Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

Uranus and Neptune have a lot in common, but they still look different in terms of colour! Now, NASA's Hubble Telescope has found the reason behind it.

Neptune and Uranus share many common features - they have similar masses, sizes, and atmospheric compositions, and a lot more, but still, have you ever wondered why the planets look so different? Skywatchers must have noticed while staring into the night sky that Uranus looks so pale unlike Neptune, which is in a deep blue colour. Well, thanks to NASA's Hubble Telescope, astronomers may now know why Uranus and Neptune are different colours.

Astronomers now have an explanation for this distinctive difference in colours of Neptune and Uranus despite sharing several commonalities.

Researchers designed a single atmospheric model that matches observations of both planets using data from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope, the Gemini North telescope, and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. According to the model, the abundance of haze on Uranus builds up in the planet's stagnant, sluggish atmosphere, giving it a lighter tone than Neptune. Also read: NASA Hubble Telescope discovers a giant Galaxy; Sized 2.5x LARGER than our Milky Way Galaxy!

The new research suggests that a layer of concentrated haze that exists on both planets is thicker on Uranus than on Neptune, causing Uranus to look whiter than Neptune. The atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus would seem nearly identically blue if there was no haze in their atmospheres due to blue light scattered in their atmospheres. Also Read: NASA Hubble Space Telescope spots Hidden Galaxy behind Milky Way Galaxy!

Three layers of particles at various heights make up the team's model. The middle layer, which is a layer of haze particles thicker on Uranus than on Neptune, is the primary layer that impacts the colours. Methane ice condenses onto the particles in this layer on both worlds, dragging them deeper into the atmosphere in a shower of methane snow, according to the study. The research team believes Neptune's atmosphere is more effective at mixing up methane particles into the haze layer and producing this snow because it has a more active, turbulent atmosphere than Uranus'. This removes additional haze and keeps Neptune's haze layer thinner than Uranus', allowing Neptune's blue colour to shine out.

"We hoped that developing this model would help us understand clouds and hazes in the ice giant atmospheres," Dr. Mike Wong, an astronomer at the University of California and a member of the team behind this result, has commented.

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Why Uranus and Neptune colours are different: NASA's Hubble Telescope has the answer - HT Tech

Illustration: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), and A. Mellinger

When we gaze out into the night sky, all may appear calm, but looks can be deceiving. Though we may not feel it, our galaxythe Milky Wayis hurtling through the universe at an astonishing 1.3 million miles per hour. And, it's on a crash course with its neighborthe Andromeda Galaxy. While these spiral galaxies are 2.5 million light years apart, that won't always be the case.

The Andromeda Galaxy, which is far larger than the Milky Way, is hurtling toward us at 68 miles per second. And while that might seem fast, given the distance between these galaxies it will still take 4 billion years for them to collide. Eventually, in about 6 billion years, they will transform from two separate spiral galaxies into one giant spherical galaxy. This new galaxy, which is sometimes called Milkomeda or Milkdromeda, will also see the merger of the supermassive black holes that reside at the centers of the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Though the thought of such a large collision sounds scary, scientists point out that due to the distance between stars, it is unlikely that individual stars will collide. And our solar system? That should be safe too. Researchers have estimated that it will likely be swept to the outskirts of the new galaxy, though this is also a small chance that it could be ejected completely from Milkomeda. Either way, it's unlikely that humans will be around to see this spectacular light show, as at this point the Sun will have grown so hot that it will have terminated life on Earth.

What's incredible about the Andromeda-Milky Way Collision is that we've known about it for hundreds of years. In the early 1900s, astronomer Vesto Slipher predicted that the Andromeda Galaxy was headed directly toward the Milky Way. Since that time, many astronomers have created simulations to see if these galaxies would meet head-on or simply skirt past each other. In 2012, data from the Hubble Telescope confirmed that there would definitely be a collision.

It's important to remember that these types of collisions are quite normal and expected. In fact, the Milky Way was already involved in a large collision about 10 billion years ago and larger galaxies often absorb smaller galaxies in their orbit. While we may not be around to see the formation of Milkomeda, it's incredible to look at the simulations and know that we're using science to predict the future.

Hubble Snaps Incredible Photo of a Faraway Galaxy

Massive 2.2-Gigapixel Photo of the Milky Way Captured in One Night

NASA Says About 300 Million Habitable Planets Could Exist in the Milky Way

Spectacular Time-Lapse Footage Taken by Worlds First Spacecraft To Touch the Sun

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The Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies Are Set to Collide in 4 Billion Years - My Modern Met

Scientists have a new, more accurate, measurement of the expansion of the universe thanks to decades worth of data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new analysis of data from the 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope continues the observatory's longstanding quest to better understand how quickly the universe expands, and how much that expansion is accelerating.

The number astronomers use to measure this expansion is called the Hubble Constant (not after the telescope but after astronomer Edwin Hubble who first measured it in 1929). The Hubble Constant is a tough one to pin down given that different observatories looking at different zones of the universe have delivered different answers. But a new study expresses confidence that Hubble's most recent effort is precise for the expansion it sees, although there is still a difference from other observatories.

The new study confirms previous expansion rate estimates based on Hubble observations, showing an expansion of roughly 45 miles (73 kilometers) per megaparsec.(A megaparsec is a measurement of distance equal to one million parsecs, or 3.26 million light-years.)

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

"Given the large Hubble sample size, there is only a one-in-a-million chance astronomers are wrong due to an unlucky draw ... a common threshold for taking a problem seriously in physics," NASA said in a statement on Thursday (May 19), paraphrasingNobel Laureate and study lead author Adam Riess.

Riess has affiliations at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) that manages Hubble, as well as the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Riess and collaborators received the Nobel in 2011 after Hubble and other observatories confirmed that the universe was accelerating in its expansion. Riess calls this latest Hubble effort a "magnum opus" given that it draws upon practically the telescope's entire history, 32 years of space work, to deliver an answer.

Hubble's data nailed down its observed expansion rate under a program called SHOES (Supernova, H0, for the Equation of State of Dark Energy.) The dataset doubles a previous sample of measurements and also includes more than 1,000 Hubble orbits, NASA stated. The new measurement is also eight times more precise than expectations for Hubble's capabilities.

Efforts to measure how fast the universe is expanding usually focus on two distance markers. One of them are the Cepheid stars, variable stars that brighten and dim at a constant rate; their utility has been known since 1912, when astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt marked their importance in imagery she was reviewing.

Cepheids are good for charting distances that are inside the Milky Way (our galaxy) and in nearby galaxies. For further distances, astronomers rely upon Type 1a supernovas. These supernovas have a consistent luminosity (inherent brightness), allowing for precise estimates of their distance based on how bright they appear in telescopes.

In the new study, NASA stated, "the team measured 42 of the supernova milepost markers with Hubble. Because they are seen exploding at a rate of about one per year, Hubble has, for all practical purposes, logged as many supernovae as possible for measuring the universe's expansion." (Again, Hubble has been in space for about 32 years, having launched on April 24, 1990; a mirror flaw that hindered early work was addressed by astronauts in December 1993.)

But the expansion rate still does not have full agreement across different efforts. The new study says Hubble's measurements are roughly 45 miles (73 kilometers) per megaparsec. But when taking into account observations of the deep universe, the rate slows down to about 42 miles (67.5 kilometers) per megaparsec.

Deep universe observations rely principally upon measurements by the European Space Agency's Planck mission, which observed the "echo" of the Big Bang that formed our universe. The echo is known as the cosmic microwave background. NASA said astronomers are "at a loss" to figure out why there are two different values, but suggested we may have to rethink basic physics.

Riess said it is best to see the expansion rate not for its exact value at its time, but its implications. "I don't care what the expansion value is specifically, but I like to use it to learn about the universe," Riess said in the NASA statement.

More measurements are expected to come in the forthcoming 20 years from the James Webb Space Telescope, which is completing commissioning work in deep space ahead of looking at some of the first galaxies. Webb, NASA said, will look at Cepheids and Type 1a supernovas "at greater distances or sharper resolution than what Hubble can see." That may in turn refine Hubble's observed rate.

A paper based on the research will be published in the Astronomical Journal. A preprint version is available on arXiv.org.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcomor Facebook.

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Hubble telescope refines universe expansion rate mystery - Space.com

A fresh image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a deep view of the eye of a galactic needle.

The spiral galaxy is nicknamed the "Needle's Eye", although more officially it is known as NGC 247 and Caldwell 62. NASA said May 10 the nickname is appropriate given this galaxy is a dwarf spiral, making it a relatively small group of stars compared to our own Milky Way.

The Hubble Space Telescope image portrays a hole on the other side of the galaxy, which NASA said puzzles astronomers. "There is a shortage of gas in that part of the galaxy, which means there isnt much material from which new stars can form," the agency wrote.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

"Since star formation has halted in this area, old, faint stars populate the void. Scientists still dont know how this strange feature formed, but studies hint toward past gravitational interactions with another galaxy," the agency added.

The hole is not the only mystery this galaxy holds.

Below the disk of the galaxy, you can spit a few more smaller and distant galaxies beyond the Needle's Eye marker of 11 million light-years, a relatively close distance to us in galactic terms. But learning about those faraway galaxies is something astronomers are also trying to do.

"Bright red indicates areas of high-density gas and dust, and robust star formation rather close to the edge of the galaxy," NASA said. There's also a bright foreground star that happens to be in the field of view.

Embedded in the heart of the galaxy is an ultraluminous X-ray source, too, but it is unclear where that came from.

"Are they stellar-mass black holes gorging on unusually large amounts of gas? Or are they long-sought 'intermediate-mass' black holes, dozens of times more massive than their stellar counterparts but smaller than the monster black holes in the centers of most galaxies?" NASA asked.

Independent studies of the galaxy using other forms of light, such as X-rays with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, suggest the X-rays are coming from an intermediate-mass black hole's disk. But more studies will be required to decide for sure what is going on.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcomor Facebook.

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Hubble telescope looks deep into the Needle's Eye in this dwarf spiral galaxy photo - Space.com

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most powerful technologies available for measuring interstellar distances.

Hubble is currently working on a much bigger mission: figuring out how fast the cosmos is expanding.

New evidence suggests that the cosmos is not expanding at the same rate everywhere.

There is a difference in the rate of expansion of the universe as it is around us and observations made after the Big Bang.

NASA observes that something weird is going on in the cosmos based on Hubble data.

NASA notes that the study of how the universe grew and how rapidly it began decades ago in 1920, when measurements by Edwin P Hubble and Georges Lemaitre revealed that galaxies beyond our own were not stationary.

These galaxies are actually travelling away from us.

These galaxies were travelling at a non-uniform, increasing rate, according to Hubble.

The further a galaxy was from Earth, the faster it was moving away.

Since then, scientists have been attempting to comprehend the phenomenon and determine the pace of expansion.

However, now that Hubble data is available, it appears that the expansion is considerably faster than models expected.

Scientists are now awaiting data from the new James Webb Space Telescope, which will offer a more in-depth examination at the matter, as the new data kicks off a new review of our understanding of the universes expansion.

The Webb Space Telescope will extend on Hubbles work by showing these cosmic milepost markers at greater distances or sharper resolution than what Hubble can see, NASA said.

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Hubble Telescope: Something weird going on in universe - us.bolnews.com

Earlier this year, the single greatest site reliability engineering (SRE) lesson unfolded itself out in space. Last week we saw the very first, better-than-even-expected images from the James Webb Space Telescope or JWST.

After ten years of design and build on a $9 billion budget, this was an effort in testing 344 single points of failure all before deploying to production, with the distributed system a million miles and one month away.

Needless to say, there are a lot of reliability lessons to be learned from this endeavor. At his WTF is SRE talk last month, Robert Barron brought his perspective as an IBM SRE architect, amateur space historian, and a hobby space photographer to uncover the patterns of reliability that enabled this feat. And how NASA was able to trust its automation so much that itd release something with no hopes of fixing it. Its a real journey into observability at scale.

Its a great platform for demonstrating site reliability engineering concepts because this is reliability to the extreme, Barron said of the James Webb Space Telescope. If something goes wrong, if its not reliable, then it doesnt work. We cant just deploy it again. Its not something logical, its something physical that has to work properly and I think there are a lot of lessons and a lot of inspiration that we can take from this work into our day-to-day lives.

After 30 years of amazing photos from the Hubble Telescope, there was a demand for new business and technical capabilities, including to be able to see through and past clouds as they are created.

When designing the Webb telescope, the design engineers kicked off with the functional requirements, which in turn drove a lot of non-functional requirements. For instance, it needed to be much more powerful and larger than Hubble, but to achieve that it needed a significantly larger mirror. However, an operational constraint arose that the mirror is so large that it doesnt fit into any rocket, so it needed to be broken up into pieces. The non-functional requirement became to create a foldable mirror. A solution arose to break the mirror up into smaller hexagons, which can be aligned together to form a honeycomb-shaped mirror.

The second non-functional requirement of the JWST was to go beyond Hubble in not only seeing invisible light, but in seeing hot infrared light. But, to be accurate, the mirror needs to keep cold. Not just colder, but we need to be able to control the temperatures. Exactly. Because any variation and were going to look at something and think Oh, this is a star. This is a galaxy. Not thats just something there on Webb itself, which is slightly colder or warmer than it should be, Barron explained.

Unlike Hubble which orbits the Earth, Webb is unable to orbit because then its temperatures would vary greatly in sun and shade. Plus, it needs to be much farther away from earth than Hubble has ever gone. With this in mind, the controls and antennas face Earth and the telescope faces away with the honeycomb set of mirrors that reflect into a second set of mirrors which then sends the images back to the cameras, which are located in the middle of the honeycomb mirrors. Then behind it is a massive set of sunshades that work to control the temperature of the telescope.

When NASA decided back in 1995 to make this next-generation space telescope, the agency assumed itd cost about a billion dollars. In 2003, they started to design it, and they realized that its not just scaling up Hubble, we need technological breakthroughs the foldable mirrors, precise control of the temperature, the unfurling of the heat shields, and so on, said Barron. Over the next four years of high-level design, they moved the budget to $3.5 billion and planned on another billion for a decade of operations.

Then between 2007 and 2021, NASA dove into the design, build and test phase of what was named the James Webb Space Telescope.

Like good SREs we test and, because we have ten technological breakthroughs that we need to achieve, we have a lot of failures, Barron said. So we retest and fail, and retest and fail. And this takes a lot of time, and the project is nearly canceled many times. And eventually it costs $9.5 billion dollars just to build it. And that $1 billion that we thought would be enough to operate for 10 years is only going to be enough to operate for five years.

All things considered, the JWST was launched in December of last year, kicking off its operation, and what Barron referred to as pirouetting and ballet moves through space.

You can see that over a period of 13 days that the telescope, like a butterfly, opens up, spreads its wings, and started reporting home. And then starts going further away from Earth until it reaches the location where it will remain for the next decade, he explained. This journey took a total of 30 days.

As of the WTF is SRE event that Barron spoke at the end of April, the JWST was considered mid-deployment, before reaching production were doing the final tests before we can say that the system is working and can start giving actual scientific data.

During this deployment phase, there are so many components and pieces moving and changing, it uncovered many points of failure 344 to be exact.

Webb is famous for having over 300 single points of failure during this process of 30 days, each of which has to go perfectly, each of which if the fails, the entire telescope will not be able to function, Barron explained.

When those first exceptional photos came back, discovering new, fainter galaxies, was it luck or a feat of extreme site reliability engineering?

How did NASA reach the point where they could send $10 billion worth of satellite out into space without being able to fix anything without being able to reach out with an astronaut to say, Oh, I need to move something, I need to restart something, I need to do something manual. How can the system be completely fully automated? And can I trust that no dragons will come from outer space and do something to the telescope which will cause it to fail?

Robert Barron @FlyingBarron

You could say this is more than a leap of faith. That trust that NASA had in all this working properly, Barron believes, comes from its decades-long history of sending crafts into space, which is grounded in the values of:

Both the Voyager spacecraft that went to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and the Mars Rover were actually sets of identical twin crafts, in case one failed. Similarly, constellations of satellites work in tandem as fail-safes. This redundancy has long been embraced by NASA, but wasnt the option with the JWST price tag.

When redundancy is out, NASA next reaches for repairability. The Hubble Telescope has been repaired and upgraded multiple times for both fixes and preventive maintenance. And, according to Barron, 50% of the astronaut time on the International Space Station is actually spent on toil.

If the astronauts left the International Space Station, then, in a very short period of time, it would just break down and theyd be forced to send it back down into the atmosphere to burn up, he explained.

But, again, the non-functional requirement of repairability was also not an option for the Webb Telescope because it is floating far beyond the current capability of astronauts.

So the next step toward reliability came from building the JWST out of component architecture.

Barron went through a brief history of the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. from 1960 to 1988. He uncovered the pattern that redundancy didnt actually matter much because the failure modes were shared in both crafts each time, like an alloy wasnt durable enough or a launch was during a sandstorm. He did note that the Soviet space program chose not to publish their mistakes, so they were less likely than NASA to learn from them.

Redundancy is very good, but sometimes at a system level, it doesnt solve a problem because the problem is much wider, which Barron said happens to SREs as well. Kubernetes, for example, has componentization, redundancy and load balancing built-in, but that doesnt matter if the problem is with the DNS or an application bug. Often reliability demands more than simple redundancy.

The monolith Hubble was designed from the start with repairability and upgradeability in mind. With this repairability out of the picture, there had to be a lot more testing on Webb versus Hubble, for each single point of failure. For example, each mirror was a smaller component that could be realigned remotely. He analogized this to Kubernetes, where you want to allocate the right amount of CPU, memories, and resources available to each and every microservice.

In fact, Webb saw some observability trade-offs because it could only allow for so many selfie cameras to observe its own condition because adding more could affect the temperature and alter its observations.

Theres no doubt that the James Web Space Telescope SRE strategy has more stakes than any enacted on Earth. It still makes for a fantastic example of how site reliability engineering and observability needs vary within the context of circumstances. And that sometimes chaos engineering can only be performed before it goes into production.

Barron observed some of the JWSTs SRE strategy:

The JWST experiment is also a good reminder that, with fewer stakes than NASA, much more frequent, smaller deployment cadence, and with less than 100% uptime required, you can experiment more with redundancy, repairability and reliability to continuously improve your systems. Under ideally significantly less pressure.

As SREs, we dont want to aim for 100% availability. We want the right amount of availability, and we dont want to overspend neither resources nor budget in order to get there. We dont want to embrace too many new technologies for new products, Barron said. A lot of the lessons from Webb are what not to do.

Disclosure: The author of this article was a host of the WTF is SRE conference.

The New Stack is a wholly owned subsidiary of Insight Partners, an investor in the following companies mentioned in this article: Saturn.

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James Webb Space Telescope and 344 Single Points of Failure - thenewstack.io

James Webb Space Space Telescope may be humanity's future 'eye in the sky' but good ol' Hubble telescope still has a place in our hearts. Hubble has faithfuly relayed images of distant stars and galaxies to Earth for three decades. The space telescope does not cease to make us awestruck, amused and appreciate the endless beauty of the cosmos.

Latest image clicked by Hubble is such. While it may not be as exciting as a colliding galaxy, exploding star but this image tells us about our future.

The photo shows an elliptical galaxy called NGC 474. It is 100 million light-years away from Earth. It is about two and a half times larger than Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy may not have a beautiful spiral structure like our own galaxy. It just looks like a wisp or smokey haze. But studying NGC 474 galaxy is vital because it gives us glimpses of our on future.

As much as we love our Milky Way Galaxy, it is on collision course with an even bigger galaxy. Andromeda galaxy is racing towards Milky Wayat an unimaginable speed.

We can breathe a little sigh of relief though because the galactic collision will take place billions of years from now. This collision of galaxies may not be as apocalyptic as movies have us believe. But immense gravities of Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will tear material out from the cosmic dance partners. After a merger process that will last billions of years still, both galaxies will lose their spiral shapes and the resulting 'Milkdromeda' galaxy will have an elliptical shape just like NGC 474 which Hubble has clicked!

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Hubble clicks photo that shows future of Milky Way Galaxy - WION

The Crab Nebula, an iconic supernova remnant in our Milky Way galaxy, was photographed by the ESA's Herschel Space Observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in this composite image.

According to NASA, the Crab nebula is a wispy and filamentary cloud of gas and dust that was discovered by Chinese astronomers in 1054 as a remnant of a supernova explosion.

(Photo : ESA/Herschel/PACS/MESS Key Programme Supernova Remnant Team; NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University))

Space.comreported that the glow from cosmic dust contained in the nebula is shown by Herschel's observations, which are displayed in red. Hubble's view, in blue, shows the nebula's oxygen and sulfur gas.

A team of scientists using Herschel to study the nebula discovered that it contains far more dust than they anticipated - nearly a fourth of the mass of the Sun. The newer findings also revealed the presence of argon-based molecules, the first time such a molecule has been discovered in space.

Read More: #SpaceSnap: Hubble Space Telescope's Photo of Gas Clouds Inside NGC 1977 in The Running Man Nebula

The Herschel image is based on data collected at a wavelength of 70 microns with the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) instrument, while the Hubble image is based on archival data from the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).

"Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission with important NASA contributions, and Hubble is a NASA mission with important ESA contributions," NASA said.

Behold since the Crab Nebula isn't the only thing the Hubble Telescope has seen thus far. The following are some of the most fascinating images captured by the telescope:

(Photo : NASA, ESA, STScI, Julianne Dalcanton (Center for Computational Astrophysics / Flatiron Inst. and University of Washington); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

NASA said that the image above is a "spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy." On the right, the NGC 2445 is the more dazzling spiral galaxy, while the NGC 2444 lies on the left. Arp 143 is the collective name for them. [read more]

(Photo : NASA, ESA, K. Luhman and T. Esplin (Pennsylvania State University), et al., and ESO; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))

The Hubble Space Telescope image above depicts one of the Chameleon Cloud Complex's three segments. The photo was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. [read more]

(Photo : ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini)

A magnificent image of a laser-like jet of gas blasting from a very young star has been caught by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, one of the space telescope's five scientific instruments, captured the image. The Herbig-Haro object HH34, which is 1,250 light-years away from Earth, is depicted in this snapshot. [read more]

(Photo : NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (University of Virginia); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))NASAs Hubble Space Telescope captures another Flame Nebula.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning image of the Flame Nebula, officially known as NGC 2024. NGC 2024 is a large star-forming region around 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. [read more]

(Photo : NASA, ESA, and J. Bally (University of Colorado at Boulder); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))

Inside the Running Man nebula complex, the telescope captured breathtaking gas clouds. The Hubble Space Telescope's favorite subject to shoot is nebulae, and these photographs have helped scientists learn more about them. [read more]

Related Article: #SpaceSnap: Hubble Space Telescope Captures Amazing 'Space Triangle' Created by Colliding Galaxies

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#SpaceSnap The Alluring Crab Nebula Captured by the Hubble and Herschel Space Telescopes - iTech Post

This story was originally published by Undark and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Outer space isnt what most people would think of as an ecosystem. Its barren and frigid void isnt exactly akin to the verdant canopies of a rainforest or to the iridescent shoals that swim among coral cities. But if we are to become better stewards of the increasingly frenzied band of orbital space above our atmosphere, a shift to thinking of it as an ecosystem as part of an interconnected system of living things interacting with their physical environment may be just what we need.

Last month, in the journal Nature Astronomy, a collective of 11 astrophysicists and space scientists proposed we do just that, citing the proliferation of anthropogenic space objects. Thousands of satellites currently orbit the Earth, with commercial internet providers such as SpaceXs Starlink launching new ones at a dizzying pace. Based on proposals for projects in the future, the authors note, the number could reach more than a hundred thousand within the decade. Artificial satellites, long a vital part of the space ecosystem, have arguably become an invasive species.

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The band of orbital space just above our atmosphere is becoming so densely populated with satellites that it may threaten the practice of astronomy. Whereas the main source of light interference used to be the cities below, it is now increasingly the satellites above. These artificial stars can be a billion times brighter than the objects astronomers hope to study, and they emit radio waves that can interfere with telescopes. By some estimates, around one in 20 images from the Hubble Telescope are affected by the streaks of passing satellites. By 2030, the authors say, a third of Hubbles images could be impacted.

Yet the choice by the authors of the Nature Astronomy paper to call the orbital space around Earth an ecosystem reflects the fact that its not just astronomers who are affected by the recent infiltration of the night sky. Rather, the cluttering of orbital space is impacting the well-being of creatures both above the skies and below.

To begin with, there are the handful of astronauts at any given moment who call low-Earth orbit home and the plants, worms, and tardigrades that have been their playthings on the International Space Station. Space junk created by the rare but inevitable collisions between satellites which can travel faster than bullet speed is becoming a threat to that life. Last year, a five-millimetre hole was punctured in the International Space Stations robotic arm by debris of unknown origin.

But clutter in low-Earth orbit also threatens ways of life for entire communities of people here on the ground. The traditions and cosmologies of many Indigenous peoples, for example, are rooted in the movements of the stars. Polynesian sailors feats of navigation by starlight are unparalleled. The Palikur people of the Amazon see constellations as boats driven by shamans that bring rain and seasonal fish. The recent deluge of light pollution in our night skies is more than a headache to these and other Indigenous peoples, whose cosmologies may wither if the numbers of satellites arent kept in check. New artificial mega-constellations could mask those that have been relied on for millennia. (This issue may provide rare common ground between Indigenous peoples and professional astronomers, the latter of whom have historically been aligned with colonialism and courted controversy with the construction of new telescopes on sacred Indigenous lands.)

For many non-human animals, evidence suggests that a clear night sky might be a basic survival need. The hazy stripe of the Milky Way is used by dung beetles to navigate back to their burrows. Migratory birds, harbour seals, and some species of moths all use the movement of the stars as a compass too. Who knows how many other creatures might depend on a clear view of the night sky?

To protect the space ecosystem, we should treat it the way many aspire to treat our atmosphere and our oceans: as a global commons, a resource that lies beyond national, corporate, or individual ownership. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty took steps toward this ideal by recognizing that all nations have an equal interest in the exploration and use of outer space. Yet even that treaty establishes space as a resource humans can use for our own benefit. Thats like defining an ecosystem in terms of the natural capital it offers to humans, rather than recognizing the protection of habitats and biodiversity as an intrinsic good.

More apt would be to emphasize not the potential benefits that space provides to humans but rather the potential threats that humans pose to orbital space. In this view, overuse of the global commons by any one actor imposes a shared expense on us all. In our management of Antarctica, for example, preservation goes hand in hand with human activity on the continent. In this light, we shouldnt see low Earth orbit as the next frontier of capitalist extraction, but rather as an ecosystem to be protected one that, like other ecosystems, has limits and tipping points beyond which there is no return.

Some groups have started to open up conversations and build initiatives to this effect. The authors of the Nature Astronomy paper, for example, propose a space traffic footprint akin to a carbon footprint. And in February, the International Astronomical Union launched the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference. The centre, which will be co-hosted by the National Science Foundations NOIRLab and the Square Kilometer Array Observatory, aims to act as a hub of information and advocacy, bringing together stakeholders such as astronomers, ecologists, and Indigenous peoples alike. While much remains to be done, the issue is one of perspective as much as policy. It will take a shared commitment to the value of a clear night sky, and collaboration across diverse communities, to preserve orbital space for generations to come.

Unlike other ecosystems, the near-barrenness of the band of space just beyond our atmosphere is precisely what makes it unique and valuable. Preserving this transparent window grants us all access to what lies beyond.

Thomas Lewton is a science journalist who writes about astrophysics and the environment.

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Space is an ecosystem, too. And it's in peril - Canada's National Observer

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning view of the Prawn Nebula floating through deep space.

The Prawn Nebula, formally known as IC 4628, is an emission nebula located 6,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius. Nebulas, or clouds of interstellar gas and dust, form following massive stellar explosions; in turn, this interstellar material gives life to new stars.

Stretching over 250 light-years wide, IC 4628 is believed to be a massive stellar nursery, where new stars are forming. Scientists classify it as an emission nebula because its gas has been energized, or ionized, by the radiation of nearby stars. That process produces electrons that re-emit the absorbed energy in the form of infrared light, according to a statement from NASA.

Full story: Hubble telescope captures stunning image of the star-forming Prawn Nebula

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