Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

14:58 03 December 2014

St Albans astronomer Dr Jim Geach has been studying the evolution of galaxies

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The NASA Hubble space telescope has helped a St Albans astronomer uncover new insights into the processes that have helped shape galaxies.

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An international team of astronomers, including local researcher Dr Jim Geach from the University of Hertfordshire, has been unlocking mysteries of the universe including how all the galaxies we see around us came to be.

Before their study, it was assumed that stars alone could not drive out gas to the velocities the team observed, and that something more powerful like a black hole would be needed.

The astronomers have now challenged that belief; showing that if a galaxy is compact enough and forming stars at a high rate, it will produce the velocity required without needing a central black hole.

Dr Geach, co-author of the paper led by Paul Sell, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, said: We have discovered a remarkable class of galaxy that compared to the Milky Way is extremely compact and it has recently been forming stars hundreds of times faster.

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St Albans astronomer investigates mysteries of universe using Hubble telescope

A crew aboard the space shuttle 'Endeavor' successfully repaired the Hubble telescope in December of 1993.

At their 360-mile-high rendezvous, Endeavour's crew pulled the telescope onto a platform in the space shuttle's open cargo bay.

There, they attached new stabilizing gyroscopes necessary to guide the telescope, replaced its solar panels and gave it a new primary camera.

The wide-field planetary camera was responsible for about half of the Hubble's observations.

It had been sending to earth unfocused images due to a flaw in its primary mirror.

Hubble, which had been launched into space in 1990, had only been able to transmit bright images within 4 billion light-years rather than the optimal 10 to 15 billion.

The flaw had limited the observations of astronomers investigating theories of an expanding universe and the existence of black holes.

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This Day in History - December 2, 1993 - Hubble Repair Shuttle Mission Launched

Hubble Space Telescope: Merry Christmas from the Hubble Telescope Images and christmas songs
This image was created with information received from the ever amazing Hubble Space Telescope. i have mixed iit with a favourite Christmas carol. Sit back and enjpy. Thanks to Nasa / ESA...

By: Amazing Space

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Hubble Space Telescope: Merry Christmas from the Hubble Telescope Images and christmas songs - Video

Hubble Space Telescope Stunning Images : Nasa Astronomy Hubble Photos
a video created from images and visualizations from the Hubble Space Telescope. Photos from the deepest reaches of space in spectacular detail taken by Nasa Hubble telescope, deep space ...

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Hubble Space Telescope Stunning Images : Nasa Astronomy Hubble Photos - Video

Journey to the Edge of the Universe (HD) + english subtitles
Voyage on images taken from the Hubble telescope. Explore the science and history behind the distant celestial bodies in the solar system. Arabic subtitles to be added soon. Excellent documentary...

By: 2014allDOCs

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Journey to the Edge of the Universe (HD) + english subtitles - Video

Atlantis Captures Hubble Telescope
Video streaming by http://www.AllthingsScience.com The Atlantis astronauts have captured the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronauts grabbed the orbiting observatory early Wednesday afternoon for...

By: Davies Robinson

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Atlantis Captures Hubble Telescope - Video

Hubble Telescope - Library Trailer
A promotional video to market exclusive NASA footage that had been filmed during the making of When We Left Earth. Editor: Dan Hall (dan.hall@puplimited.com)

By: Daniel Hall

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Hubble Telescope - Library Trailer - Video

Published: 17 Nov 2014 15:300 comments

A REGULAR feature from Tweeddale Astronomical Society...

THE increased popularity of astronomy as an interest and hobby over recent years has been in large part due to one of mankinds greatest technological achievements, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble telescope.

Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has been providing us with spectacular images in exquisite detail. These have not just delighted the amateurs among us and inspired many to take up the hobby, but have given professional astronomers and cosmologists a wealth of insight into the history, structure and diversity of the universe.

The telescope was named after Edwin Hubble, who in the late 1920s demonstrated that the Milky Way was not the entire universe, but was in fact just one of billions of galaxies, all of which seemed to be racing away from one another after an event which became known as 'The Big Bang.

So, why put a telescope in space? In its position 353 miles above the Earth, Hubble uses its 2.4m mirror to get a view of the universe that typically far surpasses that of much larger ground-based telescopes, which look through an atmosphere that can distort and block the light that reaches our planet.

Even the mountain-top telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and the Canary Islands, which can have mirrors as large as 10m across, still suffer from these effects and struggle to match the results of Hubble.

Amongst other things, Hubbles gaze has helped determine the age of the universe, discover planets outside our solar system, and demonstrate the existence of dark energy. One of the most striking images produced by Hubble came from scientists pointing the telescope at an apparently empty part of the sky and collecting light for almost 12 days.

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Eyes On The Skies

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have uncovered young, massive and compact galaxies that are dying earlier than expected.

The researchers said that the firestorm of star birth has blasted out most of the remaining gaseous fuel needed to make future generations of stars and are on track to possibly becoming so-called "red and dead galaxies," composed only of aging stars.

Scientists had earlier believed that powerful monster black holes lurking at the centers of the galaxies triggered the gaseous outflows and shut down star birth by blowing out any remaining fuel, but the recent study shows that the stars themselves are turning out the lights on their own star-making party, which happened when the universe was half its current age of 13.7 billion years.

Paul Sell of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, lead author of a science paper, said that the common belief was that stars cannot drive high-velocity outflows in galaxies; only more powerful supermassive black holes can do that, however, it was found that the stars can actually produce the velocities of the outflows alone without needing to invoke the black hole.

Team member Christy Tremonti of the University of Wisconsin-Madison first identified the galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as post-starburst objects spouting high-speed gaseous fountains. The sharp visible-light views from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 show that the outflows are arising from the most compact galaxies yet found. These galaxies contain as much mass as our Milky Way galaxy, but packed into a much smaller area. The smallest galaxies are about 650 light-years across.

One reason for the stellar shutdown is that the gas rapidly heats up, becoming too hot to contract under gravity to form new stars. Another possibility is that the star-birthing frenzy blasts out most of the star-making gas via powerful stellar winds.

The researchers said that the biggest surprise from Hubble was the realisation that the newly formed stars were born so close together and the extreme physical conditions at the centers of these galaxies explain how they can expel gas at millions of miles per hour.

They found that it was the powerful stellar winds from the most massive and short-lived stars at the end of their lives, combined with their explosive deaths as supernovae. Based on their analysis of the Hubble and Chandra data, team members suggest that the "party begins" when two gas-rich galaxies collide, funneling a torrent of cold gas into the merging galaxies' compact center. The large amount of gas compressed into the small space ignites the birth of numerous stars. The energy from the stellar firestorm then blows out the leftover gas, quenching further star formation.

The study was published in the Royal Astronomical Society.

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NASA's Hubble telescope finds young galaxies on track to becoming 'red and dead'

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has appointed Dr. Roeland van der Marel to lead its work on a proposed NASA space telescope that will provide images as sharp as the Hubble Space Telescope, but over a hundred times larger area. The space observatory, called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets (WFIRST-AFTA), is being studied for launch in the mid-2020s, pending program approval by NASA.The telescope will be used to probe the distribution of dark matter, which is most of the matter in the universe, and the characteristics of dark energy, a repulsive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate. The telescope will also be used to measure the abundance and characteristics of planets orbiting other stars. As a general-purpose observatory with a large survey program, it will also yield fundamental progress in many other astrophysical subjects.STScI is presently the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope and the science and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.WFIRST-AFTA will produce large-scale maps of the night sky at the highest resolution we have ever had. Our Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) already holds the astronomical data from some 20 astronomy missions. The addition of the enormous WFIRST-AFTA dataset would add considerably to its scientific discovery potential, STScI Director Matt Mountain said.A wide-field infrared survey telescope was the highest-ranked large space mission recommended by the National Academy of Sciences 2010 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey. WFIRST-AFTA would fulfill this recommendation. The heart of the proposed telescope is already built. It features a 2.4-meter-diameter mirror (the same size as Hubbles mirror), which was donated to NASA in 2012 by the United States National Reconnaissance Office.WFIRST-AFTA will have a wide-field, near-infrared imaging camera and also a visible-light coronagraph, an instrument specially designed for studying planets orbiting other stars. These instruments share many characteristics with instruments on Hubble and the Webb telescope, with which STScI has extensive experience.We will be extremely excited to help the astronomical community use WFIRST-AFTA to further revolutionize our understanding of the universe, van der Marel said. The Hubble data and analysis tools provided by STScI have already enabled astronomers around the world to make many ground-breaking astronomical discoveries. Building on that experience at STScI will make WFIRST-AFTA a powerful complement to the Webb telescope, and will further expand our knowledge.Van der Marel earned a doctorate in astronomy in 1994 from Leiden University in the Netherlands and joined the STScI staff in 1997. He previously led teams dealing with the scientific operations of Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys, and dealing with the structure, optics, and pointing of the Webb telescope. Van der Marel is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.Van der Marel is an expert on black holes and the structure of galaxies. His research, which includes using the Hubble telescope to study galaxies, has contributed to the discovery that supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies. In 2005, he won the Pirelli International Award for developing an educational website that explains black holes to students and the public.STScI is collaborating with NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, Maryland), NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (La Canada Flintridge, California), the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (Pasadena, California), and other partners on preparations for the WFIRST-AFTA mission.Contact:Ray VillardSpace Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.+1 410-338-4514villard@stsci.eduImages and more information about WFIRST:http://hubblesite.org/news/2014/49NASAs WFIRST Portalhttp://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/STScIs Brochure Pushing Astronomys Boundshttp://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2014/49/pdf.pdfWFIRST Video Trailer on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtKmBMmpWvwQ&A Session about NASAs WFIRST Mission:http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/qa-session-about-nasas-wfirst-mission/

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Lead Appointed on Proposed Wide Field Space Telescope