Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

SpaceX's Starlink Gen2 satellite has recently submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy 30,000 Starlink Gen2 satellites.

However, NASA sent a letter to the FCC stating that it encourages the agency to do more research and careful deployment of these satellites.

NASA added that the Hubble space telescope might be affected by the deployment of the plethora of satellites since eight percent of Hubble telescope images are impacted by satellites captured during exposures.

NASA expressed that the license Starlink seeks approval for states 10,000 satellites that are positioned in or above the orbital range of Hubble.

In this case, this would double the number of Hubble's degraded images.

NASA added that it estimates that the presence of a Starlink satellite will be spotted in every single asteroid image captured by the Hubble telescope.

The agency does not take it lightly as this would mean a difficulty of detecting asteroids that might further cause harm towards the planet, the satellites, and NASA's space missions. This might also go as far as having numerous image renders that are unusable.

As reported by Ars Technica, NASA wants "additional information including spacecraft and laser specifications including deployed dimensions, communications plan, ground segment expansion, orbital spacing, and deployment schedule."

"This will inform a thorough analysis of risks and impacts to NASA's missions and enable a mitigation strategy," the report adds.

Read Also: Life on Mars? NASA Discovers Abundant Water Source In The Red Planet

The letter that NASA sent to the FCC does not discourage the agency from rejecting the application of SpaceX Starlink Gen2. Rather, it pushes for the meticulous overseeing of the project to guarantee safe spaceflight in future missions and a long-term sustainable space environment.

It has been reported that NASA has legally expressed its concern regarding the significant increase of space satellites that might possibly cause collisions with other crewed spacecraft missions.

Space traffic might further endanger space exploration due to a possible crowded orbit.

According to Space.com, due to the five-fold increase of satellites in space, NASA expressed its concern about whether or not SpaceX's automated collision avoidance system would be capable of handling an enormous amount of traffic.

The conjunction that may possibly happen between satellites and other space crafts will likely have an effect on both crewed and uncrewed space missions since there will be more objects in close proximity.

Due to the resurfacing concern, SpaceX claims that there is zero risk in Starlink satellites colliding with other spacecraft in orbit.

As reported previously here oniTechPost, NASA told the FCC that "the assumption of zero risk from a system-level standpoint lacks statistical substantiation"

In addition, they added that with "the potential for multiple constellations with thousands and tens of thousands of spacecraft, it is not recommended to assume propulsion systems, ground detection systems, and software are 100% reliable, or that manual operations (if any) are 100% error-free."

PC Magalso reported that SpaceX's Starlink Gen2 satellites are aimed to launch as soon as next month. This leaves SpaceX hoping for the FCC to accept its proposal for deploying 30,000 satellites.

Related Article: NASA Raises Issues Over SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Plans of Sending 30,000 Starlink Satellites

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and its Asteroid Detection Ability Will Be Hampered by Starlink Gen2 - iTech Post

Since 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has floated through space, taking pictures of the universe 24 hours a day, seven days a week - meaning that in its time, it has witnessed some incredible cosmic events.

Using a tool on the Nasa website, you can see what deep-space images the telescope captured on your birthday.

This is everything you need to know.

What is the Hubble Telescope?

The Hubble Space Telescope, also known as just the Hubble, is a huge telescope in space, which Nasa launched in 1990.

According to the space agency, the Hubble is as long as a large school bus and weighs as much as two adult elephants. The Hubble spends its time travelling around earth at around five miles per second, which is the equivalent of driving a car from the east coast of the US to the west coast in just 10 minutes.

The telescope faces towards space, and it takes pictures of planets, stars and galaxies. It has witnessed the birth and death of stars, black holes, galaxies that are trillions of miles away and has even seen comet pieces crash into the gases above Jupiter.

Nasa says that the Hubble has fundamentally changed our understanding of the cosmos, and its story - filled with challenges overcome by innovation, determination, and the human spirit - inspires us.

The telescope got its name from Edwin P Hubble, who was an astronomer who made important discoveries about the universe in the early 1990s.

Astronauts have visited the Hubble five times to fix it, adding new parts and cameras to the telescope. In 2020, it turned 30 years old.

How do I use the feature?

Nasa says: The Hubble explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday.

To see with the Hubble saw on your birthday, you just need to head to the Nasa website.

From there, select the month and date that you were born and hit submit to see what it saw on your birthday.

Youll be shown a picture and will be given some information about what the Hubble saw. If you click on the more information option, youll be taken to a new webpage on the Hubble site which tells you all about the image.

You can easily share your image to social media, like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest by clicking on the icons in the upper left corner. Users are encouraged to share their birthday image on social media with the hashtag #Hubble30.

The Nasa website says that for Firefox users, you might need to turn off content blocking for this site in your browser's privacy settings if youre wanting to share your Hubble birthday image on social media.

A text version of the tool is also available for screen readers.

What did the telescope see on notable dates?

These are some examples of what the Hubble Telescope saw on some notable dates throughout the years.

On 25 December 2009, the telescope saw the dwarf galaxy NGC 4215, with the image capturing intricate patterns of glowing hydrogen shaped during the star birthing process, cavities blown clear of gas by stellar winds, and bright stellar clusters.

On 1 January 2012, it saw the galaxy Leo IV, which is one of more than a dozen ultra-faint dwarf galaxies near the Milky Way.

On 31 October 2005, the Hubble saw the nebula NGC 281, with the image showing dark knots of gas and dust called Bok Globules.

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How to see the photo the Hubble Space Telescope took on your birthday - The Scotsman

Black holes can not only rip stars apart, but they can also trigger star formation, as scientists have now seen in a nearby dwarf galaxy.

At the centers of most, if not all, large galaxies are supermassive black holes with masses that are millions to billions of times that of Earth's sun. For instance, at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy lies Sagittarius A*, which is about 4.5 million solar masses in size.

Astronomers have previously seen giant black holes shred apart stars. However, researchers have also detected supermassive black holes generating powerful outflows that can feed the dense clouds from which stars are born.

Video: Dwarf galaxys black hole triggers star formationRelated: The strangest black holes in the universe

Black hole-driven star formation was previously seen in large galaxies, but the evidence for such activity in dwarf galaxies was scarce. Dwarf galaxies are roughly analogous to what newborn galaxies may have looked like soon after the dawn of the universe, so investigating how supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies can spark the birth of stars may in turn offer "a glimpse of how young galaxies in the early universe formed a portion of their stars," study lead author Zachary Schutte, an astrophysicist at Montana State University in Bozeman, told Space.com.

In a new study, the scientists investigated the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, located about 34 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pyxis. Recent estimates suggest the dwarf galaxy has a mass about 10 billion times that of the sun. (In contrast, the Milky Way has a mass of about 1.5 trillion solar masses.)

A decade ago, study senior author Amy Reines at Montana State University discovered radio and X-ray emissions from Henize 2-10 that suggested the dwarf galaxy's core hosted a black hole about 3 million solar masses in size. However, other astronomers suggested this radiation may instead have come from the remnant of a star explosion known as a supernova.

In the new study, the researchers focused on a tendril of gas from the heart of Henize 2-10 about 490 light-years long, in which electrically charged ionized gas is flowing as fast as 1.1 million mph (1.8 million kph). This outflow was connected like an umbilical cord to a bright stellar nursery about 230 light-years from Henize 2-10's core.

This outflow slammed into the dense gas of the stellar nursery like a garden hose spewing onto a pile of dirt, leading water to spread outward. The researchers found newborn star clusters about 4 million years old and upwards of 100,000 times the mass of the sun dotted the path of the outflow's spread, Schutte said.

With the help of high-resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the scientists detected a corkscrew-like pattern in the speed of the gas in the outflow. Their computer models suggested this was likely due to the precessing, or wobbling, of a black hole. Since a supernova remnant would not cause such a pattern, this suggests that Henize 2-10's core does indeed host a black hole.

"Before our work, supermassive black hole-enhanced star formation had only been seen in much larger galaxies," Schutte said.

In the future, the researchers would like to investigate more dwarf galaxies with similar black hole-triggered star formation. However, this is difficult for many reasons "systems like Henize 2-10 are not common; obtaining high quality observations is difficult; and so on," Schutte said. However, when the James Webb Space Telescope hopefully comes online in the near future, "we will have new tools to search for these systems," he noted.

Schutte and Reines detailed their findings in the Jan. 19 issue of the journal Nature.

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Hubble telescope spots a black hole fostering baby stars in a dwarf galaxy - Space.com

The universe is beautiful and weve got pictures to prove it. Come May, when the James Webb Space Telescope starts downloading deep space photos, were going to have even more pictures, and astrophysicist and cosmologist Fr. Adam Hinks just knows those pictures will be beautiful too.

Were going to get beautiful pictures from the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) and thats super-important, Hinks told The Catholic Register. The public loves it, just because theyre beautiful pictures and they make you think about the universe. If youre a person of faith, it helps you think about God too. This is His handiwork.

This onslaught of abstract, pure beauty we see in images of galaxies, nebulas and stars is not just incidental to the science of astronomy, said the Jesuit who holds the Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity and Cultures at the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the University of Toronto, teaches in the Christianity and Culture program at the University of St. Michaels College and in his spare time is an adjunct scholar with the Vatican Observatory.

Its not secondary. Its not irrelevant, these beautiful pictures, Hinks said. As scientists, we love them too. We certainly study them carefully. We analyze them mathematically. We try to figure out the physics. But at the same time we also love just the images. Theres further beauty when you understand the science.

For Hinks, an encounter with beauty on this scale is also an encounter with God.

When youre in a relationship with someone, when you love someone, youre interested in what that person does. This is what God has done, he said.

As a cosmologist, Hinks studies how the universe came to be what it is. Its a sort of scientific take on history, starting with the Big Bang. Hinks specialty is the very early history of the first instance of the universe, when it was fairly uniform and mostly gas.

The James Webb telescope, with its giant, golden eye that can read infrared light, is going to have the ability to peer back in time to when stars first began to form. The light that hits the James Webb will have travelled for billions of years so long that the wavelengths have stretched out and are no longer visible to ordinary telescopes on Earth, or even the Hubble Telescope that orbits high above the interference of our atmosphere.

The James Webb is about 100 times more powerful than the Hubble. The light it sees dates from about 100 million years after the Big Bang a blink of an eye in the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe. The telescope cost $9 billion (U.S.) and will take almost four months to set up and focus from NASAs Goddard space flight centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.

For now, Hinks isnt part of any of the teams of scientists who have scheduled time on the telescope to run experiments. One of his Jesuit colleagues at the Vatican Observatory is awaiting data from the JWST that will show star populations as the first galaxies formed.

Science is a team sport and even if Hinks isnt booking time on the James Webb, what the eye in the sky sees matters to the cosmologist.

I will certainly have colleagues who are involved in projects on the James Webb telescope. It will certainly impact my research, even if I dont directly work on it, he said.

Its all about filling in the blanks on the long chronicle of the universe, said Hinks.

Theres kind of some fuzzy chapters, he said. We dont have the words on the page yet.

Encountering God in cosmology is no surprise.

Its part of the Christian world view to see the universe as making sense, as something you can study, said Hinks. Christians want to know where it all came from. Those are questions that very naturally lead to scientific curiosity.

Certainly, not every scientist is Christian. But as a Christian, Hinks knows that what he learns leads him back to God.

Our faith tells us something about the origin of the universe that it comes from God, he said. What our faith doesnt tell us is, scientifically, how that works. For the science we need to go out with our telescopes and figure out the equations and all of that.

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What we learn of the universe leads us to God - The Catholic Register

Irish eyes were focused on the skies on Christmas Eve, not in the hope of spotting Santa or a stray reindeer, but rather at one of the biggest space launches in recent years the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, or simply Webb), the next great space science observatory following the famous Hubble Telescope. The Webb telescope will now reside one-and-a-half million kilometres from Earth, hovering in line with our planet as it orbits the Sun.

ver 25 years in development, the Webb telescope aims to answer more questions about the development of the Universe than ever before, with the ability to look back 13.5 billion years in time to observe the birth of the first galaxies and the lifecycle of stars and exoplanets. This major breakthrough is the result of an international project led by NASA with its partners the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) with two Irish companies and an Irish research institute playing significant roles in the development of the Webbs scientific instruments and in its launch into space.

Webb follows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in the line of great space observatories. Both have different scientific capabilities and will operate in parallel, complementing each other, for several years.

In fact, the Webb has the capacity to do far more than the Hubble, as it has over six times the light-gathering capacity and is a hundred times more sensitive, with the ability to peer through clouds of dust by capturing light in the infrared part of the spectrum. By looking back to the early Universe using infrared detectors, Webb hopes to answer some vital questions about the formation of our Universe, the make-up of so-called dark matter, and how the development of galaxies can tell us about the future of the Universe.

There was significant Irish input into the development of the infrared detector technology. Professor Tom Ray of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) was Co-Principal Investigator for the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) on Webb, which will produce images and spectra with unprecedented sharpness and sensitivity. Professor Ray and his team from DIAS also provided MIRIs infrared filters, which break up the light into its various components, and imaging software that will analyse the instrument data sent back to Earth and produce scientific images.

Upon completion, Webb was carefully transported to ESAs spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, where it was launched on Christmas Day on an Ariane 5 launcher. Here, an Irish company played a major role: Raltra Space Systems Engineering designed and manufactured the video imaging system onboard the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, which gave us impressive high-definition video images of the separation of the launchers fairing and separation of the telescope itself. The final images of Webb moving into space on Christmas Day came from Raltras technology. Interestingly, Raltras system was originally designed for the Ariane 6 launch vehicle, which is due its first flight in the second half of 2022.

A second Irish company, Nammo Ireland, provided structural supports for the Vulcain engine that powers Ariane 5 and will be involved in producing components for both the Vulcain and Vinci engines on the new Ariane 6 launch vehicle.

The vital roles played by these Irish entities in the development of this huge space project were enabled by Irelands membership of ESA, which is managed through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Enterprise Ireland supports and guides Irish companies and research institutes in developing technologies through ESA programmes, and in commercialising these technologies in the worldwide space market, with over 100 companies supported to date.

The success of these companies in this ground-breaking project underlines the growth in opportunities in the commercial space market for innovative Irish companies with exciting technologies that can also be used in many different sectors, such as automotive and medical. These opportunities will only become more plentiful as our understanding of space grows and develops and we are confident more Irish companies will be involved in such thrilling projects in the future.

Bryan Rogers is the Enterprise Irelanddelegate to the European Space Agency.

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Irish innovation helps to drive exciting space mission - Independent.ie

Striding across the sky this month is the giant figure of Orion, a familiar pattern of seven bright stars. According to ancient Greek tales, Orion was the most handsome man on Earth, with the power to walk over water. Armed with a mighty club and a massive sword, his greatest joy was hunting, and he boasted he would kill every creature on Earth.

Listening in to his words was the Earth-goddess Gaia. Appalled by this threaten of mass extinction, Gaia sent a scorpion to end Orions life by stinging his ankle. The gods honoured Orion by placing him among the stars. His nemesis was also elevated to the skies, but at a safe distance so that we see Orion during the winter, and the scorpion (the constellation Scorpius) in the summer time.

Orions Belt is marked by a line of three brilliant stars. Two stars above including blood-red Betelgeuse depict Orions shoulders, while a matching pair of stars below pick out the bottom of his tunic. Look carefully below the Belt, and youll spot a faint star representing Orions sword. Scrutinise it on really dark clear night, and youll see its actually a tiny faint glowing cloud.

Small and dim it may look in our skies, but thats just due its immense distance: in reality, the Orion Nebula is vast seething maelstrom of incandescent gas, 24 light years in diameter. Through a telescope you can make out its swirls of gas, though our eyes are not sensitive enough to see any colours other than greyish green. The discerning eye of the Hubble Space Telescope reveals a cosmic butterfly, gaudy in the red light from hydrogen gas and the green tinge of oxygen atoms.

These gases are usually invisible, but here the atoms are being energised by the radiation from extraordinarily hot stars. Chief among these cosmic firebrands is a star known only by its catalogue number, Theta-1 C1. Its 40 times heavier than the Sun, with a temperature of 40,000C, and shines 210,000 times more brightly than our star,.

Theta-1 C1 and its brightest neighbours are massive young stars, recently born from a dense cloud of gas and dust. The Orion Nebula is the tattered wreckage of their maternity ward, blasted apart by the energetic infant stars within.

These cosmic thugs have some 3,000 siblings, stars born at the same time, but smaller, fainter and less disruptive. The penetrating gaze of the Hubble telescope has revealed that many of the stars are girdled by dense discs of gas and dust, whirling around in the central stars gravity. Each of these proplyds is the size of our solar system, and is a new system of planets in formation around its own sun.

And thats just the beginning of the Orion Nebulas secrets. Behind the young stars, planets and hot glowing gas theres a vast dark cloud of cold, black dust and gas. Its called the Orion Molecular Cloud, and its replete with exotic chemical compounds, molecules that would be the envy of any well-stocked chemistry lab. Pungent ammonia, bad-eggs hydrogen sulphide, and the mothballs stench of naphthalene all mingle together, along with poisonous molecules of cyanide and copious quantities of alcohol.

Under the force of gravity, the dark material in the Orion Molecular Cloud is curdling into hundreds of individual fragments. One day, they too will become new stars, firing up the Orion Nebula to even more splendour.

While in western mythology Orion the hunter represented death and destruction, to the Mayan civilisation the lower part of the constellation, centred on the Orion Nebula, was seen as the Hearth of Creation. Astrophysics shows that they had it right all along.

Whats up

The year opens with a planetary party, low in the southwest as the sky grows dark. Right on the horizon lies brilliant Venus. To its upper left, youll find fainter Mercury, then Saturn and at the end of the line giant Jupiter, second in brightness only to Venus. Its all happening in the twilight glow, around 5pm, and binoculars will give you the best chance of spotting our neighbouring worlds.

All these planets have set by 8pm, and the night sky is dominated by the familiar outline of Orion, the great hunter (see main story). Follow the line of Orions Belt to the lower left and youll find Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Also known as the Dog Star, its the jewel in the crown of Canis Major (the Great Dog). Above lies its slightly fainter litter-mate, Procyon, in the constellation of the Little Dog (Canis Minor).

The night sky at around 10 pm this month

(Nigel Henbest)

Higher still are the twin stars of Gemini, Castor and Pollux. And almost overhead, youll find Capella: the stars name means the little nanny goat, though oddly enough its in the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). Sweeping down to the lower right, reddish Aldebaran marks the eye of Taurus, the Bull, with the lovely little star cluster of the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters) lying nearby.

By the end of January, the starry display remains much the same, but the planets have seriously shifted around. Only Jupiter is visible in the evening sky. Mercury and Saturn have disappeared into the Suns glare. And Venus has swung between the Earth and the Sun, and is now visible in the morning sky, accompanying Mars. The Red Planet lies to the right of the Morning Star, and is 250 times fainter.

Diary

6 January: Moon near Jupiter

7 January: Mercury at greatest elongation east

9 January, 6.11pm: First Quarter Moon

12 January: Moon near the Pleiades

13 January: Moon near Aldebaran

17 January, 11.48pm: Full Moon near Castor and Pollux

19 January: Moon near Regulus

20 January: Moon near Regulus

23 January: Moon near Spica

24 January: Moon near Spica

25 January, 1.41pm: Last Quarter Moon

Philips 2022 Stargazing (Philips 6.99) by Nigel Henbest reveals everything thats going on in the sky this year

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Stargazing in January: Orion strides across the night sky - The Independent

Women scientists in the 1950s and 1960s faced discouragement from school counselors, hostility from professors and discrimination in the workplace. Good thing some, like NASA's Nancy Grace Roman, ignored it all.

Roman was NASA's first chief of astronomy, man or woman. She earned the title in 1960, after joining the agency in 1959. She was also its first female executive. She's best known as the mother of the Hubble telescope. And last year, NASA announced it was naming its new wide field infrared survey telescope (WFIRST) in honor of Roman as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is scheduled to launch in 2027.

Her love of exploration, and goal of dedicating her life to it, blasted past petty politics and blatant sexism. "If you enjoy puzzles, science or engineering may be the field for you," Roman told an interviewer. "Scientific research ... is a continuous series of solving puzzles."

Roman's journey shows how to thwart discrimination by jumping jobs when necessary and building your profile. And her success at NASA demonstrates that leadership is about excellence and persistence. It isn't a popularity contest.

Roman hired Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA's retired associate administrator for science, in his first job at the agency. Weiler told Investor's Business Daily that Roman commanded respect and was a born leader. "When she told you to do something, you did it," he said. "She was tough. And if you didn't like her, she couldn't care less."

Roman's career in astronomy spanned decades she spent 21 years at NASA. She passed away in 2018 at the age of 93. But her legacy of telescope and satellite launches, and the resulting breakthroughs in astronomical science, lives on here on earth and in the skies above.

Roman's father was a scientist. But her mother, a music teacher, inspired her love of astronomy by showing her the night sky. "She showed me the constellations and the auroras," Roman told an interviewer.

At just 11 years old,Romanformed an astronomy club with her school classmates to study the constellations.By high school she knew she wanted to pursue a career in astronomy."I knew itwas going to take me another 12 years of schooling, but I figured I'd try and if I didn't make it, I could teach physics or math," she said.

Others didn't agree with Roman's choice, including women. In high school she asked her guidance counselor for permission to take a second year of algebra, instead of a fifth year of Latin. "She looked down her nose at me, sneered (and said) 'What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?' " Roman said.

Things didn't get easier when she attendedSwarthmore College. Roman said the dean of women was hostile toward women pursuing science: "If you insisted on majoring in science or engineering, she wouldn't have anything more to do with you."

After Swarthmore, in 1946 she went to the University of Chicago for graduate studies in astronomy.In1949,she received her Ph.D. in astronomy.

During her career, Roman faced more sexism. She'd sometimes use the prefix "Dr." with her name because "otherwise, I couldn't get past the secretaries."

After receiving her Ph.D., Roman continued her research at the University of Chicago as a research associate and then later an assistant professor. But there were two problems with the position. "I didn't think I could get tenure as a research astronomer (due to sexism)," she said. "(And) I like teaching very much, but I didn't want to dojustteaching."

So, in 1954, she went around the glass ceiling instead of trying to smash through it. Roman took a position at the Naval Research Laboratory in radio astronomy. She studied the structure of the Milky Way. While at NRL, she spoke at a number of events around the world.

Another power move for her career: Be visible. Those speeches upped her recognition among the astronomy community in the U.S., including NASA.

"She was really a pretty amazing individual she liked science and she liked to get things done," said Neta Bahcall, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy atPrinceton University.

Roman quickly gained respect at NASA. She worked on a number of projects, including the development of several orbiting observatories. And during that first year the idea of a space telescope was considered. That type of telescope was first proposed in 1946 in a paper by Princeton astronomer Lyman Spitzer.

Roman began building the base for Hubble early in her career at NASA. And she picked up a number of tips.

First, give astronomy lectures around the U.S. Find out what other astronomers want to study. Many astronomers were resistant to space-based astronomy. Roman worked to convince them of the advantages of observing the skies from above the Earth's murky atmosphere. She also showed them the benefits of a NASA-based space astronomy program, vs. one controlled by a single university or research organization.

Second, take input to gain more advocates. In 1971, Roman set up the Science Steering Group for the Hubble Space Telescope. It was named after Edwin Hubble, an astronomer who in the 1920s discovered galaxies beyond ours. She tapped both NASA engineers and astronomers from across the country to serve on it.

Third, listen to ideas but discard the bad ones. Roman figured out how to do that without alienating too many scientists. Part of her work on Hubble was to reject design ideas she and other NASA scientists found impractical. One bad idea? A moon-based telescope (too much dust) or a manned space telescope (too much wobble).

Lastly, get astronomers outside of NASA to convince Congress to fund Hubble. Funding sparked the most powerful space telescope the world had ever seen.

Roman was also responsible for ending NASA projects that weren't viable. "She was a no-nonsense person, very blunt and honest," said Bahcall, whose husband, John, was one of the astronomers who lobbied Congress to fund Hubble. "She canceled some missions (and) did what she thought was right, and I greatly admired her for that."

Hubble launched in April 1990, well after Roman left NASA. After some adjustments, Hubble produced astounding images. The most famous is the first deep field study by astronomer Robert Williams from theSpace Telescope Science Institute. The landmark image, which includes 342 separate exposurestakenover 10 days in 1995, shows in detail the vast diversity of the universe, including thousands of galaxies.

"The Hubble deep field image is probably one of the most important pictures ever taken," said Weiler. "Thousands of astronomers to date owe their careers to the Hubble telescope data and they owe that debt of gratitude to Nancy Roman."

In 1980, Roman retired from NASA to care for her elderly mother. But her retirement was short-lived. She studied programming, then took a consulting job to develop astronomical catalogs.

She went back to work at NASA in 1995. And she became head of its astronomical data center at Goddard Space Flight Center.In 1997, she retired from NASA again, then taught science to junior high and high school students, as well as K-12 science teachers.

After that, she recorded astronomical textbooks for the blind and dyslexic. And she lectured at many schools. "I like to talk to children about the advantages of going into science and particularly to tell the girls, by showing them my life, that they can be scientists and succeed."

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How NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Blasted Past Men Standing In Her Way - Investor's Business Daily

A new Hubble Space Telescope image of a spiral galaxy shows sparkling stars, including a couple that snuck into the foreground.

The telescope captured UGC 11537, a galaxy 230 million light-years away in the constellation Aquila; the galaxy sits at almost 10 times the distance to the spectacular Andromeda Galaxy (M31) that is just barely visible by the naked eye in Earth's sky.

Because UGC 11537 is close to the plane of the Milky Way where most of our galaxy's stars reside, two starry interlopers closer to home snuck into the image, the European Space Agency stated in late November.

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

"The spikes surrounding these stars are imaging artifacts, called diffraction spikes. They are the result of starlight interacting with the structure that supports Hubbles secondary mirror," ESA added in its description.

The spiral galaxy's image came during a larger search for supermassive black holes embedded in the heart of these star structures. The study is using Hubble, along with observations from ground-based telescopes, to measure the mass and motions of stars in galaxies like UGC 11537. These metrics will help estimate the mass of the supermassive black holes, ESA said.

Hubble's image came courtesy of data from its Wide Field Camera 3. On Oct. 26, a synchronization error sidelined the camera and other Hubble instruments and put the 31-year-old observatory into safe mode. Engineers adapted the observatory's schedule and carefully put each instrument back online, completing the process on Monday (Dec. 6).

A successor telescope to Hubble, called the James Webb Space Telescope, is expected to fly to space on Dec. 22 after years of technical and funding delays. Since Hubble is expected to keep operating well into the 2020s, the two observatories will work together on at least some investigations in the coming years, according to NASA.

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

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Hubble telescope shows the sparkling side of a spiral galaxy - Space.com

The James Webb Space Telescope, NASAs most powerful telescope, is scheduled to be rocketed into orbit no earlier than December 22. Though Webb is often called the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA said it prefers to call it a successor.

Launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has made more than 1.4 million observations, including tracking interstellar objects, capturing a comet colliding with Jupiter, and discovering moons around Pluto. Hubble has captured galaxies merging, probed supermassive black holes and has helped us understand the history of our universe.

Here we explore some of the major differences between Webb and the Hubble Telescope.

Wavelength

The James Webb Space Telescope, carrying four scientific instruments, will observe primarily in the infrared range and provide coverage from 0.6 to 28 microns. The instruments on Hubble see mainly in the ultraviolet and visible part of the spectrum. It could observe only a small range in the infrared from 0.8 to 2.5 microns.

The infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum covers the wavelength range from approximately 0.7 to a few 100 microns.

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Size comparisons

Webbs primary mirror has a diameter of 6.5 metres. Hubbles mirror was much smaller 2.4 metres in diameter. So, Webb will have a larger field of view compared to the camera on Hubble.

Webb also carries a large sun shield measuring about 22 metres by 12 metres about the size of a tennis court.

Orbit

Hubble orbits around the Earth at an altitude of ~570 km. Webb will not orbit the Earth. It will orbit the sun at about 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth. As the Earth orbits the Sun, Webb will orbit with it but it will stay fixed in the same spot with relation to the Earth and the Sun.

How far will Webb see?

NASA says, Hubble can see the equivalent of toddler galaxies and Webb Telescope will be able to see baby galaxies. Webbs near- and mid-infrared instruments will help study the first formed galaxies, exoplanets and birth of stars.

Webb vs Herschel Space Observatory

In 2009, the European Space Agency launched an infrared telescope named the Herschel Space Observatory.

It also orbits the Sun similar to how Webb would. The primary difference between Webb and Herschel is the wavelength range: Webb goes from 0.6 to 28 microns, while Herschel covers 60 to 500 microns.

Also, Herschels mirror is smaller than Webbs. It is 3.5 metres in diameter, while Webbs primary mirror has a diameter of 6.5 metres.

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Explained: Differences between Webb and Hubble telescopes - The Indian Express

The recent NASA Hubble Telescope picture showed a mini-jet in the center of a massive black hole called Sagittarius A*.

In relation to this, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the NASA IXPE, which aims to further investigate black holes and neutron stars.

In a recent Hubble Twitter post, the space telescope showed evidence of a mini-jet ejecting material from the Mily Way galaxy's core black hole, which "hiccups" regularly when stars and gas clouds fall into it.

In addition to this,NASA released a blog postexplaining that our Milky Way's central black hole has a leak.

Space.comadded that the Milky Way's supermassive black hole is called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Additionally, it is almost 4 million times more massive than our Sun. Its gravitational pull is powerful enough to drag surrounding stars and gas clouds into its accretion disk.

Some of the material falling into the black hole is subsequently superheated and ejected from the black hole in the form of narrow beams known as jets.

Several thousand years ago, the leftovers of the "blowtorch-like jet" were discovered. However, the Hubble Space Telescope was not able to picture the jet directly.

According to NASA's blog post, studies from the satellite telescope uncovered evidence that implies a brilliant cloud of hydrogen surrounding the black hole was impacted by an explosive outburst.

Moreover, the said outburst is thought to be an outflowing jet of material that regularly blasts into space, as materials from the Milky Way's central black hole collide with neighboring gas clouds.

The space agency further explained that when the jet moves out from the black hole, it collides with the hydrogen cloud and interacts with the gas. Through this, it forms several streams of expanding bubbles that reach roughly 500 light-years into the Galactic halo.

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Furthermore, co-author of the study and a researcher at Tsukuba University in Japan Alex Wagner stated that the streams penetrate the Milky Way's thick gas disk.

"Like an octopus, the jet diverges from a pencil beam into tentacles," Wagner stated inNASA's blog post.

For background information, Hubble and other telescopes have previously discovered evidence that the Milky Way's black hole experienced an outburst approximately 2-4 million years ago.

That said discovery was powerful enough to build a massive pair of gamma-ray-emitting bubbles towering above our galaxy.

As previously reported, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the NASA IXPE, a satellite and space telescope that can study black holes and neutron stars.

Moreover, scientists expect that NASA IXPE will give them a new tool to probe the mysteries of the cosmos.

Aside from this, the NASA Hubble Space Telescope will also be joined by a new observatory tool.

Since the NASA Hubble Space Telescope has existed for more than 30 years,its successor James Webb Space Telescope is set to be launched soon.

According to several reports, this satellite telescope will be more powerful than Hubble and it would be equipped with cutting-edge technology.

To be clear, the James Webb Space Telescope will not replace the Hubble Space Telescope since these two space telescopes employ various technologies that might aid researchers and scientists even more.

Related Article: NASA Hubble Picture Shows Epic Cosmic Photobomb in Milky Way [PHOTOS]

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NASA Hubble Telescope Picture Shows Stunning Discovery in Massive Black Hole: What Is That Mini-Jet? - iTech Post