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HR 4796 with Dust Disk
This color image of the star
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4/21/98
| Date |
4/21/98 |
| Description |
This color image of the star HR 4796 and its surrounding dust disk was taken on March 15, 1998 at the Keck II Observatory atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, using MIRLIN, JPL's mid-infrared camera. Images were taken at two different infrared wavelengths (12 and 21 micrometers) and are represented by bluish green and red in this picture. The star, which is similar to our Sun, appears white in this image. A much cooler disk of dust, a few times larger than our own solar system, appears red. A slight decrease in the brightness between the star and the outer parts of the disk implies that material in this region has condensed to form planets. The bright outer disk may represent material left over from this planet-building phase and could still be actively forming comets. The W.M. Keck Observatory is owned and operated by the California Association for Research in Astronomy, a joint venture between the University of California, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, and NASA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, a division of Caltech, manages the use of the W.M. Keck Observatory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. This image of HR 4796 is posted on the World Wide Web, at URL http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/98/hr4796.html ##### |
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Sharper Vision
| title |
Sharper Vision |
| date |
07.09.2004 |
| description |
The power of the Keck telescope's adaptive optics system is clear in this image of Uranus, its rings and the moon Miranda. The two sets of exposures compare Keck AO system off (left) to Keck AO system on (right). Upper: Uranus, its rings and moon Miranda at near infrared wavelengths of 2.2 microns. Lower: Uranus and its atmospheric details as seen in near infrared wavelengths of 1.6 microns. The image has been doubled in size. Date is Universal Time. *Image Credit*:Heidi Hammel, Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO/Imke de Pater, University of California, Berkeley/ W. M. Keck Observatory |
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World's Most Powerful Telesc
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| Title |
World's Most Powerful Telescopes Team Up With a Lens in Nature to Discover Farthest Galaxy in the Universe |
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World's Most Powerful Telesc
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| Title |
World's Most Powerful Telescopes Team Up With a Lens in Nature to Discover Farthest Galaxy in the Universe |
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Astronomers Use Hubble and K
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| Title |
Astronomers Use Hubble and Keck to Identify Dwarf Galaxy |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. A team of astronomers at the University of California at Santa Barbara report that they have resolved a dwarf galaxy 6 billion light-years away. Weighing only 1/100 as much as our Milky Way Galaxy, the dwarf is much smaller than anything studied before in any detail at this distance. They report in the Dec. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal that the galaxy looks very similar to one of the dwarf galaxies in the Virgo cluster, which is located only 60 million light-years away. "We believe we may have identified the progenitors of local dwarf galaxies," says Tommaso Treu. "We see them as clearly as we would see dwarfs in the Virgo cluster using ground-based telescopes. The sharp view of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and the laser guide stars adaptive optics system on the W.M. Keck Telescope, were aimed at a natural lens in space, called a gravitational lens, to study the dwarf. The researchers took advantage of the fact that the distant dwarf galaxy lies behind a massive foreground galaxy that bends light rays much as a glass lens does. This gravitational lensing amplifies the image of the much farther dwarf galaxy, making it appear 10 times brighter and 10 times larger than it would normally be seen by either Hubble or Keck. |
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Astronomers Use Hubble and K
…
| Title |
Astronomers Use Hubble and Keck to Identify Dwarf Galaxy |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. A team of astronomers at the University of California at Santa Barbara report that they have resolved a dwarf galaxy 6 billion light-years away. Weighing only 1/100 as much as our Milky Way Galaxy, the dwarf is much smaller than anything studied before in any detail at this distance. They report in the Dec. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal that the galaxy looks very similar to one of the dwarf galaxies in the Virgo cluster, which is located only 60 million light-years away. "We believe we may have identified the progenitors of local dwarf galaxies," says Tommaso Treu. "We see them as clearly as we would see dwarfs in the Virgo cluster using ground-based telescopes. The sharp view of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and the laser guide stars adaptive optics system on the W.M. Keck Telescope, were aimed at a natural lens in space, called a gravitational lens, to study the dwarf. The researchers took advantage of the fact that the distant dwarf galaxy lies behind a massive foreground galaxy that bends light rays much as a glass lens does. This gravitational lensing amplifies the image of the much farther dwarf galaxy, making it appear 10 times brighter and 10 times larger than it would normally be seen by either Hubble or Keck. |
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Circle of Ashes
PIA08041
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
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| Title |
Circle of Ashes |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Circle of Ashes This plot tells astronomers that a pulsar, the remnant of a stellar explosion, is surrounded by a disk of its own ashes. The disk, revealed by the two data points at the far right from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, is the first ever found around a pulsar. Astronomers believe planets might rise up out of these stellar ashes. The data in this plot, or spectrum, were taken by ground-based telescopes and Spitzer. They show that light from around the pulsar can be divided into two categories: direct light from the pulsar, and light from the dusty disk swirling around the pulsar. This excess light was detected by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Dust gives off more infrared light than the pulsar because it's cooler. The pulsar, called 4U 0142+61, was once a massive star, until about 100,000 years ago, when it blew up in a supernova explosion and scattered dusty debris into space. Some of that debris was captured into what astronomers refer to as a "fallback disk," now circling the leftover stellar core, or pulsar. The disk resembles protoplanetary disks around young stars, out of which planets are thought to be born. The data have been corrected to remove the effects of light scattering from dust that lies between Earth and the pulsar. The ground-based data is from the Keck I telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. |
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Circle of Ashes
PIA08041
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
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| Title |
Circle of Ashes |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Circle of Ashes This plot tells astronomers that a pulsar, the remnant of a stellar explosion, is surrounded by a disk of its own ashes. The disk, revealed by the two data points at the far right from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, is the first ever found around a pulsar. Astronomers believe planets might rise up out of these stellar ashes. The data in this plot, or spectrum, were taken by ground-based telescopes and Spitzer. They show that light from around the pulsar can be divided into two categories: direct light from the pulsar, and light from the dusty disk swirling around the pulsar. This excess light was detected by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Dust gives off more infrared light than the pulsar because it's cooler. The pulsar, called 4U 0142+61, was once a massive star, until about 100,000 years ago, when it blew up in a supernova explosion and scattered dusty debris into space. Some of that debris was captured into what astronomers refer to as a "fallback disk," now circling the leftover stellar core, or pulsar. The disk resembles protoplanetary disks around young stars, out of which planets are thought to be born. The data have been corrected to remove the effects of light scattering from dust that lies between Earth and the pulsar. The ground-based data is from the Keck I telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. |
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