Hubble Space Telescope News

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Bullseye! Hubble Spots Ripples in Space From a Galaxy Collision​

What happens when one galaxy shoots a bigger galaxy right through the heart? Like a rock thrown into a pond, the smashup creates a splash-up of starry ripples. At least that’s what happened to the Bullseye galaxy, which is the focus of observations made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.


In a study published today by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a research team led by Yale University’s Imad Pasha identifies nine visible ring-shaped ripples in the structure of the galaxy, formally known as LEDA 1313424. The galaxy is 567 million light years from Earth in the constellation Pisces.

 

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Hubble Finds a Potential Triple Kuiper Belt Object​

Sometimes, good things come in threes. If astronomers are correct, a system in the distant Kuiper Belt may not be two but three worlds, offering an insight into formation in the early solar system.

The study comes out of researchers at Brigham Young University and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The Strange World(s) of 148780 Altjira​

Discovered in 2001 during Kitt Peak’s Deep Ecliptic Survey, 146780 Altjira orbits 44 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun, once every 294 years. Later observations by Hubble in 2006 confirmed the object as a binary system.

Hubble Finds a Potential Triple Kuiper Belt Object - Universe Today

A distant trio of worlds may shed light on planetary formation in the early solar system. Sometimes, good things come in threes. If astronomers are correct, a system in the distant Kuiper Belt may not be two but three worlds, offering an insight into formation in the early solar system. The...

www.universetoday.com

 

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The Hubble Space Telescope turns 35 as NASA budget cuts loom. How many more birthdays will it have?​

Since its genesis in 1958, NASA has really speckled our corner of the cosmos with incredible feats of engineering. To this day, remnants of the historic Apollo lunar missions exist on the moon; the OSIRIS-REx probe recently placed its robotic fingerprint on a clumpy asteroid called Bennu; six different rovers have left tracks on Mars over the years with their specially designed wheels; and the twin Voyager craft are still exploring interstellar space almost 50 years after setting off from our planet.

The Hubble Space Telescope turns 35 as NASA budget cuts loom. How many more birthdays will it have?

It's up in the air how much longer the beloved telescope will be with us.

www.space.com

 

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Dazzling Pictures Celebrate Hubble Space Telescope's 35 Years in Orbit​

This week brings the Hubble Space Telescope's 35th birthday — but instead of getting presents, the Hubble team is giving out presents in the form of four views of the cosmos, ranging from a glimpse of Mars to a glittering picture of a far-out galaxy.

It’s the latest observance of a tradition that goes back decades, in which NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute release pictures to celebrate the anniversary of Hubble’s launch into Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.

“Hubble opened a new window to the universe when it launched 35 years ago,” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, said today in an image advisory marking the occasion.

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/dazzling-pictures-celebrate-hubbles-35-years-in-orbit

 

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Hubble telescope discovers a new type of cosmic object and astronomers are on 'Cloud 9'​

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a new type of cosmic object, a cloud of dark matter and gas that contains no stars. The object, located around 14 million light-years from Earth at the outskirts of the spiral galaxy Messier 94 (M94), has been nicknamed "Cloud 9."

Hubble telescope discovers a new type of cosmic object and astronomers are on 'Cloud 9'

"This is a tale of a failed galaxy."

www.space.com

The Galaxy That Never Was

A team using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a new type of astronomical object —a starless, gas-rich, dark-matter cloud that is considered a “relic” or remnant of early galaxy formation. Nicknamed “Cloud-9,” this is the first confirmed detection of such an object in the...

www.universetoday.com

 

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The History and Scientific Impact of Hubble’s Deep Field Imaging​

When someone asks me what originally got me interested in space exploration, my answer is always the same - the Hubble Deep Field. That image, taken in 1995, came out when I was in middle school, and had an everlasting impact on my sense of place in the universe. It’s since been improved upon by various other images, and even last week the Hubble team released yet another jaw-dropping image of the galaxy cluster MACS0329-0211 which recaptures some of the magic of that original image, and still provides the same sense of scale that never seems to truly fade once you come to terms with it. While the original Hubble Deep Field was a blind experiment to see what lay in a seemingly empty patch of sky, this new image comes from the targeted Cluster Lensing and Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) program, focusing on the dynamics of a specific massive galaxy cluster.

The History and Scientific Impact of Hubble’s Deep Field Imaging

When someone asks me what originally got me interested in space exploration, my answer is always the same - the Hubble Deep Field. That image, taken in 1995, came out when I was in middle school, and had an everlasting impact on my sense of place in the universe. It’s since been improved upon by...

www.universetoday.com

 

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Hubble Space Telescope images galaxy scientists thought was impossible to find​

A bright, dense cluster of hot, massive stars in a galaxy that existed 1.4 billion years after the big bang has been found helping to end the early universe's foggy days during which neutral hydrogen gas was draped across the cosmos, obscuring ultraviolet light from luminous objects.

The cluster was found emitting ultraviolet light in a small but quickly growing galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope. The presence of this ultraviolet light, and the star-forming history of the cluster producing it, suggests that bursts of star formation contributed to waves of ionizing radiation that gradually cleared out the opaque neutral hydrogen.

https://www.space.com/astronomy/hubble-space-telescope/hubble-space-telescope-images-galaxy-scientists-thought-was-impossible-to-find

 

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The Galaxy That Cleared the Fog​

How did the universe learn to let light through? For its first billion years or so, the universe was not the clear, starry place we see today. It was filled with a thick fog of hydrogen gas, so dense that ultraviolet light could not pass through it. Then, slowly, the fog lifted. Astronomers call this the Era of Reionisation, and for decades they have argued about what did the clearing. Hubble may finally have caught the culprit in the act.

The galaxy at the heart of this story is called MXDFz4.4, and we see it as it was just 1.4 billion years after the big bang, deep in the fogbound early universe. What makes it remarkable is that Hubble detected its ionising light, the very ultraviolet glow capable of burning hydrogen gas transparent. That was thought to be impossible because the fog of the early universe was expected to smother such light long before it could reach us. Yet here it is, the first galaxy of its kind ever spotted this close to dawn of time.

The Galaxy That Cleared the Fog

For its first billion years the universe was lost in fog, a thick haze of hydrogen that swallowed light whole. Something burned it away, and astronomers have long wondered what. Now Hubble has caught a tiny, furious galaxy in the very act of clearing the murk, glimpsed as it was just 1.4 billion...

www.universetoday.com

 

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Hubble Discovers the First "Missing" Black Hole in this Famous Star Cluster​

Using over 20 years of archival data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have finally located a stellar-mass black hole in the Omega Centauri cluster. For decades, this cluster has mystified astronomers because it previously showed no evidence of stellar-mass black holes. Globular clusters are known to host many black holes that formed when some of their massive stars reached the end of their lives and exploded (i.e., supernovae).

The Omega Centauri cluster is located about 18,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It contains 10 million stars within a diameter of 150 light-years, making it the largest known globular cluster in the Milky Way. While Hubble observations found evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) at its center in 2024, models suggest that it should contain about 10,000 stellar-mass black holes.

Hubble Discovers the First "Missing" Black Hole in this Famous Star Cluster

Combining over 20 years of archival data from Hubble with new data from the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has found the first of the "missing" black holes.

www.universetoday.com

 

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Hubble Reveals that Star Formation is Slowing Down in the Andromeda Galaxy​

The Andromeda Galaxy, one of the Milky Way's closest cosmic neighbors, is a fascinating subject for astronomers. Located about 2.5 million light-years away, Andromeda is visible to the naked eye (where light conditions permit), allowing astronomers to examine its stellar populations in detail. Moreover, this galaxy is around twice the size of the Milky Way (200,000 light-years) and has five times the population - roughly one trillion stars.

Hubble Reveals that Star Formation is Slowing Down in the Andromeda Galaxy

A team of scientists led by the University of Washington has studied how star formation is declining in the Andromeda galaxy using highly detailed Hubble surveys.

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Hubble Solves a Mystery About the Milky Way's Early Years​

It is a scientific consensus that our galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size by merging with smaller galaxies. Some of those mergers are still taking place, including the "nearest" galaxy to our own: the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. Unfortunately, the history of those mergers was not well understood for a long time. But new data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show definitive evidence that a dwarf galaxy merged with the Milky Way during its earliest phases of evolution.

The research was led by astronomers from the Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna (OAS). They were joined by researchers from the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), the Escola de Enxeñaría de Telecomunicación, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Edinburgh University's Astrophysics Research Institute, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and multiple universities and observatories. The results are reported in a paper that appeared in Nature Astronomy.

Hubble Solves a Mystery About the Milky Way's Early Years

New data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way galaxy in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our galaxy’s history 1.8 billion years farther back in time than before.

www.universetoday.com