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A Giant Hubble Mosaic of the
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A Giant Hubble Mosaic of the Crab Nebula |
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Hubble Sees Star Cluster "In
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Hubble Sees Star Cluster "Infant Mortality |
| General Information |
What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found that young stellar nurseries, called open star clusters, have very short lives. This is gleaned from new observations by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys that were used to do a "Where's Waldo" search for blue stars tossed out of their open cluster "nest" in the nearby galaxy known as NGC 1313. Read more: * The Full Story [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/05/full/ ] |
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Hubble Sees Star Cluster "In
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| Title |
Hubble Sees Star Cluster "Infant Mortality |
| General Information |
What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found that young stellar nurseries, called open star clusters, have very short lives. This is gleaned from new observations by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys that were used to do a "Where's Waldo" search for blue stars tossed out of their open cluster "nest" in the nearby galaxy known as NGC 1313. Read more: * The Full Story [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/05/full/ ] |
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Hubble Sees 'Comet Galaxy' B
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Hubble Sees 'Comet Galaxy' Being Ripped Apart By Galaxy Cluster |
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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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Hubble Yields Direct Proof o
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Hubble Yields Direct Proof of Stellar Sorting in a Globular Cluster |
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The Sombrero Galaxy from VLT
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The Sombrero Galaxy from VLT |
| Explanation |
Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero [ http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m104.html ]'s unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990509.html ] lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981220.html ]. Billions of old stars [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991103.html ] cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge. Close inspection of the bulge in the above photograph [ http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2000/phot-07-00.html ] shows many points of light that are actually globular clusters [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/globular_clusters.html ]. M104's spectacular dust rings harbor many younger and brighter stars, and show intricate details astronomers don't yet fully understand [ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1995A%26A...303..673E ]. The very center of the Sombrero [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951109.html ] glows across the electromagnetic spectrum [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html ], and is thought to house a large black hole [ http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/abholes.html ]. Fifty million-year-old light from the Sombrero Galaxy [ http://www.hawastsoc.org/messier/fslide121.html ] can be seen with a small telescope [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011014.html ] towards the constellation [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/constellations.html ] of Virgo [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/constellations/Virgo.html ]. |
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Breaking Distant Light
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Breaking Distant Light |
| Explanation |
In the distant universe, time [ http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/time.html ] appears to run slow. Since time-dilated [ http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html ] light appears shifted toward the red end of the spectrum [ http://www.lbl.gov/MicroWorlds/ALSTool/EMSpec/EMSpec2.html ] (redshifted), astronomers are able to use cosmological time-slowing [ http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/cosm/expan.html ] to help measure vast distances [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/debate/debate96.html ] in the universe. Above [ http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/pr-04-02.html ], the light from distant galaxies [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000709.html ] has been broken up into its constituent colors (spectra [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/YBA/M31-velocity/galactic_redshift-2.html ]), allowing astronomers to measure the redshift [ http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~jh8h/glossary/redshift.htm ] of known spectral lines [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/how_l1/spectral_what.html ]. The novelty of the above image [ http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/pr-04-02.html ] is that the distance to hundreds of galaxies [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010904.html ] can now be measured on a single frame using the Visible MultiObject Spectrograph [ http://www.astrsp-mrs.fr/virmos/ ] that has begun operating at the Very Large Telescope array [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000707.html ] in Chile [ http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ci.html ]. Analyzing the space distribution of distant objects [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020117.html ] will allow insight into when and how stars, galaxies, and quasars [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020309.html ] formed, clustered, and evolved [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990905.html ] in the early universe [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/debate/debate98.html ]. |
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The Crab Nebula from VLT
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The Crab Nebula from VLT |
| Explanation |
The Crab Nebula, filled with mysterious filaments, is the result of a star that was seen to explode in 1054 AD. This spectacular supernova [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/supernovae.html ] explosion was recorded by Chinese and (quite probably) Anasazi Indian [ http://www.co.blm.gov/ahc/anasazi.htm ] astronomers. The filaments are mysterious because they appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and higher speed than expected from a free explosion. In the above picture taken recently from a Very Large Telescope [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030914.html ap990309.html ], the color indicates what is happening to the electrons [ http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/welect.html ] in differentparts of the Crab Nebula. Red indicates the electrons are recombining with protons to form neutral hydrogen, while blue indicates the electrons are whirling around the magnetic field of the inner nebula. In the nebula [ http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search?crab+nebula ]'s very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star rotating, in this case, 30 times a second. |
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M27: Not A Comet
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M27: Not A Comet |
| Explanation |
While searching the skies above 18th century France for comets, astronomer Charles Messier [ http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/history/biograph.html ] diligently recorded this object as number 27 on his list of things which are definitely not comets [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960626.html ]. So what is it? Well, 20th century astronomers would classify it as a Planetary Nebula [ http://www.seds.org/messier/planetar.html ] ... but it's not a planet either, even though it may appear round [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980518.html ] and planet-like in a small telescope. Messier 27 (M27) is now known to be an excellent example of a gaseous emission nebula [ http://www.astro.washington.edu/balick/WFPC2/ ] created as a sun-like star runs out [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980426.html ] of nuclear fuel in its core. The nebula forms as the star's outer layers are expelled into space, with a visible glow generated by atoms excited by the dying star's intense but invisible ultraviolet light [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html ]. Known by the popular name of the "Dumbbell Nebula" [ http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m027.html ], the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/ constellations/Vulpecula.html ]. This gorgeous synthetic color picture of M27 [ http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-1998/phot-38-98.html ] was produced during testing of the European Southern Observatory's new Very Large Telescope [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960901.html ]. |
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NGC 2997 from VLT
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NGC 2997 from VLT |
| Explanation |
Add another 8-meter telescope to the list of modern optical telescope giants [ http://www.seds.org/billa/bigeyes.html ]. Kueyen achieved a first-light photograph of a bright star on March 1, ahead of schedule. The above picture [ http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-1999/pr-06-99.html ] of spiral galaxy NGC 2997 [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap961030.html ] was taken with Antu [ http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-1999/pr-06-99.html ], the first of the four planned Very Large Telscopes [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990309.html ] (VLTs) being built in Chile [ http://www.eso.org/paranal/site/paranal.html ] for the European Southern Observatory. NGC 2997 [ http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/universe_level2/ngc2997.html ] is a thin spiral galaxy [ http://www.seds.org/messier/spir.html ] tilted about 45 degrees with a bright compact nucleus and prominent lanes of dark dust [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980318.html ]. |
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