disk fraction also stays roughly constant across the whole range of redshifts.

Figure 2: Fraction of spheroid, disk, and peculiar galaxies at different redshifts, measured with JWST in todays paper, and with Hubble (HST) in previous work. The trends found by Hubble had predicted the number of disks would decrease at redshifts greater than three, and that most galaxies would be peculiar. JWST shows that this is not the case. Figure 4 in todays paper.

Our current idea that mergers assemble galaxies in the early Universe means that we would expect to find lots of peculiar galaxies and few disks at high redshift, as these disks are still in the process of forming. However, the near-constant disk fraction found in this study indicates that disk galaxies (like the Milky Way) have existed in a fairly stable state for more than 10 billion years, seemingly contradicting our old ideas.

So whats going on? There are several ways to interpret these results. It could be that almost all mergers occur extremely early in the Universe, quickly forming disk galaxies, and that these disks survive until the present day because recent mergers are far less common than our current theories suggest. Alternatively, it could be that only some classes of galaxies are built up by mergers, or even that mergers are simply far less likely to destroy disk structures than we previously thought.

Whatever the case, it indicates that we may need to refine current theoretical ideas about how galaxies assemble and evolve through mergers, which is one of the key predictions of our widely-accepted model of the Universe (the Lambda cold dark matter, or CDM, model). Some articles based on this work have gone a step further, stating that this research disproves CDM, or even the Big Bang. However, despite the homage to noughties emo-pop in the title of this paper, theres really no reason to panic. Tuning and re-tuning theories to fit new data is a normal part of the scientific process. In fact, this paper is exciting: it tells us that we still do not truly know where galactic structure came from, but that new science carried out using this new telescope will finally give us a chance to understand the origins and lives of galaxies.

Astrobite edited by Aldo Panfichi

Featured image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI

About Roan HaggarI'm a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, working with hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters to study the evolution of infalling galaxies. I also co-manage a portable planetarium that we take round to schools in the local area. My more terrestrial hobbies include rock climbing and going to music venues that I've not been to before.

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JWST takes a peek at the first ever galaxies - Astrobites

Stare into the core of the Phantom Galaxy.

New images from humanity's most powerful space telescopes the legendary Hubble telescope and its successor the James Webb Space Telescope reveal unprecedented detail in this magnificent distant spiral galaxy. It's 32 million light-years away.

The over 30-year-old Hubble telescope views light we can see (visible light), while the Webb telescope views a type of light with longer wavelengths (called "infrared light") that isn't visible to us. Together, these instruments gather bounties of data that reveal new insights about what lies in the distant cosmos.

The middle image below shows the combined views of the Hubble and Webb telescopes. What you can see:

The areas of bright pink in the reddish spirals are active star-forming regions

The bright blue dots are other stars

The core of the galaxy glows cyan and green. These are older stars clustered around the galactic center.

At center is a view of the Phantom Galaxy with combined data of the Hubble and Webb telescopes.Credit: ESA / Webb / NASA / CSA / J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team / Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt

In the Webb image by itself (the top image of this story or the right-side image in the comparison above), it's easy to see the many stars (shown in blue) amassed in the galaxy's core. A lack of gas at the heart of the Phantom Galaxy makes this view exceptionally clear.

Hubble continues to capture dazzling views of distant stars and galaxies. Meanwhile, Webb, stationed 1 million miles away from Earth, is expected to reveal new insights about the universe. Here's how Webb will achieve unparalleled things:

Giant mirror: Webb's mirror, which captures light, is over 21 feet across. That's over two and a half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. The telescope will peer at stars and galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

"We're going to see the very first stars and galaxies that ever formed," Jean Creighton, an astronomer and the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, told Mashable last year.

Infrared view: Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see far more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves more efficiently slip through cosmic clouds; the light doesn't as often collide with and get scattered by these densely-packed particles. Ultimately, Webb's infrared eyesight can penetrate places Hubble can't.

"It lifts the veil," said Creighton.

Peering into distant exoplanets: The Webb telescope carries specialized equipment, called spectrometers, that will revolutionize our understanding of these far-off worlds. The instruments can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) exist in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets be they gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb will look at exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we'll find?

"We might learn things we never thought about," Mercedes Lpez-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, told Mashable in 2021.

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Scientists harness powers of Webb and Hubble in stunning galactic image - Mashable

As it turns out, the idea of space being a completely silent vacuum is a misconception. And were now learning thanks to a recording released by NASA, not only does space have a sound its a goddamn Lovecraftian horror.

The 34-second clip sending social media into a frenzy is a remixed sonification of the black hole located at the centre of a galaxy cluster dubbed Perseus. For reference, Perseus is approximately 240 million light years away from Earth (just in case any of you were thinking about ducking over real quick).

RELATED: NASAs James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Galaxy From 4.6 Billion Years Ago

Since 2003, the black hole at the centre of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound, explained NASA.

This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the clusters hot gas that could be translated into a note one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C.

So how is it possible that our woefully human ears are (finally) registering the audio being emitted by Perseus?

RELATED: Hubble Telescope Photo Shows One Galaxy Ripping Solar Systems From Another

The US space agency added: The sound waves were extracted in radial directions, that is, outwards from the centre. The signals were then resynthesized into the range of human hearing by scaling them upward by 57 and 58 octaves above their true pitch.

Another way to put this is that they are being heard 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times higher than their original frequency (a quadrillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000.) The radar-like scan around the image allows you to hear waves emitted in different directions.

In other words, this isnt a completely faithful representation of what youd experience in the aural sense if you were to hypothetically get up close and personal with a black hole. Although in that scenario, sound accuracy would probably be the least of your problems.

Still, anyone having trouble staying awake in the dead of night should definitely give the NASA space sound recording a listen.

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NASA Captured The Sound Of Space (And It's Bloody Terrifying) - Boss Hunting

For centuries, science fiction writers have taken findings and theories from the most cutting-edge research and used them to feed their flights of fancy. The clouds on Mars and its similarity to Earth, when seen through a telescope (as early as 1610, by Galileo), have led to speculation about everything from little green men to the John Carter series. Billionaires like Elon Musk continue to harbour (rather expensive) notions of colonising the Red Planet. And quantum theory has led to many multiverses. Even something as simple as the earliest seafarers seeking to pierce the horizon continues to form the emotional bedrock of the Star Trek franchise. With the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the limits of the horizon have been pushed exponentially.

Jupiter, children have been told for decades in their middle-school syllabus, is a gas giant. What the general public did not comprehend how could it was that in the swirling mass of storms on the planet (the largest of which could easily swallow up the Earth), encircled by hitherto invisible Saturn-like rings, there is beautiful, ferocious activity. Or, that the violent geological life is circumscribed by an almost heavenly halo. Looking at the stunning JWST images by NASA just weeks after it revealed the sound of a Black Hole there is no doubt that there will be enough fodder to feed the imagination for generations to come.

The JWST, like the Hubble telescope before it, is likely to enhance human understanding of the cosmos immeasurably. A horizon, of course, is a curious thing. It is simultaneously a challenge and a limit. It also tells us exactly what to aim for a theoretical meeting point in the distance. The immensity of what lies beyond can offer both hope and an escape. Thanks to the JWST, Jupiter is already calling.

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James Webb Telescope images of the planet open up new horizons of the imagination - The Indian Express