posted 04-25-2005 04:28 PM               

Hubble celebrates 15th anniversary with new images

During the 15 years NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has orbited the Earth, it has taken more than 750,000 photos of the cosmos; images that have awed, astounded and even confounded astronomers and the public.

NASA released new views today of two of the most well-known objects Hubble has ever observed: the Eagle Nebula and the Whirlpool Galaxy (spiral galaxy M51). These new images are among the largest and sharpest Hubble has ever taken. They were made with Hubble's newest camera, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The images are so incredibly sharp, they could be enlarged to billboard size and still retain stunning details.

For the 15th anniversary, scientists used the ACS to record a new region of the eerie-looking Eagle Nebula. The Eagle Nebula image reveals a tall, dense tower of gas being sculpted by ultraviolet light from a group of massive, hot stars. The new Whirlpool Galaxy image showcases the spiral galaxy's classic features, from its curving arms, where newborn stars reside, to its yellowish central core that serves as home for older stars. A feature of considerable interest is the companion galaxy located at the end of one of the spiral arms.

The mural-sized celestial images of the Eagle Nebula and Whirlpool Galaxy were unveiled today at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. More than 100 museums, planetariums, and science centers will also unveil these same images today.

The Space Shuttle Discovery placed the Hubble into Earth orbit on April 25, 1990, opening a new era in astronomy. For the first time, a large telescope that viewed in visible light orbited above Earth's distorting atmosphere, which blurs light, making images appear fuzzy.

After installation of a new camera and a device that compensated for an improperly ground mirror, images of planets, stars, galaxies, and nebula began pouring in - most up to 10 times sharper than delivered by any previous telescope.

Hubble has compiled a long list of scientific achievements since its launch. Hubble has:

• Helped astronomers calculate the precise age of the universe (13.7 billion years old)
• Helped confirm the existence of a strange form of energy called dark energy
• Detected small proto-galaxies that emitted their light when the universe was less than a billion years old
• Proved the existence of super-massive black holes
• Provided sharp views of a comet hitting Jupiter
• Showed the process of forming planetary systems is common throughout the galaxy

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) manages Hubble imagery. It is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under contract with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The Hubble Space Telescope is an international cooperative activity between NASA and the European Space Agency.

For a list of the museums and other locations displaying the new 4-by-6-foot image of the Whirlpool Galaxy and the 3-by-6-foot image of the Eagle Nebula, visit the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Electronic image files and additional 15th anniversary information are available at HubbleSite.

posted 04-24-2007 01:25 PM               

The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme

In celebration of the 17th anniversary of the launch and deployment of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers is releasing one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras. It is a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth - and death - is taking place.

Hubble's view of the nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The fantasy-like landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born.

The immense nebula contains at least a dozen brilliant stars that are roughly estimated to be at least 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. The most unique and opulent inhabitant is the star Eta Carinae, at far left. Eta Carinae is in the final stages of its brief and eruptive lifespan, as evidenced by two billowing lobes of gas and dust that presage its upcoming explosion as a titanic supernova.

The fireworks in the Carina region started three million years ago when the nebula's first generation of newborn stars condensed and ignited in the middle of a huge cloud of cold molecular hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carved out an expanding bubble of hot gas. The island-like clumps of dark clouds scattered across the nebula are nodules of dust and gas that are resisting being eaten away by photoionization.

The hurricane blast of stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation within the cavity is now compressing the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen. This is triggering a second stage of new star formation.

Our Sun and our solar system may have been born inside such a cosmic crucible 4.6 billion years ago. In looking at the Carina Nebula we are seeing the genesis of star making as it commonly occurs along the dense spiral arms of a galaxy.

The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel (of the old southern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, from Greek mythology).

This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen. Color information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

posted 04-24-2008 11:49 AM               

Galaxies Gone Wild!

Astronomy textbooks typically present galaxies as staid, solitary, and majestic island worlds of glittering stars.

But galaxies have a wild side. They have flirtatious close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing "maternity wards" of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes.

Today, in celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary, 59 views of colliding galaxies constitute the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public. This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail.

Astronomers observe only one out of a million galaxies in the nearby universe in the act of colliding. However, galaxy mergers were much more common long ago when they were closer together, because the expanding universe was smaller. Astronomers study how gravity choreographs their motions in the game of celestial bumper cars and try to observe them in action.

For all their violence, galactic smash-ups take place at a glacial rate by human standards - timescales on the order of several hundred million years. The images in the Hubble atlas capture snapshots of the various merging galaxies at various stages in their collision.

Most of the 59 new Hubble images are part of a large investigation of luminous and ultra- luminous infrared galaxies called the GOALS project (Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey). This survey combines observations from Hubble, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, and NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The majority of the Hubble observations are led by Aaron S. Evans of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and Stony Brook University.

posted 08-11-2008 10:36 AM               

Hubble Unveils Colorful and Turbulent Star-Birth Region on 100,000th Orbit Milestone

In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left).

The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies.

This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

posted 04-24-2010 01:51 PM               

NASA's Starry-Eyed Hubble Telescope Celebrates 20 Years of Discovery

As the Hubble Space Telescope achieves the major milestone of two decades on orbit, NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore are celebrating Hubble's journey of exploration with a stunning new picture and several online educational activities. There are also opportunities for the public to explore galaxies as armchair scientists and send personal greetings to Hubble.

NASA is releasing a new Hubble photo of a small portion of one of the largest known star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Three light-year-tall towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble's classic "Pillars of Creation" photo from 1995, but even more striking.

NASA's best-recognized, longest-lived and most prolific observatory was launched April 24, 1990, onboard the space shuttle Discovery's STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology.

Over the years, Hubble suffered broken equipment, a bleary-eyed primary mirror, and the cancellation of a planned shuttle servicing mission. But the ingenuity and dedication of scientists, engineers and NASA astronauts allowed the observatory to rebound and thrive. The telescope's crisp vision continues to challenge scientists and the public with new discoveries and evocative images.

"Hubble is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and successful scientific projects in history," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "Last year's space shuttle servicing mission left the observatory operating at peak capacity, giving it a new beginning for scientific achievements that impact our society."

Hubble fans worldwide are being invited to take an interactive journey with Hubble. They can also visit HubbleSite.org to share the ways the telescope has affected them. Follow the "Messages to Hubble" link to send an e-mail, post a Facebook message, or send a cell phone text message. Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope's science data. For those who use Twitter, you can follow @HubbleTelescope or post tweets using the Twitter hashtag #hst20.

The public also will have an opportunity to become at-home scientists by helping astronomers sort out the thousands of galaxies seen in a Hubble deep field observation. STScI is partnering with the Galaxy Zoo consortium of scientists to launch an Internet-based astronomy project where amateur astronomers can peruse and sort galaxies from Hubble's deepest view of the universe into their classic shapes: spiral, elliptical, and irregular. Dividing the galaxies into categories will allow astronomers to study how they relate to each other and provide clues that might help scientists understand how they formed.

For educators and students, STScI is creating an educational website called "Celebrating Hubble's 20th Anniversary." It offers links to facts and trivia about Hubble, a story that chronicles the observatory's life and discoveries, and the IMAX "Hubble 3D" educator's guide. An anniversary poster with Hubble's "hall-of-fame" images, including the Eagle Nebula and Saturn, also is being offered with downloadable classroom activity information.

To date, Hubble has observed more than 30,000 celestial targets and amassed more than a half-million pictures in its archive. The last servicing mission to Hubble in May 2009 made the telescope 100 times more powerful than when it was launched.

posted 04-24-2010 02:55 PM               

Google Doodle for April 24, 2010:

Take a tour of the universe with Hubble imagery in Google Earth.

posted 04-20-2011 09:38 AM               

NASA's Hubble Celebrates 21st Anniversary With "Rose" Of Galaxies

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

"For 21 years, Hubble has profoundly changed our view of the universe, allowing us to see deep into the past while opening our eyes to the majesty and wonders around us," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said."I was privileged to pilot space shuttle Discovery as it deployed Hubble. After all this time, new Hubble images still inspire awe and are a testament to the extraordinary work of the many people behind the world's most famous observatory."

Hubble was launched April 24, 1990, aboard Discovery's STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology.

"Hubble is America's gift to the world," Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said. "Its jaw-dropping images have rewritten the textbooks and inspired generations of schoolchildren to study math and science. It has been documenting the history of our universe for 21 years. Thanks to the daring of our brave astronauts, a successful servicing mission in 2009 gave Hubble new life. I look forward to Hubble's amazing images and inspiring discoveries for years to come."

The newly released Hubble image shows a large spiral galaxy, known as UGC 1810, with a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewel-like points across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light.

The smaller, nearly edge-on companion shows distinct signs of intense star formation at its nucleus, perhaps triggered by the encounter with the companion galaxy.

Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. The image shows a tenuous tidal bridge of material between the two galaxies that are separated from each other by tens of thousands of light-years.

A series of uncommon spiral patterns in the large galaxy are a tell-tale sign of interaction. The large, outer arm appears partially as a ring, a feature seen when interacting galaxies actually pass through one another. This suggests the smaller companion dived deep, but off-center, through UGC 1810. The inner set of spiral arms is highly warped out of the plane, with one of the arms going behind the bulge and coming back out the other side. How these two spiral patterns connect is not precisely known.

The larger galaxy in the UGC 1810 - UGC 1813 pair has a mass about five times that of the smaller galaxy. In unequal pairs such as this, the relatively rapid passage of a companion galaxy produces the lopsided or asymmetric structure in the main spiral. Also in such encounters, the starburst activity typically begins in the minor galaxies earlier than in the major galaxies. These effects could be because the smaller galaxies have consumed less of the gas present in their nuclei, from which new stars are born.

The interaction was imaged on Dec. 17, 2010, with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The picture is a composite of data taken with three separate filters on WFC3 that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington.

posted 07-05-2011 05:42 PM               

NASA's Hubble Makes One Millionth Science Observation

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away.

"For 21 years Hubble has been the premier space science observatory, astounding us with deeply beautiful imagery and enabling ground-breaking science across a wide spectrum of astronomical disciplines," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. He piloted the space shuttle mission that carried Hubble to orbit. "The fact that Hubble met this milestone while studying a faraway planet is a remarkable reminder of its strength and legacy."

Although Hubble is best known for its stunning imagery of the cosmos, the millionth observation is a spectroscopic measurement, where light is divided into its component colors. These color patterns can reveal the chemical composition of cosmic sources.

Hubble's millionth exposure is of the planet HAT-P-7b, a gas giant planet larger than Jupiter orbiting a star hotter than our sun. HAT-P-7b, also known as Kepler 2b, has been studied by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler observatory after it was discovered by ground-based observations. Hubble now is being used to analyze the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere.

"We are looking for the spectral signature of water vapor. This is an extremely precise observation and it will take months of analysis before we have an answer," said Drake Deming of the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Hubble demonstrated it is ideally suited for characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets, and we are excited to see what this latest targeted world will reveal."

Hubble was launched April 24, 1990, aboard space shuttle's Discovery's STS-31 mission. Its discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology. The observatory has collected more than 50 terabytes of data to-date. The archive of that data is available to scientists and the public.

Hubble's odometer reading includes every observation of astronomical targets since its launch and observations used to calibrate its suite of instruments. Hubble made the millionth observation using its Wide Field Camera 3, a visible and infrared light imager with an on-board spectrometer. It was installed by astronauts during the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 in May 2009.

"The Hubble keeps amazing us with groundbreaking science," said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the chairwoman of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. "I championed the mission to repair and renew Hubble not just to get one million science observations, but also to inspire millions of children across the planet to become our next generation of stargazers, scientists, astronauts and engineers."

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. Goddard manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington.

posted 03-17-2014 10:27 AM               

Hubble Celebrates 24th Anniversary with Infrared Image of Nearby Star Factory

In celebration of the 24th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have captured infrared-light images of a churning region of star birth 6,400 light-years away.

The collection of images reveals a shadowy, dense knot of gas and dust sharply contrasted against a backdrop of brilliant glowing gas in the Monkey Head Nebula (also known as NGC 2174 and Sharpless Sh2-252).

The image demonstrates Hubble's powerful infrared vision and offers a tantalizing hint of what scientists can expect from the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Observations of NGC 2174 were taken in February, 2014.

Massive newborn stars near the center of the nebula (and toward the right in this image) are blasting away at dust within the nebula. The ultraviolet light emitted by these bright stars helps shape the dust into giant pillars.

This carving action occurs because the nebula is mostly composed of hydrogen gas, which becomes ionized by the ultraviolet radiation. As the dust particles are warmed by the ultraviolet light of the stars, they heat up and begin to glow at infrared wavelengths.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington.

posted 12-14-2014 09:30 AM               

Celebrating 25 years of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

On the 24 April 2015 the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope will celebrate 25 years since its launch.

During the 1970s, NASA and ESA began planning for a space telescope that could transcend the blurring effects of the atmosphere and take clearer images of the Universe than ever before. In 1990 the idea finally became a reality and, despite a flaw in the main mirror which was quite swiftly corrected, Hubble has since far exceeded expectations.

It has delved deeper into the early years of the Universe than was ever thought possible, played a critical part in the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating and probed the atmospheres of planets around distant stars.

To commemorate this quarter century of success in engineering, science and culture ESA/Hubble will run a series of projects to involve the public in the celebrations.

posted 01-06-2015 12:47 PM               

Hubble Revisits the Famous 'Pillars of Creation' to Celebrate 25th Anniversary

Although NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken many breathtaking images of the universe, one snapshot stands out from the rest: the iconic view of the so-called "Pillars of Creation." The jaw-dropping photo, taken in 1995, revealed never-before-seen details of three giant columns of cold gas bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young, massive stars in a small region of the Eagle Nebula, or M16.

Though such butte-like features are common in star-forming regions, the M16 structures are by far the most photogenic and evocative. The Hubble image is so popular that it has appeared in movies and television shows, on tee-shirts and pillows, and even on a postage stamp.

And now, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, Hubble has revisited the famous pillars, providing astronomers with a sharper and wider view. As a bonus, the pillars have been photographed in near-infrared light, as well as visible light. The infrared view transforms the pillars into eerie, wispy silhouettes seen against a background of myriad stars. That's because the infrared light penetrates much of the gas and dust, except for the densest regions of the pillars. Newborn stars can be seen hidden away inside the pillars. The new images are being unveiled at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Washington.

Although the original image was dubbed the Pillars of Creation, the new image hints that they are also pillars of destruction. "I'm impressed by how transitory these structures are. They are actively being ablated away before our very eyes. The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars is material getting heated up and evaporating away into space. We have caught these pillars at a very unique and short-lived moment in their evolution," explained Paul Scowen of Arizona State University in Tempe, who, with astronomer Jeff Hester, formerly of Arizona State University, led the original Hubble observations of the Eagle Nebula.

The infrared image shows that the reason the pillars exist is because the very ends of them are dense, and they shadow the gas below them, creating the long, pillar-like structures. The gas in between the pillars has long since been blown away by the ionizing winds from the central star cluster located above the pillars.

At the top edge of the left-hand pillar, a gaseous fragment has been heated up and is flying away from the structure, underscoring the violent nature of star-forming regions. "These pillars represent a very dynamic, active process," Scowen said. "The gas is not being passively heated up and gently wafting away into space. The gaseous pillars are actually getting ionized (a process by which electrons are stripped off of atoms) and heated up by radiation from the massive stars. And then they are being eroded by the stars' strong winds (barrage of charged particles), which are sandblasting away the tops of these pillars."

When Scowen and Hester used Hubble to make the initial observations of the Eagle Nebula in 1995, astronomers had seen the pillar-like structures in ground-based images, but not in detail. They knew that the physical processes are not unique to the Eagle Nebula because star birth takes place across the universe. But at a distance of just 6,500 light-years, M16 is the most dramatic nearby example, as the team soon realized.

As Scowen was piecing together the Hubble exposures of the Eagle, he was amazed at what he saw. "I called Jeff Hester on his phone and said, 'You need to get here now,'" Scowen recalled. "We laid the pictures out on the table, and we were just gushing because of all the incredible detail that we were seeing for the very first time."

The first features that jumped out at the team in 1995 were the streamers of gas seemingly floating away from the columns. Astronomers had previously debated what effect nearby massive stars would have on the surrounding gas in stellar nurseries. "There is only one thing that can light up a neighborhood like this: massive stars kicking out enough horsepower in ultraviolet light to ionize the gas clouds and make them glow," Scowen said. "Nebulous star-forming regions like M16 are the interstellar neon signs that say, 'We just made a bunch of massive stars here.' This was the first time we had directly seen observational evidence that the erosionary process, not only the radiation but the mechanical stripping away of the gas from the columns, was actually being seen."

By comparing the 1995 and 2014 pictures, astronomers also noticed a lengthening of a narrow jet-like feature that may have been ejected from a newly forming star. The jet looks like a stream of water from a garden hose. Over the intervening 19 years, this jet has stretched farther into space, across an additional 60 billion miles, at an estimated speed of about 450,000 miles per hour.

Our Sun probably formed in a similar turbulent star-forming region. There is evidence that the forming solar system was seasoned with radioactive shrapnel from a nearby supernova. That means that our Sun was formed as part of a cluster that included stars massive enough to produce powerful ionizing radiation, such as is seen in the Eagle Nebula. "That's the only way the nebula from which the Sun was born could have been exposed to a supernova that quickly, in the short period of time that represents, because supernovae only come from massive stars, and those stars only live a few tens of millions of years," Scowen explained. "What that means is when you look at the environment of the Eagle Nebula or other star-forming regions, you're looking at exactly the kind of nascent environment that our Sun formed in."

posted 04-23-2015 08:30 AM               

NASA Unveils Celestial Fireworks as Official Hubble 25th Anniversary Image

The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resemble a glittering fireworks display in the 25th anniversary NASA Hubble Space Telescope image to commemorate a quarter century of exploring the solar system and beyond since its launch on April 24, 1990.

"Hubble has completely transformed our view of the universe," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "This vista of starry fireworks and glowing gas is a fitting image for our celebration of 25 years of amazing Hubble science."

The sparkling centerpiece of Hubble's silver anniversary fireworks is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2, named for Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund, who discovered the grouping in the 1960s. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina.

To capture this image, Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 pierced through the dusty veil shrouding the stellar nursery in near-infrared light, giving astronomers a clear view of the nebula and the dense concentration of stars in the central cluster. The cluster measures between 6 to 13 light-years across.

The giant star cluster is only about 2 million years old and contains some of our galaxy's hottest, brightest, and most massive stars. Some of its heftiest stars unleash torrents of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds of charged particles that etch at the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud.

The nebula reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys. The pillars, composed of dense gas and thought to be incubators for new stars, are a few light-years tall and point to the central star cluster. Other dense regions surround the pillars, including reddish-brown filaments of gas and dust.

The brilliant stars sculpt the gaseous terrain of the nebula and help create a successive generation of baby stars. When the stellar winds hit dense walls of gas, the shockwaves may spark a new torrent of star birth along the wall of the cavity. The red dots scattered throughout the landscape are a rich population of newly forming stars still wrapped in their gas-and-dust cocoons. These tiny, faint stars are between 1 million and 2 million years old — relatively young stars — that have not yet ignited the hydrogen in their cores. The brilliant blue stars seen throughout the image are mostly foreground stars.

Because the cluster is very young — in astronomical terms — it has not had time to disperse its stars deep into interstellar space, providing astronomers with an opportunity to gather information on how the cluster formed by studying it within its star-birthing environment.

The image's central region, which contains the star cluster, blends visible-light data taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys with near-infrared exposures taken by the Wide Field Camera 3. The surrounding region is composed of visible-light observations taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The red colors in the nebulosity represent hydrogen; the bluish-green hues are predominantly oxygen.

The original observations of Westerlund 2 were obtained by the science team: Antonella Nota (ESA/STScI), Elena Sabbi and Carol Christian (STScI), Eva Grebel and Peter Zeidler (Astronomisches Rechen-Institut Heidelberg), Monica Tosi (INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna), Alceste Bonanos (National Observatory of Athens, Astronomical Institute), and Selma de Mink (University of Amsterdam). Follow-up observations were made by the Hubble Heritage team: Zolt Levay (STScI), Max Mutchler, Jennifer Mack, Lisa Frattare, Shelly Meyett, Mario Livio, Carol Christian (STScI/AURA), and Keith Noll (NASA/GSFC).

posted 12-05-2018 10:53 AM               

The 'Camera That Saved Hubble' Turns 25

Twenty-five years ago this week, NASA held its collective breath as seven astronauts on space shuttle Endeavour caught up with the Hubble Space Telescope 353 miles (568 kilometers) above Earth. Their mission: to fix a devastating flaw in the telescope's primary mirror.

About the size of a school bus, the Hubble Space Telescope has an 8-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirror. The largest optical telescope ever launched into space, where it could observe the universe free from the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere, Hubble had a lot riding on it. But after the first images were obtained and carefully analyzed following the telescope's deployment on April 25, 1990, it was clear that something was wrong: The images were blurry.

Astronomers and engineers rallied to study a variety of solutions to the problem, and NASA convened an independent committee to find the source. They all came to the same conclusion: Hubble's primary mirror, which looks like a very shallow bowl, had been polished into the wrong shape. The error was smaller than the width of a human hair, but the effect was significant. If the error went uncorrected, Hubble would never reach its full potential.

During the week of Dec. 6, 1993, the astronaut crew installed two pieces of hardware intended to fix the error. The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) was designed and built by a team at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and would correct for the mirror error in three of the five instruments on Hubble.

The second instrument was the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), designed and built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. WFPC2, which actually contains four cameras, would go on to produce many of Hubble's breathtaking images, helping transform our view of the cosmos.

The size of baby grand piano, the instrument imaged objects and events that occurred in our own solar system - such as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's crash into Jupiter - to the most distant cosmological images that had ever been taken in visible light. It generated breathtaking snapshots of galaxies, exploded stars and nebulae where new stars are born. During the instrument's tenure, Hubble managers pointed the telescope at a single, black patch of sky for more than a week and found thousands of previously unseen galaxies.

But WFPC2's success was far from guaranteed. The instrument was built on an incredibly tight timeline, and designing it to correct the flaw was something JPL's John Trauger, principal investigator for WFPC2, would later describe as being akin to "trying to play baseball on the side of a hill."

"There's a lot of pressure when you're building a space instrument even under normal circumstances," said Dave Gallagher, JPL's associate director for strategic integration, who served as integration and test manager for WFPC2. "But when you're fixing something that will essentially make or break the reputation of the entire agency, the pressure goes through the roof."

A Mirror Image

In June 1990, NASA announced that the Hubble telescope was not working as expected. WFPC2 team members say they remember that the reaction from the public and the media was often pessimistic or even incredulous. Trauger watched network news anchor Tom Brokaw begin his program that evening by saying, "The Hubble Telescope you've heard so much about - it's broken."

"The promise of the Hubble program, the application of our best technology to push back the frontiers of astronomy, had been instantly transformed in the public eye to an icon of technical failure," Trauger wrote in an essay in 2007.

Trauger brought his team together to work the problem. The telescope's primary and secondary mirrors collected light and fed it to the five onboard science instruments. The primary mirror could not be replaced and could not be returned to Earth for repairs. A solution would have to be found for each of Hubble's instruments. The COSTAR device provided corrective optics for three of them, eliminating the need to fully replace those instruments. But the same approach wouldn't work for the telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera (WFPC), the predecessor of WFPC2.

Trauger and his team came up with a potential solution. The primary mirror error caused light striking different parts of the mirror to come into focus at different locations, so the team had to figure out how to redirect it to the appropriate focal point. Their solution was to reverse-engineer the problem: They would place four identical nickel-sized mirrors inside the instrument - one for each of the four cameras inside WFPC2 - with the same error as the flawed primary mirror, but where the primary mirror was too flat, the new mirrors would be curved too deeply. Together, these two errors would cancel each other, producing the equivalent of a single mirror with the correct shape.

NASA accepted JPL's proposal to build a WFPC replacement. The agency had planned to carry out Hubble repair missions every three years and decided to maintain this schedule. The first repair mission was set for the fall of 1993. JPL would need to deliver the replacement by the winter of 1992 - just over 2 years away. The race to repair Hubble was on.

Under Pressure

Two years was nowhere near enough time to build a new camera instrument from scratch. Thankfully, WFPC2 was already under construction at JPL; NASA had intended to eventually use it as an upgrade for WFPC or a replacement if the instrument ever failed.

Even with work on WFPC2 already under way, the deadline required an accelerated schedule. Dave Rodgers and Larry Simmons, the WFPC2 project managers, held daily meetings with the leaders of each of WFPC2's several components to help stay on target.

"The daily meetings kept the pressure on all of us, all the time," said Simmons, who retired from JPL in 2005. "We knew we only had a few years, and we had to get it done."

While the corrective mirrors were small, they affected nearly every step of the building process and created "an endless string of novel problems," according to Trauger.

To minimize the chance for error during WFPC2's installation in low-Earth orbit, the seven astronauts who were scheduled to execute the repair mission traveled to JPL to learn about the instrument and be trained on how to install it. They would be inserting WFPC2 into a cavity in the telescope's body, as if sliding it in a drawer. And although they would need to make sure that the electrical connections at the back of the instrument were secure, they had no way of reaching those connections; they could control only how they inserted the instrument.

Complicating matters further was the weight of WFPC2: At more than 600 pounds (272 kilograms), it was unwieldy even in the microgravity of low-Earth orbit. One of the instrument's mirrors, called the pickoff mirror, was mounted on a short arm located outside the protective casing. Merely bumping the mirror would misalign the system and essentially ruin the entire instrument. During WFPC2's construction, Trauger and colleagues showed a model of the instrument to an astronaut, who bumped the pickoff mirror. Trauger couldn't help but wonder, "Is this an omen?"

Time to Fly

The leaders of the WFPC2 team traveled to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the early morning launch on Dec. 2, 1993. After departing Kennedy and seeking out an early breakfast, Gallagher remembers looking up at the predawn sky to see the space shuttle passing overhead and nearing Hubble; the objects appeared as two faint points of light in the sky as they orbited Earth.

On the sixth day of the mission, astronauts Jeffrey Hoffman and Story Musgrave conducted a spacewalk to remove WFPC from Hubble and install WFPC2. Everything seemed to go as planned, but the real test was yet to come.

The astronauts returned to Earth on Dec. 13, and the first raw data from WFPC2 came back on Dec. 18. The team put the data through the image-processing software and watched anxiously as the pictures began to ratchet across the screen. There was instant relief.

"They were sharp," Trauger said of the images. "And it wasn't just that we had pictures that looked amazing, it was that we were making new discoveries right away. There were things in the images that we'd never seen before."

NASA released those first images to the public on Jan. 13, 1994. The next day, the WFPC2 team presented the results to an overflow audience at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

"When we showed the first images, the room erupted; we got a standing ovation," Trauger said. "You don't usually see that at an astronomy meeting!"

The WFPC2 instrument operated on Hubble for over 15 years and took more than 135,000 observations of the universe. More than 3,500 science papers were written based on that data before the instrument was retired in 2009, and over 2,000 more have been published since.

"WFPC2 didn't succeed by magic or luck; it succeeded because we had a competent and hardworking group of people who understood what was at stake and stepped up to the challenge," Gallagher said. "And just like with every project, I wish I could have transported that team with me to the next mission."

In May of 2009, astronauts removed WFPC2 from Hubble and replaced it with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which continues to operate today - 28 years after Hubble first switched on. WFPC2 was later placed on public display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

posted 04-19-2018 10:17 AM               

Hubble 28th Anniversary Image Captures Roiling Heart of Vast Stellar Nursery

This colorful image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, celebrates the Earth-orbiting observatory's 28th anniversary of viewing the heavens, giving us a window seat to the universe's extraordinary tapestry of stellar birth and destruction.

At the center of the photo, a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust.

This mayhem is all happening at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 4,000 light-years away and visible in binoculars simply as a smudge of light with a bright core.

The giant star, called Herschel 36, is bursting out of its natal cocoon of material, unleashing blistering radiation and torrential stellar winds (streams of subatomic particles) that push dust away in curtain-like sheets. This action resembles the Sun bursting through the clouds at the end of an afternoon thunderstorm that showers sheets of rainfall.

Herschel 36's violent activity has blasted holes in the bubble-shaped cloud, allowing astronomers to study this action-packed stellar breeding ground.

The hefty star is 32 times more massive and 40,000 times hotter than our Sun. It is nearly nine times our Sun's diameter. Herschel 36 is still very active because it is young by a star's standards, only 1 million years old. Based on its mass, it will live for another 5 million years. In comparison, our smaller Sun is 5 billion years old and will live another 5 billion years.

This region epitomizes a typical, raucous stellar nursery full of birth and destruction. The clouds may look majestic and peaceful, but they are in a constant state of flux from the star's torrent of searing radiation and high-speed particles from stellar winds. As the monster star throws off its natal cocoon of material with its powerful energy, it is suppressing star formation around it.

However, at the dark edges of this dynamic bubble-shaped ecosystem, stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. Dark, elephant-like "trunks" of material represent dense pieces of the cocoon that are resistant to erosion by the searing ultraviolet light and serve as incubators for fledgling stars. They are analogous to desert buttes that resist weather erosion.

The Hubble view shows off the bubble's 3D structure. Dust pushed away from the star reveals the glowing oxygen gas (in blue) behind the blown-out cavity. Herschel 36's brilliant light is illuminating the top of the cavity (in yellow). The reddish hue that dominates part of the region is glowing nitrogen. The dark purple areas represent a mixture of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

The image shows a region of the nebula measuring about 4 light-years across.

The observations were taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 between Feb. 12 and Feb. 18, 2018.

posted 04-24-2020 08:10 AM               

Hubble Marks 30 Years in Space with Tapestry of Blazing Starbirth

NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 30 years of unlocking the beauty and mystery of space by unveiling a stunning new portrait of a firestorm of starbirth in a neighboring galaxy.

In this Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef," because it resembles an undersea world.

Thirty years ago, on April 24, 1990, Hubble was carried aloft from the Kennedy Space Center aboard the space shuttle Discovery, along with a five-astronaut crew. Deployed into low-Earth orbit a day later, the telescope opened a new eye onto the cosmos that has been transformative for our civilization.

Hubble is revolutionizing modern astronomy, not only for scientists, but also by taking the public on a wondrous journey of exploration and discovery. Hubble's never-ending, breathtaking celestial snapshots provide a visual shorthand for Hubble's top scientific achievements. Unlike any space telescope before it, Hubble made astronomy relevant, engaging, and accessible for people of all ages. The space telescope's iconic imagery has redefined our view of the universe and our place in time and space.

"Hubble has given us stunning insights about the universe, from nearby planets to the farthest galaxies we have seen so far," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "It was revolutionary to launch such a large telescope 30 years ago, and this astronomy powerhouse is still delivering revolutionary science today. Its spectacular images have captured the imagination for decades, and will continue to inspire humanity for years to come."

Unencumbered by Earth's blurring atmosphere, the space observatory unveils the universe in unprecedented crystal-clear sharpness across a broad range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light.

Hubble's top accomplishments include measuring the expansion and acceleration rate of the universe; finding that black holes are common among galaxies; characterizing the atmospheres of planets around other stars; monitoring weather changes on planets across our solar system; and looking back in time across 97% of the universe to chronicle the birth and evolution of stars and galaxies.

Hubble has yielded to date 1.4 million observations and provided data that astronomers around the world have used to write more than 17,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications, making it the most prolific space observatory in history. Its archival data alone will fuel future astronomy research for generations to come.

Hubble's longevity can be attributed to five space shuttle servicing missions, from 1993 to 2009, in which astronauts upgraded the telescope with advanced instruments, new electronics, and on-orbit repairs. The venerable observatory, with its suite of cameras and other instruments, is expected to stay operational through the 2020s, in synergy with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Cosmic Reef

The new space portrait is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries Hubble has observed during its 30-year lifetime. These regions are dominated by the glow of stars at least 10 times more massive than our Sun. The stellar inhabitants have short lives of only a few million years, compared to the 10-billion-year lifetime of our Sun.

The sparkling centerpiece of NGC 2014 is a grouping of bright, hefty stars, each 10 to 20 times more massive than our Sun. The stars' ultraviolet radiation heats the surrounding dense gas. The massive stars also unleash fierce winds of charged particles that blast away lower-density gas, forming the bubble-like structures seen on the right. The stars' powerful stellar winds are pushing gas and dust to the denser left side of the nebula, where it is piling up, creating a series of dark ridges bathed in starlight.

The blue areas in NGC 2014 reveal the glow of oxygen, heated to nearly 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit (11,000 degrees Celsius) by the blast of ultraviolet light. The cooler, red gas indicates the presence of hydrogen and nitrogen.

By contrast, the seemingly isolated blue nebula at lower left (NGC 2020) has been created by a solitary mammoth star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. The blue gas was ejected by the star through a series of eruptive events during which it lost part of its outer envelope of material.

posted 04-24-2025 08:13 AM               

NASA Celebrates Hubble's 35th Year in Orbit

In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 35 years in Earth orbit, NASA is releasing Wednesday an assortment of compelling images recently taken by Hubble, stretching from the planet Mars to star forming regions, to a neighboring galaxy.

Above: A selection of photogenic space targets to celebrate the 35th anniversary of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Upper left: Mars. Upper right: planetary nebula NGC 2899. Lower left: a small portion of the Rosette Nebula. Lower right: barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335. (NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale [STScI], Alyssa Pagan [STScI])

After more than three decades of perusing the universe, Hubble remains a household name — the most well-recognized and scientifically productive telescope in history. The Hubble mission is a glowing success story of America's technological prowess, unyielding scientific curiosity, and a reiteration of our nation's pioneering spirit.

"Hubble opened a new window to the universe when it launched 35 years ago. Its stunning imagery inspired people across the globe, and the data behind those images revealed surprises about everything from early galaxies to planets in our own solar system," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The fact that it is still operating today is a testament to the value of our flagship observatories, and provides critical lessons for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which we plan to be serviceable in the spirit of Hubble."

Perched above Earth's blurry atmosphere, Hubble's crystal-clear views have been nothing less than transformative for the public's perception of the cosmos. Through its evocative imagery, Hubble has made astronomy very relevant, engaging, and accessible for people of all ages. Hubble snapshots can portray the universe as awesome, mysterious, and beautiful — and at the same time chaotic, overwhelming, and foreboding.

The 24,000-pound observatory was tucked away inside the space shuttle Discovery's cargo bay and lofted into low Earth orbit on April 24, 1990. As the shuttle Discovery thundered skyward, the NASA commentator described Hubble as a "new window on the universe." The telescope turned out to be exactly as promised, and more.

More scientific papers than ever are based on Hubble data, thanks to the dedication, perseverance, and skills of engineers, scientists, and mission operators. Astronauts chased and rendezvoused with Hubble on five servicing missions in which they upgraded Hubble's cameras, computers, and other support systems. The servicing missions took place from 1993 to 2009.

The telescope's mission got off to a shaky start in 1990 when an unexpected flaw was found in the observatory's nearly eight-foot diameter primary mirror. Astronauts gallantly came to the rescue on the first shuttle servicing mission in December 1993 to improve Hubble's sharpness with corrective optics.

To date, Hubble has made nearly 1.7 million observations, looking at approximately 55,000 astronomical targets. Hubble discoveries have resulted in over 22,000 papers and over 1.3 million citations as of February 2025. All the data collected by Hubble is archived and currently adds up to over 400 terabytes, representing the biggest dataset for a NASA astrophysics mission besides the James Webb Space Telescope.

Hubble's long operational life has allowed astronomers to return to the same cosmic scenes multiple times to observe changes that happened during more than three decades: seasonal variability on the planets in our solar system, black hole jets travelling at nearly the speed of light, stellar convulsions, asteroid collisions, expanding supernova bubbles, and much more.

Before 1990, powerful optical telescopes on Earth could see only halfway across the cosmos. Estimates for the age of the universe disagreed by a big margin. Supermassive black holes were only suspected to be the powerhouses behind a rare zoo of energetic phenomena. Not a single planet had been seen around another star.

Among its long list of breakthroughs: Hubble's deep field images unveiled myriad galaxies dating back to the early universe. The telescope also allowed scientists to precisely measure the universe's expansion, find that supermassive black holes are common among galaxies, and make the first measurement of the atmospheres of exoplanets. Hubble also contributed to the discovery of dark energy, the mysterious phenomenon accelerating the expansion of universe, leading to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The relentless pace of Hubble's trailblazing discoveries kick-started a new generation of space telescopes for the 21st century. Hubble provided the first observational evidence that there were myriad distant galaxies for Webb to pursue in infrared wavelengths that reach even farther beyond Hubble's gaze. Now, Hubble and Webb are often being used in complement to study everything from exoplanets to galaxy evolution.

Hubble's planned successor, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, will have a significantly larger mirror than Hubble's to study the universe in visible and ultraviolet light. It will be significantly sharper than Hubble and up to 100 times more sensitive to starlight. The Habitable Worlds Observatory will advance science across all of astrophysics, as Hubble has done for over three decades. A major goal of the future mission is to identify terrestrial planets around neighboring stars that might be habitable.

The Hubble Space Telescope continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.