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Thomas Arthur Reiter (born 23 May 1958 in Frankfurt, West Germany) is a retired European astronaut and is a Brigadier General in the German Air Force currently working as ESA Interagency Coordinator and Advisor to the Director General at the European Space Agency (ESA). He was one of the top 25 astronauts in terms of total time in space. With his wife and two sons he lives near Oldenburg in Lower Saxony.
Source and more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Reiter
See also:
ESTEC
The European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) is the European Space Agency's main technology development and test centre for spacecraft and space technology. It is situated in Noordwijk, South Holland, in the western Netherlands.
At ESTEC, about 2500 engineers, technicians and scientists work hands-on with mission design, spacecraft and space technology. ESTEC provides extensive testing facilities to verify the proper operation of spacecraft, such as the Large Space Simulator (LSS), acoustic and electromagnetic testing bays, multi-axis vibration tables and the ESA Propulsion Laboratory (EPL). Prior to launch, almost all of the equipment that ESA launches is tested in some degree at ESTEC.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Research_and_Technol...
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observation has captured the galaxy CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger which lies around 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.
This observation is a gem from the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers from around the world who classified galaxies to help scientists solve a problem of astronomical proportions: how to sort through the vast amounts of data generated by telescopes. A public vote selected the most astronomically intriguing objects for follow-up observations with Hubble. CGCG 396-2 is one such object, imaged here by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #gsfc #galaxy
Macro 1X con apilamiento de foco por control de anillo de enfoque
Macro 1X by focus stacking using the focus ring control
Ingredientes:
-Nikon D600 + Nikor 105mm macro 1X
-Helicon Remote para control automático de la pila de foco mediante el anillo de enfoque (por medio de USB)
-Helicon Soft para apilamiento de foco (36 shots, Method B, R=4, S=2)
-Helicon lo puedes bajar a prueba durante 1 mes gratis, o una licencia para un año por 50€, controla casi todas las Nikon y Canon mediante USB. Existen otros proveedores de soft para stacking (apilamiento), p. ej. Zerene, ControlMyNikon o Canon, Combine Z, etc
-Opcional: impresora 3D (Up Plus 2) para la fabricación de focos, soportes, mesa de trabajo, etc. Puedes utilizar el sencillo 123D Design (free soft) para diseñar las piezas.
Receta:
-Montamos el bodegón con sujeto y fondo
-Lo iluminamos con 4 o 5 micro-focos de leds. Los focos se pueden diseñar e imprimir utilizando una impresora 3D y después montar los leds (alta luminosidad y 5300K), la alimentación es de 12vdc para grupos de 3 o 4 leds. La ventaja frente al uso de flash, es que se pueden dirigir los focos y componer la iluminación antes del disparo, además del volumen que se consigue jugando con la iluminación.
-Disparamos las fotografías utilizando, p. ej., Helicon Remote: Helicon controla el enfoque con el movimiento del anillo de enfoque antes de disparar cada foto, todo el proceso de toma de fotos es automático, se pueden ver videos en youtube
-Para 1X se necesitan de 20 a 100 fotos, según valor de f, focal utilizada y profundidad de campo necesaria, lo calcula el soft automáticamente. Se suele utilizar el punto dulce de la lente (normalmente en el entorno de f5.6) para optimizar los resultados
-Apilamos el stack de n fotografías utilizando Helicon Soft
-Utilizamos Lightroom o similar para eliminar “halos” y “artefactos”
-Una vez se tiene práctica, todo el proceso puede durar 15 min
pepo
/ POOR ENGLISH
Macro 1X by focus stacking using the focus ring control
How do you can do it :
Ingredients:
-Nikon D600 + 105mm macro nikor 1X
-Helicon Remote control for automatic focus stack using the camera focus ring (using USB)
-Helicon Soft Focus Stacking (36 shots, Method B, R = 4, S = 2)
-Helicon: You can download a free trial for 1 month, or a license for a year for € 50, it controls almost many Nikon and Canon via USB. There are other suppliers of soft for stacking, p. ex. Zerene, ControlMyNikon or Canon, Combine Z, etc.
-optional: 3D (Up Plus 2) printer to manufacture light bulbs, brackets, desk, etc. You can use the friendly 123D Design (free soft) for pieces designing.
Recipe:
-Ilumination with 4 or 5 micro-LED bulbs. The lighters can be designed and printed using a 3D printer and then mount the LED´s (high brightness and 5300K), the power is 12VDC for groups of 3 or 4 LEDs. The advantage over use of flash, is that you can positioning the lights and lighting make up before shooting, in addition to the volume to be achieved by playing with these lighting.
-Shot photographs using, p. eg Helicon Remote. Helicon controls the approach to the movement of the focus ring before the photo shot, the whole process of taking pictures is automatic, you can watch videos on youtube
-For 1X do you needed 20-100 photos, depending on value of f, focal and deep of field needed, automatically calculated by the soft. Often used the sweet spot of the lens (usually in the vicinity of f5.6) to optimize results
-Now we stack of shots using Helicon Soft
-We can use Lightroom or the like to remove "halos" and "artifacts"
-Once you have practice, the whole process can take 15 min
-And sorry my English, please.
pepo
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Ojalá hubiese grabao toas las fotos y tos los videos que habías enviado
Y esta noche mi mente te hubiese visitado
Ya que no te consigo por tenerme bloqueado
¿Dónde estarás que ya no respondes?
¿En qué cama nueva te escondes?
¿Y cómo se llama esa cabrona que ahora gritas su nombre?
Dime por qué no llamas,
Si yo sé que piensas en mi cuando estás con ella en la cama
Fumo pa no pensarte y me sale tu holograma
No olvido cómo mama y cómo te daba en toas las poses
El se hizo completo porque tenía el corazón roto
Borré los videos del carrete, pero en mi mente quedó tu foto
Solo dime dónde es que estás, que esto me está volviendo loca
Concordia research station in Antarctica is a place of extremes. In winter no sunlight is seen for four months and the typical crew of twelve live in complete isolation.
ESA sponsors a research medical doctor each year to study the effects of living in isolation. The extreme cold, isolation, sensory deprivation and remoteness make living in Concordia similar to living on another planet.
Share your summer pictures with the crew who have not seen the Sun since 4 May: blogs.esa.int/concordia/2015/06/24/midsummer-greetings/
Credit: ESA/IPEV/PNRA-B. Healey
The jellyfish galaxy JO175 appears to hang suspended in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies over 650 million light-years from Earth in the appropriately-named constellation Telescopium, and was captured in crystal-clear detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. A handful of more distant galaxies are lurking throughout the scene, and a bright four-pointed star lies to the lower right side.
Jellyfish galaxies get their unusual name from the tendrils of star-forming gas and dust that trail behind them, just like the tentacles of a jellyfish. These bright tendrils contain clumps of star formation and give jellyfish galaxies a particularly striking appearance. Unlike their ocean-dwelling namesakes, jellyfish galaxies make their homes in galaxy clusters, and the pressure of the tenuous superheated plasma that permeates these galaxy clusters is what draws out the jellyfish galaxies’ distinctive tendrils.
Hubble recently completed a deep dive into jellyfish clusters, specifically the star-forming clumps of gas and dust that stud their tendrils. By studying the origins and fate of the stars in these clumps, astronomers hoped to better understand the processes underpinning star formation elsewhere in the Universe. Interestingly, their research suggests that star formation in the discs of galaxies is similar to star formation in the extreme conditions found in the tendrils of jellyfish galaxies.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy. Its spiral arms are studded with many pink spots, especially around the top of the galaxy. One arm is sticking out below the galaxy. From it and around the bottom of the galaxy, faint gas streams away, while little gas is visible above the galaxy. The galaxy is quite small in the centre of a dark background, where a few smaller galaxies of various shapes and sizes hang.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team; CC BY 4.0
This oblique perspective view shows the southern flanks of Ascraeus Mons, the second-tallest volcano on Mars.
Deep, irregular fissures in the martian surface can be seen snaking towards the camera. These are part of a group of features collectively named Ascraeus Chasmata, which encompasses an enormous patch of collapsed terrain over 70 km across. The part shown here formed as strings of circular or near-circular depressions combined and coalesced to form troughs, causing the ground to collapse – a bit like forming a sinkhole.
This image was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Se encuentra en la ciudad de Malargüe-Mendoza- Argentina
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ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took this image of Hurriacane Florence on 12 September 2018, 400 km high from the International Space Station. He commented:
"Watch out, America! Hurricane Florence is so enormous, we could only capture her with a super wide angle lens from the International Space Station, 400 km directly above the eye. Get prepared on the East Coast, this is a no-kidding nightmare coming for you."
Alexander is on his second six-month Space Station mission. Follow him and the Horizons mission on social media on his website and on his blog.
Credits: ESA/NASA–A. Gerst
On 10 December, ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory is celebrating its 20th launch anniversary. In those two decades, the observatory has supplied a constant stream of outstanding science. One area that the mission has excelled in is the science of black holes, having had a profound effect on our understanding of these cosmic enigmas.
Black holes are celestial objects so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their pull. In this artist’s impression, the weird shapes of light around the black hole are what computer simulations predict will happen in the vicinity of its intense gravitational field.
Although neither XMM-Newton nor any other telescope can actually see black holes in this detail, the mission’s data and observations have provided a great source of information about these mysterious gravitational traps. In particular, XMM-Newton has been particularly good at isolating the X-rays given out by high-temperature, ionised atoms of iron as they swirl towards doom in the black hole.
The X-rays given out from the iron contain information about the geometry and dynamics of the black hole. In 2013, XMM-Newton was used to measure such emission in order to study the rotation rate of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365.
Supermassive black holes, with masses between millions and billions of times the mass of our Sun, are thought to lurk in the centre of almost every large galaxy in the Universe. Their rotation rate is important because it can give away important details about the history of their host galaxy.
A fast rotating black hole is fed by a uniform stream of matter falling together, or by galaxies merging with one another, whereas a slowly rotating black hole is buffeted from all sides by small clumps of matter hitting it. In the case of NGC 1365, XMM-Newton showed that the black hole was rotating quickly and so the galaxy probably grew steadily over time, or merged with others.
More recently, XMM-Newton discovered mysterious flashes from the black hole at the centre of another galaxy called GSN 069. These flares took place every nine hours or so, raising the brightness of the X-ray emission by a factor of 100. These eruptions are thought to be coming from the matter caught in the black hole’s gravitational grip or from a less massive black hole circling the more massive one.
As XMM-Newton continues into its third decade, black holes and the galaxies they are found in will continue to be a priority target.
More about XMM-Newton’s first two decades in space:
XMM-Newton at 20: The fascinating X-ray Universe
XMM-Newton at 20: The large-scale Universe
XMM-Newton at 20: Taking care of the science operations
Credits: ESA/XMM-Newton/I. de la Calle
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Jules Verne!
ESA’s very first Automated Transfer Vehicle is seen approaching the International Space Station against the glow of Earth’s horizon.
Launched 10 years ago on 9 March 2008, the maiden cargo ferry was named after the 19th-century French author and visionary, Jules Verne, who fascinated millions of young people and inspired space scientists and explorers with his extraordinary stories.
While it didn’t take the spacecraft 80 days to go around the world and reach the Space Station, it was nevertheless an extraordinary voyage.
Its task was to demonstrate that ATV could accomplish cargo flights to the International Space Station safely and reliably, and that all the advanced technologies work as planned. As the pioneer, its mission was deliberately more demanding than the flights of its successors.
Launched on an Ariane 5 rocket, ATV-1 spent 30 days in orbit before docking to the Space Station. During that time, it proved itself by navigating to the Station, and practising avoidance manoeuvres and proximity control. All the while it was being closely monitored by ATV Control Centre at the CNES French space agency site in Toulouse, France.
Jules Verne docked to the Space Station on 3 April and delivered equipment and spare parts, as well as food, air and water for the crew. Like all ATVs, it remained attached for about six months before undocking for a controlled destructive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Four more ATVs carried 6.6 tonnes of cargo about every 17 months to the orbital outpost.
In addition to cargo delivery, ATV regularly boosted the Station into a higher orbit to overcome the effects of the faint drag of Earth’s upper atmosphere – the Station loses up to several hundred metres in altitude every day. To perform these manoeuvres, ATV carried up to 4 tonnes of propellant.
The five successful ATV missions proved the sophistication of this European spacecraft and, like the Columbus module, demonstrated European capability and excellence in space exploration.
The programme laid the foundation for ESA’s participation in the Orion programme that will take Europe, in collaboration with international partner NASA, beyond low Earth orbit.
ESA is developing the European Service Module that will power the Orion spacecraft to carry humans back to the Moon and beyond.
Credits: ESA/NASA
No creo que esas cosas puedan hacerte daño, pero si ves algo que no te guste limítate a mirar hacia otro lado, y cuando vuelvas a fijarte, la cosa habrá desaparecido.
Captured by ESA astronaut André Kuipers, London by night.
André is onboard the ISS as part of ESA's long duration mission, PromISSe. For further information on the mission, please visit: www.esa.int/SPECIALS/PromISSe/index.html
Credits: ESA/NASA
ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson are getting world-class geology training this week during the fifth edition of ESA’s Pangaea course.
A balanced mix of theory and field trips, the course will take the pair all over Europe to hone their geology skills. The training began last week in the Italian Dolomites with lessons on fundamental geology knowledge and skills, martian geology and asteroids at Bletterbach Canyon.
The rock samples from the canyon Alexander is holding in this image are a combination of gypsum (white hue) in siltstone-sandstone (reddish hue), and are analogous to rocks found on Mars.
This week, Alexander and Stephanie will follow the footsteps of Apollo astronauts to study the Ries crater in Germany, one of the best-preserved impact craters on Earth, where American crews trained before their flights to the Moon.
The course concludes the year with a trip to the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote, Spain in November, to learn about the geological interactions between volcanic activity and water – two key factors in the search for life.
The final part of the course has the astronauts travel to Lofoten, Norway, to focus on rocks similar to the lunar highlands. These will be important locations to explore during the future Artemis missions, as they may hold key information for unravelling the history of the Moon and our Solar System.
The different field locations visited during Pangaea are used to train Alexander and Stephanie on how to read a landscape, collect scientifically relevant samples and effectively communicate their geological observations with teams back on Earth.
Alexander is a geophysicist, volcanologist and more recently International Space Station commander in 2018, and has seen 5700 sunrises and sunsets in space. Pangaea is challenging this seasoned space explorer to become a field scientist in preparation for future deep space missions, where the astronauts will be the eyes and ears of the scientific community on Earth.
Follow Alexander on Twitter for his takes on getting back in the classroom for Pangaea.
Credits: ESA-V. Crobu
"esa inevitable huida
hacia la infancia"
"that inevitable escape
toward childhood "
© Fotografía y prosa: Emili Bermúdez
India is currently facing a prolonged heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 42°C in numerous cities across the country. This comes just weeks after India recorded its hottest March since the country’s meteorological department began its records over 120 years ago. This image, produced using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, shows the land surface temperature across most of the nation.
According to the India Meteorological Department, maximum air temperatures reached 43-46°C over most parts of Rajasthan, Vidarbha, Madhya Pradesh and East Uttar Pradesh; in many parts over Gujarat, interior Odisha; and in some parts of Madhya Maharashtra on 28 April. Forecasters warned that heatwave conditions are expected to continue until 2 May.
Experts at the Indian Institute of Technology’s Water and Climate Lab stated that, in recent years, the number of Indian states hit by heatwaves has increased, as extreme temperatures become more frequent.
Owing to the absence of cloud cover on 29 April (10:30 local time), the Sentinel-3 mission was able to obtain an accurate measurement of the land surface temperature of the ground, which exceeded 60°C in several areas. The data shows that surface temperature in Jaipur and Ahmedabad reached 47°C, while the hottest temperatures recorded are southeast and southwest of Ahmedabad (visible in deep red) with maximum land surface temperatures of around 65°C.
The map was generated by using the mission’s Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer instrument. While weather forecasts use predicted air temperatures, this satellite instrument measures the real amount of energy radiating from Earth. Therefore, the map shows the actual temperature of the land’s surface pictured here, which is usually significantly hotter than air temperatures.
Sentinel-3 can monitor wildfires, map the way the land is used, provide indices of vegetation state, as well as measure the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface. For more information on the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, click here.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Madrugué para que los primeros rayos del sol aparecieran por miespalda y con esa luz dorada del amanecer pusieran color, en este caso, a untrocito de la Ría de Vigo, con su inconfundible puente de Rande que forma yadesde hace décadas, del paisaje de las Rías Baixas.
A veces no ves esa luz...
A veces la buscas...
Con o sin éxito...
Cuando la encuentras, la pierdes´otra vez...
Y cuando de repente un día te tropiezas con ella te come la nostalgia.
No se que es, pero me gusta
:)
Foto tomada desde polideportivo de Santurtzi ^^
At 11:12 GMT (13:12 CEST), 6 June 2018, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst was launched into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The launch went as planned as the 50-m tall Soyuz rocket propelled the astronauts to their cruising speed of around 28 800 km/h. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft accelerated 50 km/h on average.
The spacecraft is an improved model from the last time Alexander was launched into space in 2014 with many technological upgrades to make the spacecraft lighter and more modern. For example, halogen lights have been replaced with LEDs, and newer and larger solar panels increase power generation.
Over the next two days, while circling Earth 34 times, the trio will catch up with the International Space Station where they will spend the next six months. The journey is relatively smooth and quiet after the rigours of launch. With no Internet or satellite phones, the crew relies on radio to communicate at set intervals with ground control.
The German astronaut is a returning visitor to the International Space Station, the first of ESA’s 2009 class of astronauts to be sent into space for a second time. During the second part of his mission Alexander will take over as commander of the International Space Station, only the second time an ESA astronaut will take on this role so far.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Ariane 5 flight VA254 with the Eutelsat Quantum and Star One D2 satellites is being rolled out from the Final Assembly Building (BAF) to the ELA-3 (Ensemble de Lancement Ariane) Ariane 5 launch complex, at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guyana on 29 July 2021.
Quantum, the ESA Partnership Project with Eutelsat, Airbus and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, is a pioneering mission preparing the way for the next generation of telecommunications satellites, which will be more flexible by design and so more adaptable to customer needs once in orbit.
Quantum is a shift from custom-designed satellite with one-off payloads to a more generic approach, resulting in unprecedented in-orbit reconfigurability in coverage, frequency and power, allowing complete mission rehaul, including orbital position.
ESA partnered with satellite operator Eutelsat and manufacturer Airbus to design this programme, in response to today's market requiring satellites to be able to respond to changes in geographical or performance demand, either during manufacturing or after launch. This will enable the operator to address emerging business opportunities — even those that appear after it has ordered a satellite.
Such ESA Partnership Projects maximise the benefits to industry thanks to an efficient, co-managed approach that is tailored to commercial best practice.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The aptly named Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is remarkably Earth-like. Its diameter is only about 40% that of our planet, but Titan’s nitrogen-rich, dense atmosphere and the geological activity at the moon’s surface make comparisons between the two bodies inevitable.
This image, taken with the radar on the Cassini spacecraft, shows just how similar the features in Titan’s surface are to Earth’s landforms.
Aside from Earth, Titan is the only other body where we have found evidence of active erosion on a large scale. There are seas, lakes and rivers filled with liquid hydrocarbons – mainly methane and some ethane – that etch the moon’s surface, in much the same way water erodes Earth’s.
A striking example is Vid Flumina, the Nile-like, branching river system visible on the upper-left quadrant of the image. The river, in the moon’s north polar region, flows into Ligeia Mare, a methane-rich sea that appears as a dark patch on the right side of the image.
Researchers in Italy and the US analysed Cassini radar observations from May 2013 and recently revealed that the narrow channels that branch off Vid Flumina are deep, steep-sided canyons filled with flowing hydrocarbons.
The channels are a little less than a kilometre wide, up to 570 m deep and with slopes steeper than 40º. This suggests they have been sculpted by liquid methane, flowing into the main Vid Flumina river, that has persistently eroded the canyon walls – a geological process reminiscent of the carving of river gorges on our planet.
The study is the first direct evidence of deeply entrenched, methane-flooded channels on Titan. Finding out how they formed provides insights into the moon’s origin and evolution and could help understand similar geological processes on Earth.
The Cassini–Huygens radar team is hoping to observe the Ligeia Mare and Vid Flumina region again in April 2017, during Cassini’s final approach to Titan. The mission is a cooperation between NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency.
Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI
Download full size: www.flickr.com/photos/192271236@N03/54216767452/sizes/o/
See license below.
Credit:
Image Procesing: Andrea Luck CC BY
Raw Data: NASA/ESA/STScI
Image created processing data from: mast.stsci.edu/
Preview raw data and more info: archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/mastpreview?mission=hst&dat...
Target Name: JUPITER-PJ65-20-SEP-2024
Instrument: WFC3
Proposal ID: 17275
PI: Michael Wong
PI Institution: University of California - Berkeley
Time: Sep 20 2024 4:23PM
Data Set: if3108caq, if3108c9q, if3108cbq
Filters used: F658N, F502N, F343N
Credit:
Image Procesing: Andrea Luck CC BY
Raw Data: NASA/ESA/STScI
Feel free to share, giving the appropriate credit and providing a link to the original image or tweet: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
This portrait of NGC 5068 is part of a campaign to create an astronomical treasure trove, a repository of observations of star formation in nearby galaxies. Previous gems from this collection can be seen here and here. These observations are particularly valuable to astronomers for two reasons. The first is because star formation underpins so many fields in astronomy, from the physics of the tenuous plasma that lies between stars to the evolution of entire galaxies. By observing the formation of stars in nearby galaxies, astronomers hope to kick-start major scientific advances with some of the first available data from Webb.
The second reason is that Webb’s observations build on other studies using telescopes including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and some of the world’s most capable ground-based observatories. Webb collected images of 19 nearby star-forming galaxies which astronomers could then combine with catalogues from Hubble of 10 000 star clusters, spectroscopic mapping of 20 000 star-forming emission nebulae from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and observations of 12 000 dark, dense molecular clouds identified by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). These observations span the electromagnetic spectrum and give astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to piece together the minutiae of star formation.
With its ability to peer through the gas and dust enshrouding newborn stars, Webb is the perfect telescope to explore the processes governing star formation. Stars and planetary systems are born amongst swirling clouds of gas and dust that are opaque to observations in visible light, like many from Hubble or the VLT. The keen vision at infrared wavelengths of two of Webb’s instruments — MIRI and NIRCam — allowed astronomers to see right through the gargantuan clouds of dust in NGC 5068 and capture the processes of star formation as they happened. This image combines the capabilities of these two instruments, providing a truly unique look at the composition of NGC 5068.
More: esawebb.org/images/potm2305a/
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team
Image description: Webb’s composite image of barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, showing its core and part of a spiral arm. Clumps and filaments of dust, represented in a mossy green color, form an almost skeletal structure that follow the twist of the galaxy and its spiral arm. Thousands upon thousands of packed, tiny stars that make it up can be seen, most dense in a whitish bar in the top left quadrant, which is the region that forms its core. Large, glowing bubbles of gas, represented in red, are hidden in the dust. The background is a dark forest green.
The light that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this Picture of the Week reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its source was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy: it sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust.
What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its centre, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of the Sun is growing. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show. Material trapped by the black hole emits light from gamma rays to radio waves and can brighten and fade without warning. But in some galaxies, including UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light. Despite this, UGC 11397's actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission — high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in visible light by a doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.
Using Hubble, researchers will study hundreds of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbour a supermassive black hole that is gaining mass. The Hubble observations will help researchers weigh nearby supermassive black holes, understand how black holes grew early in the Universe’s history, and even study how stars form in the extreme environment found at the very centre of a galaxy.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, seen at an angle that gives it an oval shape. It has two spiral arms that curl out from the centre. They start narrow but broaden out as they wrap around the galaxy before merging into a faint halo. The galaxy’s disc is golden in the centre with a bright core, and pale blue outside that. A swirl of dark dust strands and speckled blue star-forming regions follow the arms through the disc.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth; CC BY 4.0