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Hubble Sees 'Comet Galaxy' B
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| Title |
Hubble Sees 'Comet Galaxy' Being Ripped Apart By Galaxy Cluster |
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Ultra-cool Diminutive Star W
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Ultra-cool Diminutive Star Weighs In |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. The power of the some of the world's biggest telescopes has been brought to bear to directly measure the mass, for the first time, of one of the smallest stars ever seen in the universe. Barely the size of the planet Jupiter, the dwarf star weighs in at just 8.5 percent of the mass of our Sun. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/51/text/ ] |
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The Carina Nebula: Star Birt
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The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme |
| General Information |
What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. 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. READ: Junior version of this article Amazing Space Learn about this story in the Star Witness, a science newspaper available on our sister site, Amazing Space. [ http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/news/archive/2007/02/ ] 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. This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen during March and July 2005. Color information was added with data taken in December 2001 and March 2003 at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission. |
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A Laser Strike at the Galact
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A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center |
| Explanation |
Why are these people shooting a powerful laser into the center of our Galaxy? Fortunately, this is not meant to be the first step in a Galactic war [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5 ]. Rather, astronomers at the Very Large Telescope [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000707.html ] (VLT) site in Chile [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile ] are trying to measure the distortions of Earth's ever changing atmosphere [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000725.html ]. Constant imaging of high-altitude atoms excited by the laser -- which appear like an artificial star [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050207.html ] -- allow astronomers to instantly measure atmospheric blurring [ http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/optics/lgsao/lgsbasics.html ]. This information is fed back to a VLT telescope mirror which is then slightly deformed [ http://www.eso.org/projects/aot/introduction.html ] to minimize this blurring. In this case, a VLT was observing our Galaxy's center [ http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~tanner/gcintro.html ], and so Earth's atmospheric blurring in that direction was needed. As for inter-galaxy warfare [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_wars ], when viewed from our Galaxy's center [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050403.html ], no casualties are expected. In fact, the light from this powerful laser [ http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2007/pr-27-07.html ] would combine with light from our Sun to together appear only as bright [ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/alien/chapter/ch07.html ] as a faint and distant star. |
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NGC 3621: Far Beyond the Loc
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NGC 3621: Far Beyond the Local Group |
| Explanation |
Far beyond [ http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0012372 ] the local group [ http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/localgr.html ] of galaxies lies NGC 3621 [ http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?3621 ], some 22 million light-years away. Found in the serpentine southern constellation Hydra [ http://www.astronomical.org/constellations/hya.html ], the loose spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe [ http://www.astr.ua.edu/goodies/data_resources/ galaxies.text ] are loaded with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes. Still, for earthbound astronomers NGC 3621 is not just another [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011004.html ] pretty face-on spiral galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010427.html ]. Some of its brighter stars [ http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/H0kp/n3621/n3621.html ] have been used as standard candles [ http://www.powersof10.com/powers/tools/station_232.html ] to establish [ http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/1999/19/ background.html ] important estimates of extragalactic distances [ http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/ Distances.html ] and the scale of the Universe [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/debate/debate96.html ]. This color picture was constructed from astronomical image data recorded with the Very Large Telescope Antu [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000707.html ], at Paranal Observatory in Chile. At the original resolution, individual, hot supergiant stars [ http://www.usm.uni-muenchen.de/people/kud/ windsfromhotstars/winds.html ] can be identified and studied across NGC 3621. |
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VLT: A New Largest Optical T
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| Title |
VLT: A New Largest Optical Telescope |
| Explanation |
What is the largest telescope in the world? In the optical, this title [ http://www.seds.org/billa/bigeyes.html ] was long held by the Hale 200-inch [ http://astro.caltech.edu/observatories/palomar/ ], and is presently held by the Keck telescopes [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960715.html ] in Hawaii. But an even larger optical telescope is being built. Dubbed the Very Large Telescope [ http://www.eso.org/vlt/ ] (VLT), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is building four 8.2-meter mirrors in Chile [ http://sunsite.dcc.uchile.cl/chile/chile.html ] which together will act as a single telescope with a mirror diameter of over 16-meters. The first of these telescopes should be completed [ http://www.eso.org/vlt/systeng/unitelsc/planning.htm ] in 1997, and all four should be completed and working together sometime in the year 2000. The VLT [ http://www.eso.org/vlt/systeng/unitelsc/uniteles.htm ] will use active optics [ http://www.pd.astro.it/TNG/TechRep/rep53/node4.html ] to create sub-arcsecond [ http://xalph.ast.cam.ac.uk/niel/scales1.ascii ] resolution. This, combined with the enormous light-gathering power, will allow astronomers to explore dim objects in our Galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960213.html ] and the early universe [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960628.html ]. |
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NGC 3621: Far Beyond the Loc
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| Title |
NGC 3621: Far Beyond the Local Group |
| Explanation |
Far beyond [ http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0012372 ] the local group [ http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/localgr.html ] of galaxies lies NGC 3621 [ http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?3621 ], some 22 million light-years away. Found in the serpentine southern constellation Hydra [ http://www.astronomical.org/constellations/hya.html ], the loose spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe [ http://www.astr.ua.edu/goodies/data_resources/ galaxies.text ] are loaded with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes. Still, for earthbound astronomers NGC 3621 is not just another [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011004.html ] pretty face-on spiral galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010427.html ]. Some of its brighter stars [ http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/H0kp/n3621/n3621.html ] have been used as standard candles [ http://www.powersof10.com/powers/tools/station_232.html ] to establish [ http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/1999/19/ background.html ] important estimates of extragalactic distances [ http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/ Distances.html ] and the scale of the Universe [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/debate/debate96.html ]. This color picture was constructed from astronomical image data recorded with the Very Large Telescope Antu [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000707.html ], at Paranal Observatory in Chile. At the original resolution, individual, hot supergiant stars [ http://www.usm.uni-muenchen.de/people/kud/ windsfromhotstars/winds.html ] can be identified and studied across NGC 3621. |
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