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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043. We don’t see the galaxy’s spiral arms because we are seeing it from the side. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that we see edge-on.
This edge-on viewpoint makes the galaxy’s disk appear as a sharp line through space, with its prominent dust lanes forming thick bands of clouds that obscure our view of the galaxy’s glow. If we could fly above the galaxy, viewing it from the top down, we would see this dust scattered across UGC 10043, possibly outlining its spiral arms. Despite the dust’s obscuring nature, some active star-forming regions shine out from behind the dark clouds. We can also see that the galaxy’s center sports a glowing, almost egg-shaped ‘bulge’, rising far above and below the disk. All spiral galaxies have a bulge similar to this one as part of their structure. These bulges hold stars that orbit the galactic center on paths above and below the whirling disk; it’s a feature that isn’t normally obvious in pictures of galaxies. The unusually large size of this bulge compared to the galaxy’s disk is possibly due to UGC 10043 siphoning material from a nearby dwarf galaxy. This may also be why its disk appears warped, bending up at one end and down at the other.
Like most full-color Hubble images, this image is a composite, made up of several individual snapshots taken by Hubble at different times, each capturing different wavelengths of light. One notable aspect of this image is that the two sets of data that comprise this image were collected 23 years apart, in 2000 and 2023! Hubble’s longevity doesn’t just afford us the ability to produce new and better images of old targets; it also provides a long-term archive of data which only becomes more and more useful to astronomers.
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This Hubble Space Telescope captures a three-way gravitational tug-of-war between interacting galaxies. This system —known as Arp 195— is featured in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a list which showcases some of the weirder and more wonderful galaxies in the universe.
Observing time with the Hubble Space Telescope is extremely valuable, so astronomers don't want to waste a second. The schedule for Hubble observations is calculated using a computer algorithm which allows the spacecraft to occasionally gather bonus snapshots of data between longer observations. This image of the clashing triplet of galaxies in Arp 195 is one such snapshot. Extra observations such as these do more than provide spectacular images — they also help to identify promising targets to follow up with telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2130a/
NASA's #DARTMission intentionally impacted the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, slightly changing the trajectory of its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. In the aftermath of that impact, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a swarm of boulders that were possibly shaken off the asteroid when the half-ton spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos at approximately 14,000 miles per hour. It is estimated that the impact shook off two percent of the boulders on the asteroid's surface.
Image description: Against the black of space, a line of blue light arcs from the lower left of the image to the upper right corner, from behind a bright, pale point shining at the end of the streak. Very faint blue dots surrounding this streaking asteroid are boulders that have been knocked away from it.
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The tranquil spiral galaxy UGC 12295 basks leisurely in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies around 192 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces and is almost face-on when viewed from Earth, displaying a bright central bar and tightly wound spiral arms.
Despite its tranquil appearance, UGC 12295 played host to a catastrophically violent explosion – a supernova – detected in 2015. Supernovae are the explosive deaths of massive stars and are responsible for forging many of the elements found here on Earth.
Two different teams of astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to observe UGC 12295 and sift through the wreckage of this vast stellar explosion. The first team examined the supernova’s detritus to better understand the evolution of matter in our universe.
The second team of astronomers also explored the aftermath of UGC 12295’s supernova, but their investigation focused on returning to the sites of some of the best-studied nearby earlier supernovae. Hubble’s keen vision can reveal lingering traces of these energetic events, shedding light on the nature of the systems that host them.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko, J. Lyman
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-peers-at-a...
This glittering ball of stars is the globular cluster NGC 1898, which lies near the center of our galactic neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. That dwarf galaxy hosts an extremely rich population of star clusters, making it an ideal laboratory for investigating star formation.
Discovered in November 1834 by British astronomer John Herschel, NGC 1898 has been scrutinized numerous times by @NASAHubble. Today we know that globular clusters are some of the oldest known objects in the universe and are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation.
We already have a pretty good understanding of the Milky Way’s globular clusters. Our studies on globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies just started. Observations of NGC 1898 will help to determine whether their properties are similar to the ones in our Milky Way, or if they have different features due to being in a different cosmic environment.
This image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Generally, globular star clusters tend to have really old stars, but @NASAHubble found one close to the Milky Way with a profusion of younger stars.
Called NGC 1866, this cluster is found at the very edges of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy located near the Milky Way. The cluster was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, who cataloged thousands of stars and deep-sky objects during his career.
NGC 1866 is also situated close enough that its stars can be studied individually — no small feat given the mammoth distances involved in studying the cosmos! There is still debate over how globular clusters form, but generally, most of their stars are old and have few elements other than hydrogen and helium; since stars form heavier elements within their core as they carry out nuclear fusion throughout their lifetimes, stars with many heavier elements tend to be younger, formed later in the cosmic time-scale. It’s possible that the stars within globular clusters are so old that they were actually some of the very first to form after the big bang.
In the case of NGC 1866, though, not all stars are the same. Different populations, or generations, of stars are thought to coexist within the cluster. Once the first generation of stars formed, the cluster may have encountered a giant gas cloud that sparked a new wave of star formation and gave rise to a second, younger generation of stars — explaining why it seems surprisingly youthful.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Dotted across the sky in the constellation of Pictor (the Painter’s Easel) is the galaxy cluster highlighted here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope: SPT-CL J0615-5746, or SPT0615 for short.
SPT0615, first discovered by the South Pole Telescope less than a decade ago, is a massive cluster of galaxies, one of the farthest observed to cause gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when light from a background object is deflected around mass between the object and the observer. Among the identified background objects, there is SPT0615-JD, a galaxy that is thought to have emerged just 500 million years after the big bang. This puts it among the very earliest structures to form in the universe. It is also the farthest galaxy ever imaged by means of gravitational lensing.
Just as ancient paintings can tell us about the period of history in which they were painted, so too can ancient galaxies tell us about the era of the universe in which they existed. To learn about cosmological history, astronomers explore the most distant reaches of the universe, probing ever further out into the cosmos. The light from distant objects travels to us from so far away that it takes an immensely long time to reach us, meaning that it carries information from the past — information about the time at which it was emitted.
By studying such distant objects, astronomers are continuing to fill the gaps in our picture of what the very early universe looked like, and uncover more about how it evolved into its current state.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, I. Karachentsev et al., F. High et al.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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This spectacular image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures the spiral galaxy NGC 105, which lies roughly 215 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.
While it looks like NGC 105 is plunging edge-on into a neighboring galaxy, this is just a circumstance of perspective. NGC 105’s elongated neighbor is actually far more distant. Such visual associations are the result of our Earthly perspective and they occur frequently in astronomy.
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 observations in this image are from a vast collection of Hubble measurements examining nearby galaxies that contain two fascinating astronomical phenomena – Cepheid variable stars and cataclysmic supernova explosions. While these two phenomena may appear unrelated – one is a peculiar class of pulsating stars and the other is the explosion caused by the catastrophic death of a massive star – astronomers use both to measure the vast distances to astronomical objects.
Both Cepheids and supernovae have very predictable luminosities. Astronomers use these so-called “standard candles” to determine distances by comparing how bright these objects appear from Earth to their actual brightness. NGC 105 contains both supernovae and Cepheid variables, giving astronomers the opportunity to calibrate the two distance measurement techniques against one another.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Jones, A. Riess et al.
Acknowledgement: R. Colombari
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2201a/
NGC 1569 Hubble Palette Credit: NASA/Hubble, Color/Effects thedemon-hauntedworld
Source by NathalieTachet
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Although astronomers have been studying galaxy IC 5063 for decades, it took a non-scientist to make the surprising discovery. Judy Schmidt, an artist and amateur astronomer based in Modesto, California, uncovered the dark shadows when she reprocessed @NASAHubble exposures of the galaxy in December 2019. Schmidt routinely culls the Hubble archive for interesting observations that she can turn into beautiful images. She shares those images on her Twitter feed with her many followers, who include astronomers such as Peter Maksym of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Schmidt selected the Hubble observations of IC 5063 from the archive because she is interested in galaxies that have active cores. The cone-shaped shadows were not apparent in the original exposures, so she was surprised to see them in her reprocessed image. "I had no idea they were there, and even after I'd processed it, I kept blinking my eyes wondering if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing," she said.
She immediately posted her image to her Twitter account. "It was something I'd never seen before, and even though I had strong suspicions about them being shadow rays or 'crepuscular rays,' as Peter has dubbed them, it's easy to let one's imagination and wishful thinking run wild," she explained. "I figured if I was wrong, someone would come to ground me."
The image prompted a Twitter discussion among her followers, including Maksym, who debated the rays' origin. Maksym had already been analyzing Hubble images of the jets produced by the galaxy's black hole. So he took the lead in studying the rays and writing a science paper. His study is based on near-infrared observations made by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys in March and November 2019. Red and near-infrared light pierces the dusty galaxy to reveal the details that may be enshrouded in dust.
Read more: go.nasa.gov/3fdtRkG
Credit: NASA, ESA, and W.P. Maksym (CfA)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Sweeping spiral arms extend from NGC 4536, littered with bright blue clusters of star formation and red clumps of hydrogen gas shining among dark lanes of dust. The galaxy’s shape may seem a little unusual, and that’s because it’s what’s known as an “intermediate galaxy”: not quite a barred spiral, but not exactly an unbarred spiral, either - a hybrid of the two.
NGC 4536 is also a starburst galaxy, in which star formation is happening at a tremendous rate that uses up the gas in the galaxy relatively quickly, by galactic standards. Starburst galaxies can happen due to gravitational interactions with other galaxies or - as seems to be the case for NGC 4536 - when gas is packed into a small region. The bar-like structure of NGC 4536 may be driving gas inwards toward the nucleus, giving rise to a crescendo of star formation in a ring around the nucleus. Starburst galaxies birth lots of hot blue stars that burn fast and die quickly in explosions that unleash intense ultraviolet light (visible in blue), turning their surroundings into glowing clouds of ionized hydrogen, called HII regions (visible in red).
NGC 4536 is approximately 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered in 1784 by astronomer William Herschel. Hubble took this image of NGC 4536 as part of a project to study galactic environments to understand connections between young stars and cold gas, particularly star clusters and molecular clouds, throughout the local universe.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lee (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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Pismis 24, the star cluster seen here in an image released on Dec. 11, 2006, lies within the much larger emission nebula called NGC 6357, located about 8,000 light-years from Earth. The brightest object in the picture was once thought to be a single star with an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses. That would have made it by far the most massive known star in the galaxy and would have put it considerably above the currently believed upper mass limit of about 150 solar masses for individual stars. Measurements from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, however, discovered that Pismis 24-1 is actually two separate stars, and, in doing so, “halved” their mass to around 100-150 solar masses each.
Credit: NASA, ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain); Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light. The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them. Like the wake of a speeding boat, the bow shocks in this image have an arc-like appearance as the fast-moving jet from the young star slams into the surrounding dust and gas. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object with a more distant spiral galaxy in the background. Herbig-Haro 49/50 gives researchers insights into the early phases of the formation of low-mass stars similar to our own Sun. In this Webb image, blue represents light at 2.0-microns (F200W), cyan represents light at 3.3-microns (F335M), green is 4.4-microns (F444W), orange is 4.7-microns (F470N), and red is 7.7-microns (F770W).
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
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The light that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this image 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 center, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of our Sun grows. 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 donut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
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As part of ESA/Hubble's 35th anniversary celebrations, the European Space Agency (ESA) is sharing a new image series revisiting stunning, previously released Hubble targets with the addition of the latest Hubble data and new processing techniques.
ESA/Hubble published a new image of NGC 346 as the first installment in the series. Now, they are revisiting a fan-favorite galaxy with new image processing techniques. The new image reveals finer detail in the galaxy’s disk, as well as more background stars and galaxies.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Noll
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sparkling cloudscape from one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbors, a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Located 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the Milky Way’s many small satellite galaxies.
This view of dusty gas clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud is possible thanks to Hubble’s cameras, such as the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that collected the observations for this image. WFC3 holds a variety of filters, and each lets through specific wavelengths, or colors, of light. This image combines observations made with five different filters, including some that capture ultraviolet and infrared light that the human eye cannot see.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
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In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope peers into the spiral galaxy NGC 1317 in the constellation Fornax, located more than 50 million light-years from Earth. Visible in this galaxy image is a bright blue ring that hosts hot, young stars. NGC 1317 is one of a pair, but its rowdy larger neighbor, NGC 1316, lies outside Hubble’s field of view. Despite the absence of its neighboring galaxy, this image finds NGC 1317 accompanied by two objects from very different parts of the universe. The bright point ringed with a crisscross pattern is a star from our own galaxy surrounded by diffraction spikes, whereas the redder elongated smudge is a distant galaxy lying far beyond NGC 1317.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
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A previously unexplored globular cluster glitters with multicolored stars in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. Globular clusters like this one, called ESO 591-12 or Palomar 8, are spherical collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars tightly bound together by gravity. Globular clusters generally form early in the galaxies’ histories in regions rich in gas and dust. Since the stars form from the same cloud of gas as it collapses, they typically hover around the same age. Strewn across this image of ESO 591-12 are a number of red and blue stars. The colors indicate their temperatures; red stars are cooler, while the blue stars are hotter.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Massari (INAF — Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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The subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the stunning spiral galaxy NGC 5530. This galaxy is situated 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus, the Wolf, and classified as a ‘flocculent’ spiral, meaning its spiral arms are patchy and indistinct.
While some galaxies have extraordinarily bright centers that host a feasting supermassive black hole, the bright source near the center of NGC 5530 is not an active black hole but a star within our own galaxy, only 10,000 light-years from Earth. This chance alignment gives the appearance that the star is at the dense heart of NGC 5530.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
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The swirling, paint-like clouds in the darkness of space in this stunning image seem surreal, like a portal to another world opening before us. In fact, the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is very real. We are seeing vast clouds of ionized atoms thrown into space by a dying star. This is a planetary nebula named Kohoutek 4-55, a member of the Milky Way galaxy situated just 4,600 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan).
Planetary nebulae are the spectacular final display at the end of a giant star’s life. Once a red giant star has exhausted its available fuel and shed its last layers of gas, its compact core will contract further, enabling a final burst of nuclear fusion. The exposed core reaches extremely hot temperatures, radiating ultraviolet light that energizes the enormous clouds of gas cast off by the star. The ultraviolet light ionizes atoms in the gas, making the clouds glow brightly. In this image, red and orange indicate nitrogen, green is hydrogen, and blue shows oxygen. Kohoutek 4-55 has an uncommon, multi-layered form: a faint layer of gas surrounds a bright inner ring, all wrapped in a broad halo of ionized nitrogen. The spectacle is bittersweet, as the brief phase of fusion in the core will end after only tens of thousands of years, leaving a white dwarf that will never illuminate the clouds around it again.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Noll
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The spiral galaxy known as Messier 81 (M81) has a rosy tint in this June 1, 2007, composite image that incorporates data from NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, and NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Discovered by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774, M81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky. It is located 11.6 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.
The galaxy’s spiral arms, which wind all the way down into its nucleus, are made up of young, bluish, hot stars formed in the past few million years. They also host a population of stars formed in an episode of star formation that started about 600 million years ago.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
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The universe is a dusty place, as this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image featuring swirling clouds of gas and dust near the Tarantula Nebula reveals. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Tarantula Nebula is the most productive star-forming region in the nearby universe, home to the most massive stars known.
The nebula’s colorful gas clouds hold wispy tendrils and dark clumps of dust. This dust is different from ordinary household dust, which may include of bits of soil, skin cells, hair, and even plastic. Cosmic dust is often comprised of carbon or of molecules called silicates, which contain silicon and oxygen. The data in this image was part of an observing program that aims to characterize the properties of cosmic dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud and other nearby galaxies.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image offers us the chance to see a distant galaxy now some 19.5 billion light-years from Earth (but appearing as it did around 11 billion years ago, when the galaxy was 5.5 billion light-years away and began its trek to us through expanding space). Known as HerS 020941.1+001557, this remote galaxy appears as a red arc partially encircling a foreground elliptical galaxy located some 2.7 billion light-years away. Called SDSS J020941.27+001558.4, the elliptical galaxy appears as a bright dot at the center of the image with a broad haze of stars outward from its core. A third galaxy, called SDSS J020941.23+001600.7, seems to be intersecting part of the curving, red crescent of light created by the distant galaxy.
The alignment of this trio of galaxies creates a type of gravitational lens called an Einstein ring. Gravitational lenses occur when light from a very distant object bends (or is ‘lensed’) around a massive (or ‘lensing’) object located between us and the distant lensed galaxy. When the lensed object and the lensing object align, they create an Einstein ring. Einstein rings can appear as a full or partial circle of light around the foreground lensing object, depending on how precise the alignment is. The effects of this phenomenon are much too subtle to see on a local level but can become clearly observable when dealing with curvatures of light on enormous, astronomical scales.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Nayyeri, L. Marchetti, J. Lowenthal
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Westerlund 2, a giant cluster of 3,000 stars, resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29. The Hubble Space Telescope pierced through the dusty veil shrouding the stellar nursery by observing 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.
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team
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Arp 105 is a dazzling ongoing merger between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy drawn together by gravity, characterized by a long, drawn out tidal tail of stars and gas more than 362,000 light-years long. The immense tail, which extends beyond this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, was pulled from the two galaxies by their gravitational interactions and is embedded with star clusters and dwarf galaxies. The distinctively shaped arrangement of galaxies and tail gives the grouping its nickname: The Guitar.
The gravitational dance between elliptical galaxy NGC 3561B and spiral galaxy NGC 3561A creates a wealth of fascinating colliding galaxy features. A long lane of dark dust emerging from the elliptical galaxy ends in, and may be feeding, a bright blue area of star formation on the base of the guitar known as Ambartsumian’s Knot. Ambartsumian’s Knot is a tidal dwarf galaxy, a type of star-forming system that develops from the debris in tidal arms of interacting galaxies.
Two more bright blue areas of star formation are obvious in the Hubble image at the edges of the distorted spiral galaxy. The region to the left in the spiral galaxy is likely very similar to Ambartsumian’s Knot, a knot of intense star formation triggered by the merger. The region to the right is still under investigation - it could be part of the collision, but its velocity and spectral data (indicating distance) are different from the rest of the system, so it may be a foreground galaxy.
Thin, faint tendrils of gas and dust are just barely visible stretching between and connecting the two galaxies. These tendrils are particularly interesting to astronomers since they may help define the timescale of the evolution of this collision.
Credit: NASA, ESA and M. West (Lowell Observatory); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a dusty yet sparkling scene from one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy situated about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.
Despite being only 10–20% as massive as the Milky Way galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud contains some of the most impressive nearby star-forming regions. The scene pictured here is on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula, the largest and most productive star-forming region in the local universe. At its center, the Tarantula Nebula hosts the most massive stars known, weighing roughly 200 times the mass of the Sun.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
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A beautiful but skewed spiral galaxy dazzles in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy, called Arp 184 or NGC 1961, sits about 190 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).
The name Arp 184 comes from the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies compiled by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. It holds 338 galaxies that are oddly shaped and tend to be neither entirely elliptical nor entirely spiral-shaped. Many of the galaxies are in the process of interacting with other galaxies, while others are dwarf galaxies without well-defined structures. Arp 184 earned its spot in the catalog thanks to its single broad, star-speckled spiral arm that appears to stretch toward us. The galaxy’s far side sports a few wisps of gas and stars, but it lacks a similarly impressive spiral arm.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz), C. Kilpatrick
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a vibrant spiral galaxy called NGC 5042 resides about 48 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (the water snake). The galaxy nicely fills the frame of this Hubble image, while a single, foreground star from the Milky Way shines with cross-shaped diffraction spikes near the galaxy’s edge toward the top, center of the image.
Hubble observed NGC 5042 in six wavelength bands from the ultraviolet to infrared to create this multicolored portrait. The galaxy’s cream-colored center is packed with ancient stars, and the galaxy’s spiral arms are decorated with patches of young, blue stars. The elongated yellow-orange objects scattered around the image are background galaxies far more distant than NGC 5042.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
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This is largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope observations. It is a panoramic view of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. It took over 10 years to make this vast and colorful portrait of the galaxy, requiring over 600 Hubble overlapping snapshots that were challenging to stitch together. The galaxy is so close to us, that in angular size it is six times the apparent diameter of the full Moon, and can be seen with the unaided eye. For Hubble’s pinpoint view, that’s a lot of celestial real estate to cover. This stunning, colorful mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars. That’s still a fraction of Andromeda’s population. And the stars are spread across about 2.5 billion pixels. The detailed look at the resolved stars will help astronomers piece together the galaxy’s past history that includes mergers with smaller satellite galaxies.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Benjamin F. Williams (UWashington), Zhuo Chen (UWashington), L. Clifton Johnson (Northwestern); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image peers into the dusty recesses of the nearest massive star-forming region to Earth, the Orion Nebula (Messier 42, M42). Just 1,500 light-years away, the Orion Nebula is visible to the unaided eye below the three stars that form the ‘belt’ in the constellation Orion. The nebula is home to hundreds of newborn stars including the subject of this image: the protostars HOPS 150 and HOPS 153.
These protostars get their names from the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey, conducted with ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory. The object visible in the upper-right corner of this image is HOPS 150: it’s a binary star system where two young protostars orbit each other.
Extending across the left side of the image is a narrow, colorful outflow called a jet. This jet comes from the nearby protostar HOPS 153, which is out of the frame. HOPS 153 is significantly younger than its neighbor.
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and T. Megeath
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An open cluster of stars shines through misty, cocoon-like gas clouds in this Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 460.
NGC 460 is located in a region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. This particular region contains a number of young star clusters and nebulae of different sizes - all likely related to each other. The clouds of gas and dust can give rise to stars as portions of them collapse, and radiation and stellar winds from those hot, young bright stars in turn shape and compress the clouds, triggering new waves of star formation. The hydrogen clouds are ionized by the radiation of nearby stars, causing them to glow.
The NGC 460 star cluster resides in one of the youngest parts of this interconnected complex of stellar clusters and nebulae, which is also home to a number of O-type stars: the brightest, hottest and most massive of the normal, hydrogen-burning stars (called main-sequence stars) like our Sun. O-type stars are rare - out of more than 4 billion stars in the Milky Way, only about 20,000 are estimated to be O-type stars. The area that holds NGC 460, known as N83, may have been created when two hydrogen clouds in the region collided with one another, creating several O-type stars and nebulae.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and C. Lindberg (The Johns Hopkins University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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Today’s rather aquatic-themed NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy Messier 77, also known as the Squid Galaxy, which sits 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale).
The designation Messier 77 comes from the galaxy’s place in the famous catalog compiled by the French astronomer Charles Messier. Another French astronomer, Pierre Méchain, discovered the galaxy in 1780. Both Messier and Méchain were comet hunters who cataloged nebulous objects that could be mistaken for comets.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. C. Ho, D. Thilker
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has scored big, earning not one, but nine rings! 🏈💍
The telescope has been investigating the gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424, aptly nicknamed the Bullseye. Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a ninth using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Check out the big play that made this happen!
Credit: NASA, ESA, Imad Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale)
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The spiral galaxy NGC 3596 is on display in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image that incorporates six different wavelengths of light. NGC 3596 is situated 90 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo, the Lion. British astronomer Sir William Herschel first documented the galaxy in 1784.
NGC 3596 appears almost perfectly face-on when viewed from Earth, showcasing the galaxy’s neatly wound spiral arms. These bright arms hold concentrations of stars, gas, and dust that mark the area where star formation is most active, illustrated by the brilliant pink star-forming regions and young blue stars tracing NGC 3596’s arms.
What causes these spiral arms to form? It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, partly because spiral galaxies are so diverse. Some have clear spiral arms, while others have patchy, feathery arms. Some have prominent bars across their centers, while others have compact, circular nuclei. Some have close neighbors, while others are isolated.
Early ideas of how spiral arms formed stumped astronomers with the ‘winding problem’. If a galaxy’s spiral arms are coherent structures, its arms would wind tighter and tighter as the galaxy spins, until the arms are no longer visible. Now, researchers believe that spiral arms represent a pattern of high-density and low-density areas rather than a physical structure. As stars, gas, and dust orbit within a galaxy’s disk, they pass in and out of the spiral arms. Much like cars moving through a traffic jam, these materials slow down and bunch up as they enter a spiral arm, before emerging and continuing their journey through the galaxy.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
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As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, the European Space Agency (ESA) is sharing a new image series revisiting stunning, previously released Hubble targets with the addition of the latest Hubble data and new processing techniques.
This new image showcases the dazzling young star cluster NGC 346. Although both the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble have released images of NGC 346 previously, this image includes new data and is the first to combine Hubble observations made at infrared, optical, and ultraviolet wavelengths into an intricately detailed view of this vibrant star-forming factory.
This dazzling NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the young star cluster NGC 346.
NGC 346 is in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way that lies 200,000 light-years away in the constellation Tucana. The Small Magellanic Cloud is less rich in elements heavier than helium — what astronomers call metals — than the Milky Way. This makes conditions in the galaxy similar to what existed in the early universe.
NGC 346 is home to more than 2,500 newborn stars. The cluster’s most massive stars, which are many times more massive than our Sun, blaze with an intense blue light in this image. The glowing pink nebula and snakelike dark clouds are sculpted by the luminous stars in the cluster.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Nota, P. Massey, E. Sabbi, C. Murray, M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the picturesque spiral galaxy NGC 4941, which lies about 67 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo (The Maiden). Because this galaxy is nearby, cosmically speaking, Hubble’s keen instruments are able to pick out exquisite details such as individual star clusters and filamentary clouds of gas and dust.
The data used to construct this image were collected as part of an observing program that investigates the star formation and stellar feedback cycle in nearby galaxies. As stars form in dense, cold clumps of gas, they begin to influence their surroundings. Stars heat and stir up the gas clouds in which they form through winds, starlight, and — eventually, for massive stars — by exploding as supernovae. These processes are collectively called stellar feedback, and they influence the rate at which a galaxy can form new stars.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Nota, P. Massey, E. Sabbi, C. Murray, M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)
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Between 2003 and 2004, @NASAHubble spent more than 11 days taking what would become known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a view of nearly 10,000 galaxies. In 2022, Webb took less than 24 hours to observe that same target in high-resolution.
Why are we revisiting this field? We don’t exactly know how galaxies became how they are today. With its sensitivity, Webb is helping astronomers hunt for the first galaxies and better understand star formation and other galactic properties in the early universe.
In addition, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field has long been studied by a variety of telescopes. Webb’s new data complements previous data sets by providing detailed information for just about all of the galaxies in this field, allowing scientists to piece together the bigger picture.
Read more: blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2023/04/12/webb-shows-areas-of-new-st...
This image: The capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera are on full display in this comparison between Hubble’s and Webb’s observation of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The left, which demonstrates Hubble’s observation with its Wide Field Camera 3, required an exposure time of 11.3 days, while the right only took 0.83 days. Several areas within the Webb image reveal previously invisible, red galaxies.Download the full resolution from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Image description: A comparison between two images, one on the left and one on the right separated by a white line. The image on the left has a caption on the bottom that says, “Hubble UDF (exposure time: 11.3 days)”, while the image on the right has a caption on the bottom that says “Webb (exposure time: 0.83 days)”. The image on the left shows thousands of galaxies with many different colors. Most are orange and yellow while others are white and blue. Many of these galaxies appear as fuzzy ovals, but others look thin and long or have distinct spiral arms. Within the image is a yellow box, angled about 30 degrees off center, which contains a label on its bottom right that says “Webb’s field of view”. The image on the right shows a box with the same angle. Inside this box are many of the same galaxies seen in the box on the left in different colors. The orange galaxies on the left image are white or yellow on the right. There are a few galaxies spread throughout the right image that are clearer than those on the left.
A previously unexplored globular cluster glitters with multicolored stars in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. Globular clusters like this one, called ESO 591-12 or Palomar 8, are spherical collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars tightly bound together by gravity. Globular clusters generally form early in the galaxies’ histories in regions rich in gas and dust. Since the stars form from the same cloud of gas as it collapses, they typically hover around the same age. Strewn across this image of ESO 591-12 are a number of red and blue stars. The colors indicate their temperatures; red stars are cooler, while the blue stars are hotter.
Hubble captured the data used to create this image of ESO 591-12 as part of a study intended to resolve individual stars of the entire globular cluster system of the Milky Way. Hubble revolutionized the study of globular clusters since earthbound telescopes are unable to distinguish individual stars in the compact clusters. The study is part of the Hubble Missing Globular Clusters Survey, which targets 34 confirmed Milky Way globular clusters that Hubble has yet to observe.
The program aims to provide complete observations of ages and distances for all of the Milky Way’s globular clusters and investigate fundamental properties of still-unexplored clusters in the galactic bulge or halo. The observations will provide key information on the early stages of our galaxy, when globular clusters formed.
Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Massari (INAF — Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For more information: science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-observations-give...
Say hello to one of the Milky Way’s neighbors! This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a scene from one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is a dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away. Most of the galaxy resides in the constellation Tucana, but a small section crosses over into the neighboring constellation Hydrus.
Thanks to its proximity, the SMC is one of only a few galaxies that are visible from Earth without the help of a telescope or binoculars. For viewers in the southern hemisphere and some latitudes in the northern hemisphere, the SMC resembles a piece of the Milky Way that has broken off, though in reality it’s much farther away than any part of our own galaxy.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Andersen (European Southern Observatory - Germany); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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Say hello to one of the Milky Way’s neighbors! This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a scene from one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is a dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away. Most of the galaxy resides in the constellation Tucana, but a small section crosses over into the neighboring constellation Hydrus.
Thanks to its proximity, the SMC is one of only a few galaxies that are visible from Earth without the help of a telescope or binoculars. For viewers in the southern hemisphere and some latitudes in the northern hemisphere, the SMC resembles a piece of the Milky Way that has broken off, though in reality it’s much farther away than any part of our own galaxy.
Credit: NASA, ESA and M. West (Lowell Observatory); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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A supernova and its host galaxy are the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy in question is LEDA 132905 in the constellation Sculptor. Even at more than 400 million light-years away, LEDA 132905’s spiral structure is faintly visible, as are patches of bright blue stars.
The bright pinkish-white dot in the center of the image, between the bright center of the galaxy and its faint left edge, is a supernova named SN 2022abvt. Discovered in late 2022, Hubble observed SN 2022abvt about two months later. This image uses data from a study of Type Ia supernovae, which occur when the exposed core of a dead star ignites in a sudden, destructive burst of nuclear fusion. Researchers are interested in this type of supernova because they can use them to measure precise distances to other galaxies.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz)
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The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, the River.
This image comes from an observing program dedicated to studying star formation in nearby galaxies. Stars form in cold, dusty gas clouds that collapse under their own gravity. As young stars grow, they heat their nurseries through starlight, winds, and powerful outflows. Together, these factors play a role in controlling the rate at which future generations of stars form.
NGC 1637 holds evidence of star formation scattered throughout its disk, if you know where to look. The galaxy’s spiral arms have pockets of pink clouds, many with bright blue stars. The pinkish color comes from hydrogen atoms excited by ultraviolet light from young, massive stars forming within the clouds. This contrasts with the warm yellow glow of the galaxy’s center, which is home to a densely packed collection of older, redder stars.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
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The sparkling spiral galaxy gracing this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is UGC 5460, which sits about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. This image combines four different wavelengths of light to reveal UGC 5460’s central bar of stars, winding spiral arms, and bright blue star clusters. Also captured in the upper left-hand corner is a far closer object: a star just 577 light-years away in our own galaxy.
UGC 5460 has hosted two recent supernovae: SN 2011ht and SN 2015as. It’s because of these two stellar explosions that Hubble targeted this galaxy, collecting data for three observing programs that aim to study various kinds of supernovae.
SN 2015as was as a core-collapse supernova: a cataclysmic explosion that happens when the core of a star far more massive than the Sun runs out of fuel and collapses under its own gravity, initiating a rebound of material outside the core. Hubble observations of SN 2015as will help researchers understand what happens when the expanding shockwave of a supernova collides with the gas that surrounds the exploded star.
SN 2011ht might have been a core-collapse supernova as well, but it could also be an impostor called a luminous blue variable. Luminous blue variables are rare stars that experience eruptions so large that they can mimic supernovae. Crucially, luminous blue variables emerge from these eruptions unscathed, while stars that go supernova do not. Hubble will search for a stellar survivor at SN 2011ht’s location with the goal of revealing the explosion’s origin.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Jacobson-Galán, A. Filippenko, J. Mauerhan
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Happy {early} birthday Hubble! 🎉
After more than three decades of perusing the universe, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope 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.
#NASAMarshall served as the lead NASA field center for the design, development, and construction of the space telescope. Our center was also used to train astronauts on servicing Hubble while in space using Marshall's Neutral Buoyancy Simulator (NBS) as seen in this image.
Hubble will mark 35 years in Earth's orbit on April 24, 2025. To celebrate, NASA is releasing an assortment of compelling images recently taken by Hubble, stretching from the planet Mars to star-forming regions, and a neighboring galaxy. View those and more at nasa.gov/hubble.
Image description: Underwater training is conducted in Marshall's Neutral Buoyancy Simulator (NBS) in preparation for on-orbit Hubble Space Telescope operations. The NBS is a large pool of water that houses a mock-up of the Hubble Space Telescope and a shuttle cargo bay. An astronaut in a full EVA suit, as well as several members of the training crew wearing scuba gear, are seen performing check-out procedures on the Hubble Space Telescope mock-up inside the NBS.
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Knot your average discovery!
We thought there was just one, but Webb revealed there are at least 3 galaxies forming a cosmic knot around this quasar. A quasar is a super bright galactic core, powered by a supermassive black hole.
This quasar existed 11.5 billion years ago, and it is unusually “red” — meaning its galaxy’s light has been “redshifted,” or stretched into longer, infrared wavelengths as the universe expands. Data from telescopes like @NASAHubble had shown extended material surrounding this quasar, prompting further study using Webb. With Webb’s NIRSpec instrument, researchers were finally able to map the motions of the material and discover a whole cluster of galaxies!
In the graphic, at left is a Hubble image highlighting the quasar. The images on the right and at the bottom present new observations from Webb in multiple wavelengths. They demonstrate the distribution, speed and direction of gas within the newly observed galaxy cluster around the quasar. The redder the color, the faster the gas is moving away from our line of sight relative to the quasar; the bluer the color, the faster it's moving toward us. The color green indicates that the gas is steady in our line of sight relative to the quasar.
We know of very few “baby” galaxy clusters from the early universe, and Webb offers researchers a rare, exciting opportunity to expand our understanding of how clusters like this one form and evolve: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-uncovers-de...
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, D. Wylezalek (Heidelberg Univ.), A. Vayner and N. Zakamska (Johns Hopkins Univ.) and the Q-3D Team
[Image description: Infographic titled “Motions of Gas Around an Extremely Red Quasar.” On the left is a Hubble image of a field of galaxies, with one central galaxy spotlighted. On the right is a zoomed-in, multicolor image of that same galaxy, newly revealed by Webb to be part of a galaxy cluster. Four single-color images, taken by Webb in various wavelengths, make up the multicolor image and can be found in more detail at the bottom of the graphic. These images show light from the gas (doubly ionized oxygen atoms) in the galaxy cluster. A color code explains that color represents the motion of the gas, including direction and speed relative to the quasar. From left to right: the first image (blue) shows gas moving toward us at 350 kilometers per second; the second (green) shows gas steady in our line of sight at 0 kilometers per second; the third (orange) shows gas moving away at 370 kilometers per second; the fourth (red) also shows gas moving away, but at 700 kilometers per second.]
Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in this 2012 image shows the distribution of hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters that is located about 2.4 billion light years from Earth, and provides evidence that a collision took place.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, which sits 76 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. A prominent bar of stars stretches across the center of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each end of the bar. Because NGC 2566 appears tilted from our perspective, its disk takes on an almond shape, giving the galaxy the appearance of a cosmic eye.
As NGC 2566 appears to gaze at us, astronomers gaze right back, using Hubble to survey the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions. The Hubble data are especially valuable for studying stars that are just a few million years old; these stars are bright at the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to which Hubble is sensitive. Using these data, researchers can measure the ages of NGC 2566’s stars, which helps piece together the timeline of the galaxy’s star formation and the exchange of gas between star-forming clouds and the stars themselves.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
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Against an inky black backdrop, the blue swirls of spiral galaxy NGC 6956 stand out radiantly. NGC 6956 is a barred spiral galaxy, a common type of spiral galaxy with a bar-shaped structure of stars in its center. This galaxy exists 214 million light-years away in the constellation Delphinus.
Scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to image NGC 6956 to study its Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that brighten and dim at regular periods. Since the period of Cepheid variable stars is a function of their brightness, scientists can measure how bright these stars appear from Earth and compare it to their actual brightness to calculate their distance. As a result, these stars are extremely useful in determining the distance of cosmic objects, which is one of the hardest pieces of information to measure for extragalactic objects.
This galaxy also contains a Type Ia supernova, which is the explosion of a white dwarf star that was gradually accreting matter from a companion star. Like Cepheid variable stars, the brightness of these types of supernovae and how fast they dim over time enables scientists to calculate their distance. Scientists can use the measurements gleaned from Cepheid variable stars and Type Ia supernovae to refine our understanding of the rate of expansion of the universe, also known as the Hubble Constant.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jones (University of California – Santa Cruz); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For more information, visit: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-captures-m...
Between 2003 and 2004, @NASAHubble spent more than 11 days taking what would become known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a view of nearly 10,000 galaxies. In 2022, Webb took less than 24 hours to observe that same target in high-resolution.
Why are we revisiting this field? We don’t exactly know how galaxies became how they are today. With its sensitivity, Webb is helping astronomers hunt for the first galaxies and better understand star formation and other galactic properties in the early universe.
In addition, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field has long been studied by a variety of telescopes. Webb’s new data complements previous data sets by providing detailed information for just about all of the galaxies in this field, allowing scientists to piece together the bigger picture.
Read more: blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2023/04/12/webb-shows-areas-of-new-st...
This image: This image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field was taken by the Near-Infrared Camera on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The Webb image observes the field at depths comparable to Hubble – revealing galaxies of similar faintness – in just one-tenth as much observing time. It includes 1.8-micron light shown in blue, 2.1-micron light shown in green, 4.3-micron light shown in yellow, 4.6-micron light shown in orange, and 4.8-micron light shown in red (filters F182M, F210M, F430M, F460M, and F480M). Download the full resolution from the Space Telescope Science Institute..
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph DePasquale, Christina Williams (NSF’s NOIRLab).
Image description: A rectangular image that appears to be two separate square images separated by a wide black gap. The gap obscures the galaxies present between the two square images. Each square image contains thousands of galaxies with many different colors. Some galaxies are shades of yellow, while others are white or blue. Most of these galaxies appear as fuzzy ovals, but others appear thin and long. A few galaxies with distinct spiral arms are spread throughout.
A colorful, festive image shows different types of light containing the remains of not one, but at least two, exploded stars. This supernova remnant is known as 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B for short) and is part of a larger region of space where stars have been continuously forming for the past 8 to 10 million years. It is a complex landscape of dark clouds of gas, young stars, high-energy shocks, and superheated gas, located 160,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The new image of 30 Dor B was made by combining X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), optical data from the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile (orange and cyan), and infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (red). Optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was also added in black and white to highlight sharp features in the image.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/HST; Infrared: NASA/JPL/CalTech/SST; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, N. Wolk, K. Arcand
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