View allAll Photos Tagged spacescience
Located around 5000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), Abell 78 is an unusual type of planetary nebula.
After exhausting the nuclear fuel in their cores, stars with a mass of around 0.8 to 8 times the mass of our Sun collapse to form dense and hot white dwarf stars. As this process occurs, the dying star will throw off its outer layers of material, forming an elaborate cloud of gas and dust known as a planetary nebula. This phenomenon is not uncommon, and planetary nebulae are a popular focus for astrophotographers because of their often beautiful and complex shapes. However, a few like Abell 78 are the result of a so-called “born again” star.
Although the core of the star has stopped burning hydrogen and helium, a thermonuclear runaway at its surface ejects material at high speeds. This ejecta shocks and sweeps up the material of the old nebula, producing the filaments and irregular shell around the central star seen in this Picture of the Week, which features data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and PANSTARSS.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Guerrero; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
The stars are in constant motion. To the human eye this movement – known as proper motion – is imperceptible, but Gaia is measuring it with more and more precision. The trails on this image show how 40 000 stars, all located within 100 parsecs (326 light years) of the Solar System, will move across the sky in the next 400 thousand years. These proper motions are released as part of the Gaia Early Data Release 3 (Gaia EDR3). They are twice as precise as the proper motions released in the previous Gaia DR2. The increase in precision is because Gaia has now measured the stars more times and over a longer interval of time. This represents a major improvement in Gaia EDR3 with respect to Gaia DR2.
Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Acknowledgement: A. Brown, S. Jordan, T. Roegiers, X. Luri, E. Masana, T. Prusti and A. Moitinho.
This observation from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the massive galaxy cluster RX J2129. Due to Gravitational lensing, this observation contains three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy. Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime to bend the path of light travelling past or through it, almost like a vast lens. In this case, the lens is the galaxy cluster RX J2129, located around 3.2 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Gravitational lensing can cause background objects to appear strangely distorted, as can be seen by the concentric arcs of light in the upper right of this image.
Astronomers discovered the supernova in the triply-lensed background galaxy using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and they suspected that they had found a very distant Type Ia supernova. These supernovae always produce a fairly consistent luminosity — at the same distance, one looks as bright as any other — which makes them particularly helpful to astronomers. As their distance from Earth is proportional to how dim they appear in the night sky, objects with known brightness can be used as 'standard candles' to measure astronomical distances.
The almost uniform luminosity of a Type Ia supernova could also allow astronomers to understand how strongly the galaxy cluster RX J2129 is magnifying background objects, and therefore how massive the galaxy cluster is. As well as distorting the images of background objects, gravitational lenses can cause distant objects to appear much brighter than they would otherwise. If the gravitational lens magnifies something with a known brightness, such as a Type Ia supernova, then astronomers can use this to measure the ‘prescription’ of the gravitational lens.
This observation was captured by Webb's Near-InfraRed Camera to measure the brightness of the lensed supernova. As part of the same programme, NIRSpec spectroscopy of the supernova was also obtained, which will allow comparison of this distant supernova to Type Ia supernovae in the nearby Universe. This is an important way to verify that one of astronomers’ tried-and-tested methods of measuring vast distances works as expected.
[Image description: Stars and galaxies, mostly reddish in colour, are scattered across a dark background. In the foreground upper-right corner, a large elliptical galaxy is surrounded by many smaller similar galaxies in a cluster. These galaxies have bright centres and a diffuse white glow around them. The large galaxy has distorted images and arcs around it.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Kelly
After four months of darkness, the Sun finally rises on 11 August at Concordia research station in Antarctica. The crew are understandably reverent.
ESA-sponsored medical doctor Stijn Thoolen (left) and engineer Wenceslas Marie-Sainte (right) are part of the 12-member crew spending an entire year at Concordia. For nine months they are holding down the base in one of the most isolated, confined and extreme environments on Earth, with no way in or out of the station.
They run experiments in human physiology and biology, atmospheric physics, meteorology and astronomy, among other disciplines, as well as maintain the base – one of only three to run year-round on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Four months of complete darkness is quite the challenge, one researchers are very interested in studying from a physiological and psychological point of view. From questionnaires to blood and stool samples, the crew are poked and prodded to understand how better to prepare humans for deep space travel.
Social dynamics are also of interest to researchers during the period of darkness. Stress brought on by lack of sunlight, changing sleep patterns, fatigue and moodiness can affect the group. The crew are especially encouraged to take on group activities and get creative to combat the isolation of the winter.
The first sunrise is always a remarkable moment, signalling the home stretch of their Antarctic residency. From now on the winter crew will start preparing for summer and the return of scientists that arrive for the warmer months starting in November. The base is cleaned thoroughly, machinery is serviced, tents are erected and heated, and the runway is cleared of snow. Extensive work is required to welcome the new arrivals back to the base at the end of the world.
Follow the adventures in science and socialisation at Concordia on the blog.
Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–S. Thoolen
Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, part of the Canary Islands lying in the North Atlantic Ocean, are featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
The Canary Islands are a group of ocean island volcanoes that were formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago. The Spanish region and archipelago is located around 100 km off the north coast of Africa and 1000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. The eight main islands are (in order of largest to smallest in area) Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro and La Graciosa. The archipelago also includes many smaller islands and islets.
Lanzarote, the easternmost of the Canary Islands, is visible in the top-right of the image. With over 150 000 inhabitants, it is the third most populous Canary Island, after Tenerife and Gran Canaria. It covers an area of 845 sq km, making it the fourth-largest of the islands in the archipelago.
Lanzarote has a long history of eruptions and is often referred to as the ‘Island of the 1000 volcanoes’, yet it is actually the least mountainous Canarian Island. The highest mountain is the volcano Peñas del Chache near Haría in the northern part of the island, which is 670 m above sea level. The Timanfaya National Park can be seen in the southwest part of the island and is entirely made up of volcanic soil.
Fuerteventura Island, the second largest of the Canaries, lies southwest of Lanzarote, across the Bocaina Strait. Its total area is 1731 sq km and the island is around 110 km long and no more than 30 km wide. Fuerteventura is the oldest island in the Canary Archipelago, having risen between 12 and 20 million years ago owing largely to volcanic activity.
The island is fairly flat and has a desert landscape of sand and stones as well as long beaches. The centre of the island is made up of a wide, elongated valley and, from north to south, is dissected by a series of extinct, eroded volcanoes. The west coast is dotted with rugged cliffs and small bays.
To the northeast of Fuerteventura, separated by the 15 m deep strait El Río, lies the island of Isla de Lobos. The only six sq km island is home to a 127 m high extinct volcano.
This image, also featured on the Earth from Space video programme, was captured on 24 September 2021 by Copernicus Sentinel-2 – a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus programme. The image was processed by selecting spectral bands that can be used for classifying geological features.
contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Hubble has found circumstantial evidence that the black hole is still smoldering long after the earlier outburst. Hubble astronomers' evidence is like doing an archeological dig to try and peer through the interstellar pollution of dense sheets of dust and gas between Earth and the galactic center, 27,000 light-years away. Hubble photographed a bright knot of gas that has been impacted by an invisible jet from the black hole, that is merely 15 light-years from it. The black hole must have shown brilliantly billions of years ago as a quasar (quasi-stellar object), when our young galaxy was feeding on lots of infalling gas. But after all this time the black hole still goes through fits and starts, and is not ready for napping as long as there is a snack around.
This image presents a composite view of X-rays, molecular gas, and warm ionized gas near the galactic center. The graphic of a translucent, vertical white fan is added to show the suggested axis of a mini-jet from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s heart. The orange-colored features are of glowing hydrogen gas. One such feature, at the top tip of the jet is interpreted as a hydrogen cloud that has been hit by the outflowing jet. The jet scatters off the cloud into tendrils that flow northward. Farther down near the black hole are X-ray observations of superheated gas colored blue and molecular gas in green. These data are evidence that the black hole occasionally accretes stars or gas clouds, and ejects some of the superheated material along its spin axis.
Credits: NASA, ESA, Gerald Cecil (UNC-Chapel Hill), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0
Seen here in incredible detail, thanks to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the starburst galaxy formally known as PLCK G045.1+61.1. The galaxy appears as multiple reddish dots near the center of the image and is being gravitationally lensed by a cluster of closer galaxies that are also visible in this image.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
From 2009 to 2013, the European Space Agency’s Planck space observatory captured multiple all-sky surveys. In the course of these surveys, with complementary observations by the Herschel Space Observatory, Planck discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies in the night sky.
It was during the study of these Planck-Herschel selected sources using Hubble that the optical starlight emitted from this ultra-bright galaxy was found.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Frye; CC BY 4.0
This archival image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a curious linear feature that is so unusual it was first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubble’s cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200 000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars. A supermassive black hole lies at the tip of the bridge at lower left. The black hole was ejected from the galaxy at upper right. It compressed gas in its wake to leave a long trail of young blue stars. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the Universe. This unusual event happened when the Universe was approximately half its current age.
This intergalactic skyrocket is likely the result of multiple collisions of supermassive black holes. Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged perhaps 50 million years ago. That brought together two supermassive black holes at their centers. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole. When the single black hole took off in one direction, the binary black holes shot off in the opposite direction. There is a feature seen on the opposite side of the host galaxy that might be the runaway binary black hole. Circumstantial evidence for this is that there is no sign of an active black hole remaining at the galaxy’s core. The next step is to do follow-up observations with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm the black hole explanation.
These results are featured in the paper published on 6 April 2023 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
[Image description: This image shows a wide field of galaxies and stars against a black background. A callout box is used to highlight a specific linear feature that appears as a streak of small blue stars.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, P. van Dokkum (Yale University); CC BY 4.0
Cancún, situated in Quintana Roo on the northeast coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
Cancún’s location on the Caribbean Sea, tropical climate and string of beaches have made the city and the Riviera Maya to the south of Cancún one of Mexico’s top tourist destinations. In this image, captured on 16 April 2021, the city can be seen in the bottom-right corner, shrouded in clouds. Cancun International Airport, Mexico’s second busiest airport, is located around 20 km south of the city.
The Cancún Island resort area, visible just off the coast, is shaped like the number seven and is around 22 km in length. The island is separated from the city by the Nichupté Lagoon but is linked by two causeways at each end. Most of the tourist industry is centred on Cancún Island with its Caribbean-facing beaches.
Isla Mujeres, Spanish for ‘Island of Women,’ is visible just north of Cancún Island and is most famous for its beaches and snorkelling. Isla Contoy, visible in the top-right of the image, is considered one of the most important nesting places for sea birds in the Mexican Caribbean with more than 150 species of birds.
Quintana Roo covers an area of around 42 000 sq km and is home to several protected areas including the El Eden Ecological Reserve, located 50 km northwest of Cancún, and Yum Balam Flora and Fauna Protected Area, located in the north of the state. Encompassing more than 150 000 hectares, Yum Balam is home to several endangered species including jaguars, crocodiles and monkeys.
The colour of the water in the image varies from emerald green to turquoise owing to the changing water depths along the coast, turbidity and differences on the ocean floor – from sand to seaweed to rocky areas.
With its 13 spectral channels, Copernicus Sentinel-2’s novel imager can capture water quality parameters such as the surface concentration of chlorophyll, detect harmful algal blooms, and measure turbidity (or water clarity) – giving a clear indication of the health and pollution levels.
This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This spectacular view into a crater near the south pole of Mars beautifully illustrates the layered terrain that typifies this region. The walls of the crater are striped with alternating layers of water-ice and fine sediments. These ‘polar layered deposits’ are also exposed in exquisite detail in the rusty red ridge that passes through the scene.
The High Resolution Stereo Imaging camera onboard ESA’s Mars Express captured this frosty scene in the Ultimi Scopuli region near the south pole of Mars on 19 May 2022. At this time it was southern hemisphere spring and ice was starting to retreat. Dark dunes began to peak through the frost and elevated terrain appears ice-free.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Space Science image of the week:
Daphnis, one of Saturn’s small ring-embedded moons, is seen here kicking up waves as it orbits within a gap between rows of icy ring particles.
The image was taken by the international Cassini mission, which recently concluded its incredible 13-year odyssey in the Saturn system.
Images like the one featured here, which was first released in February 2017, provide scientists with a close-up view of the complicated interactions between a moon and the planet’s rings, as well as the interactions between the ring particles themselves.
Daphnis is just 8 km across, but its gravity is powerful enough to disrupt the tiny particles of the A-ring that mark the edge of a gap in the rings called the Keeler Gap. As the moon moves through the Keeler Gap, wave-like features are created in both the horizontal and vertical planes.
Three wave crests of diminishing size can be seen here in the wake of the moon’s passage. In each subsequent crest, the shape of the wave evolves as the ring particles within the crests collide with one another.
Zooming in towards the tiny moon reveals a faint, thin strand of ring material that almost appears to have been directly ripped out of the A-ring by Daphnis.
The images of this feature were taken in visible light, using Cassini’s narrow-angle camera at a distance of about 28 000 km from Daphnis. Image scale is 168 m/pixel.
The Cassini–Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the Río de la Plata estuary between Argentina and Uruguay.
This image was created by combining three different radar images from July and November 2022 and March 2023. Each image has been assigned a colour: red, green and blue respectively. This technique is used to highlight changes between acquisitions and to monitor the vegetation growth.
In radar images, built up areas and human-made features are easy to identify as they usually appear as bright patches.
Río de la Plata, or River Plate, is an estuary formed by the Parana and Uruguay Rivers, both of which appear black in the image. The Parana threads through forested marshland to enter the Río de la Plata from the left, while the Uruguay flows roughly north–south to join the Río de la Plata from above. The course of the Uruguay River delineates the border between Uruguay (right) and Argentina.
At the point where the rivers meet, the Río de la Plata is 48-km wide and extends for 290 km before opening into the Atlantic Ocean. Several islands are visible at the head of the estuary, but more are being added as some 57 million cubic metres of sediment is transported every year from upstream by the rivers into the Río de la Plata.
The large conurbation of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, is visible as a distinct white area on the southern bank of the Río de la Plata, with the smaller provincial capital of La Plata just to its east.
On the north side of the estuary, opposite to Buenos Aires, the smaller white area is the Uruguayan port of Colonia del Sacramento, which is surrounded by a colourful patchwork of agricultural fields. The different colours are down to the various crops and growth stages at the time of the satellite acquisitions.
Zooming in, clusters of coloured dots, which are ships present at the time of the different acquisitions, can be seen in the dark water of the estuary, mainly off the coasts of La Plata and Colonia del Sacramento.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022-23), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Vidéo du CSG - JM Guillon
The current expansion of ESA’s technical heart, nestled beside North Sea dunes on the Netherlands coast, as seen from the air.
The European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, is ESA’s single largest establishment and hub of Europe’s space efforts. This is the place where European space missions are born, then guided through development while new technologies for space are investigated.
The site is also home to around 35 technical laboratories specialising in different aspects of engineering for space as well as Europe’s largest satellite test centre.
Orange cranes highlight the two current construction projects on site. On the dune side the new Hertz 2.0 radio frequency test facility is taking shape, intended to accommodate the largest future space antennas and entire satellites. Near the left side base of the photo is the site of the International Meeting Facility, which will serve as the main reception and focal point for the entire establishment.
ESTEC’s main building on the dune side is distinguished by an almost 200-m long main corridor with side wings extending rightward from it. Near the very centre of the picture is a small white dome – home to ESA’s Large Diameter Centrifuge for high-gravity testing.
Above it is ESTEC’s white-hued Laboratory building and above that is the ESTEC Test Centre for evaluation of full-scale satellites. It is equipped with a suite of simulation facilities to reproduce every aspect of the space environment.
At the bottom left of the photo is ESTEC’s tower complex and restaurant, built by renowned Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. On the right side of the photo across the car park is the Erasmus Innovation Centre focused on human spaceflight.
This photo was taken by ESA Business Control and Admin Manager Felicity Sheasby during a helicopter flight over the dunes.
Learn more about the history of ESTEC, stretching back to the 1960s.
Credits: ESA-F. Sheasby
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel in northern France.
Lying between Brittany to the west and Normandy to the east, this remarkable bay, which is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, sees some of the biggest tides in continental Europe. There can be up to 15 m difference between low and high water. When spring tides peak, the sea recedes about 15 km from the coast and when it returns it does so very quickly, making it a dangerous place to be. Sentinel-2 captured this image when the tide was out so that the vast area of sand dunes is exposed cut by meandering channels of shallow water. Three rivers empty into the bay: the Couesnon, the Sée and the Sélune.
The famous rocky islet of Mont Saint-Michel, visible as a small dark spot in the south of the bay, is about 1 km from the mouth of the Couesnon. Home to a Benedictine monastery and village, Mont Saint-Michel is also a UNESCO world heritage site and a mecca for tourists.
The bay, however, has been prone to silting up in the last couple of centuries. Actions by man, including farming and the building of a causeway to the island monastery, have added to this problem. A major campaign has ensured that Mont-Saint-Michel preserves its maritime character and remains an island. The main river into the bay, the Couesnon, for example, is being left to flow more freely so that sediments are washed out to sea.
This image, which was captured on 21 June 2017, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Asteroid 162173 Ryugu
After a 42-month journey, Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft arrived at asteroid 162173 Ryugu, 300 million km from Earth, on 27 June at 02:35 CEST (00:35 GMT).
This remarkable achievement was confirmed when the spacecraft closed to just 20 km from the 1 km-diameter asteroid's surface, having entered a critical phase of this ambitious mission.
This image was taken on 24 June, as the craft nosed up to the asteroid, from a distance of about 40 km.
Hayabusa2 aims to study Ryugu in detail, deposit a European and a series of Japanese landers on the surface and return a sample of ancient rock to Earth in 2020.
"Together with all of you, we have become the first eyewitnesses to see asteroid Ryugu. I feel this amazing honour as we proceed with the mission operations," said Yuichi Tsuda, project manager from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
In 2014-17, during Hayabua2's cruise phase from Earth toward the asteroid, ESA's deep-space ground station at Malargüe, Argentina − part of the Agency's worldwide Estrack network − provided crucial communication support to the mission.
In July this year, Malargüe will resume support, providing one communication contact session per week together with ESA's Cebreros station in Spain. Malargüe station will also support the ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission, due for launch in the autumn.
Credits: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, Aizu University, AIST
As the Northern hemisphere tucks into longer nights, Antarctica bursts into its season of sunlight.
After four months of night, the crew of Concordia research station, located on Dome C in the Antarctic peninsula, saw first light in August, marking the end of the dreaded winter-over, a period of darkness and isolation.
The arrival of spring means the residents of Antarctica say goodbye to the last true night and those Milky Way views.
Each year, ESA sponsors a research medical doctor through the winter months to run experiments on the rest of the 15-strong crew. There are few other places on Earth that resemble the isolation and extreme climate astronauts will endure on other planets – giving ESA the opportunity to test technology and learn how humans behave in close quarters.
Current ESA-sponsored medical doctor Nadja Albertsen is wrapping up her residency at Concordia.
In addition to running simulations and collecting blood and urine samples, Nadja spent the year blogging about life and science in the Polar Desert. You can find her posts on the Chronicles from Concordia blog. Read also a CNN feature on life at Concordia and how it’s preparing humans for Mars.
Ahead of the influx of summer visitors, the crew are also busy with housekeeping: linens are washed, mattresses are cleaned and changed, and fresh food supplies are on their way.
Concordia hosts up to 80 researchers in the busy summer months who flock to Concordia to check equipment, setup sensors and run experiments for a few weeks.
The next ESA-sponsored medical doctor is Stijn Thoolen. He arrives with and his fellow crew mates for their Antarctic stay in November.
Credits: ESA
The Russian Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft that will transport ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano to the International Space Station is rolled out onto launchpad number one at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
This rocket will be launched on Saturday 20 July, marking the start of Luca’s second space mission known as Beyond.
In the lead-up to liftoff, component parts of a Soyuz spacecraft are brought to Kazakhstan to be assembled. Once the rocket is ready, it is loaded onto a train and transported to the launchpad.
The rollout happens in the morning, two days ahead of launch day. It is considered bad luck for the crew to witness this rollout or see the rocket again before the day of their launch, though the rollout is witnessed by the backup crew and support teams.
When the train arrives at its destination on the launchpad, the rocket is put into position. When it is fully lifted, four green arms ensure it is secured correctly for liftoff. These arms will mechanically rotate away to release the rocket at the time of launch.
After the rocket has been secured, the service structure containing the stairs and elevator as well as the umbilical towers that provide fuel and liquid oxygen, are erected.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows part of the scarred and colourful landscape that makes up Aonia Terra, an upland region in the southern highlands of Mars.
This image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 25 April 2022. It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. It is a ‘true colour’ image, reflecting what would be seen by the human eye if looking at this region of Mars.
The ground resolution is approximately 14 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 282°E/48°S. North is to the right.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
An old friend of ESA, Comet 46P/Wirtanen, is crossing our skies this month.
The comet nucleus is at the core of the brightest spot at the centre of the image, and the green diffuse cloud is its coma. The green colour is caused by molecules – mainly CN (cyanogen) and C2 (diatomic carbon) – that are ionised by sunlight as the comet approaches the Sun. A hint of the comet’s tail is visible to the upper left; the diagonal stripes are star trails.
A bright comet with a period of 5.5 years, 46P had been chosen in the 1990s as the target of ESA’s Rosetta mission. However, a launch delay from 2003 to 2004 meant the spacecraft would not be able to rendezvous with that comet at its closest approach to the Sun in 2013, prompting the Rosetta team to select a new target, the now famed 67P/Churyumov-–Gerasimenko.
Comet 46P was at perihelion, the closest point to the Sun along its orbit, on 12 December, and kept moving towards our planet, reaching the closest distance to Earth on 16 December.
Astronomers across the world – professional, student and amateur alike – have been observing the comet recently, and will keep doing so in coming weeks as it moves away from the Sun along its orbit.
This image was taken by Wouter Van Reeven at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) near Madrid, Spain, on 14 December 2018. It is a composite of 132 individual images, each with a 10 second exposure, using a William Optics ZS 71 ED (71 mm refractor) telescope and a Canon EOS 700D DSLR camera (ISO: 3200). The field of view spans 2.8 degrees x 1.8 degrees.
More information: December comet brings back Rosetta memories
Credits: ESA / ESAC Astronomy Club / W. Van Reeven
Captured on 19 August 2020, this Copernicus Sentinel-3 image shows the extent of the smoke from fires currently ablaze in California, US. Amid the blistering heatwave, which is in its second week, there are around 40 separate wildfires across the state. Record high temperatures, strong winds and thunderstorms have created the dangerous conditions that have allowed fires to ignite and spread. The fires are so extreme in regions around the San Francisco Bay Area that thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate.
Credits: contains Copernicus Sentinel (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This oblique perspective view of Medusae Fossae on Mars 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
This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image features Hurricane Dorian as it pummels the Bahamas on 2 September 2019 at 15:16 GMT (11:16 EDT). This mighty storm has been parked over the northwest Bahamas for more than 24 hours unleashing a siege of devastation. Storm surges, wind and rain have claimed at least five lives and destroyed homes and infrastructure. Dorian is reported to be one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record. Residents in Florida, US, are also starting to feel the effects of Dorian, though its path is difficult to predict as it creeps slowly over the Bahamas. However, the US National Hurricane Center expect life-threatening storm surges along Florida’s east coast and along the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. As the US authorities respond to the devastation, Europe’s Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service has been activated to provide flood maps based on satellite data.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
By combining data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, researchers were able to trace light that was emitted by the large white elliptical galaxy on the left through the spiral galaxy on the right and identify the effects of interstellar dust in the spiral galaxy. This image of galaxy pair VV 191 includes near-infrared light from Webb, and ultraviolet and visible light from Hubble.
Webb’s near-infrared data also show us the galaxy’s longer, extremely dusty spiral arms in far more detail, giving them an appearance of overlapping with the central bulge of the bright white elliptical galaxy on the left. Although the two foreground galaxies are relatively close astronomically speaking, they are not actively interacting.
Don’t overlook the background scenery! Like many Webb images, this image of VV 191 shows many galaxies that lie great distances away. For example, two patchy spirals to the upper left of the elliptical galaxy have similar apparent sizes, but show up in very different colours. One is likely very dusty and the other very far away, but researchers need to obtain data known as spectra to determine which is which.
Click here to find out more about the gravitational lensing effects that we see in this image.
Note: This image highlights Webb’s science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Rogier Windhorst (ASU), William Keel (University of Alabama), Stuart Wyithe (University of Melbourne), JWST PEARLS Team, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
On 15 February 2021 the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite captured this image of the city of Austin, Texas covered in snow during a cold snap. According to the BBC, the severe winter weather has left many without power, heat and water in what are the coldest temperatures Texas had in about 30 years.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on 19 December 2022, nearly four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission. Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the Solar System. The ejected boulders range in size from 1 m to 6.7 m across, based on Hubble photometry. They are drifting away from the asteroid at around 1 km per hour. The discovery yields invaluable insights into the behaviour of a small asteroid when it is hit by a projectile for the purpose of altering its trajectory.
[Image Description: The bright white object at lower left is the asteroid Dimorphos. It has a blue dust tail extending diagonally to the upper right. A cluster of blue dots surrounds the asteroid. These are boulders that were knocked off the asteroid when, on 26 September 2022, NASA deliberately slammed the half-tonne DART impactor spacecraft into the asteroid as a test of what it would take to deflect some future asteroid from hitting Earth. Hubble photographed the slow-moving boulders in December 2022.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA); CC BY 4.0
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope celebrates Halloween this year with a striking observation of the carbon star CW Leonis, which resembles a baleful orange eye glaring from behind a shroud of smoke.
CW Leonis glowers from deep within a thick shroud of dust in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Lying roughly 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo, CW LEonis is a carbon star — a luminous type of red giant star with a carbon-rich atmosphere. The dense clouds of sooty gas and dust engulfing this dying star were created as the outer layers of CW Leonis itself were thrown out into the void.
When small to intermediate-mass stars run out of hydrogen fuel in their cores, the outwards pressure that balances the crush of gravity within their cores falls out of equilibrium, causing the star to start collapsing. As the core collapses, the shell of plasma surrounding the core becomes hot enough to begin fusing hydrogen, generating enough heat to dramatically expand the outer layers of the star and turn it into a bloated red giant. Stars in that phase of life eject huge amounts of gas and dust outwards into space, eventually jettisoning their outer layers. In the case of the carbon star CW Leonis, this process has surrounded the star with a dense pall of sooty dust.
Along with CW Leonis’s smoky veil, the vibrant orange and green tints of this image make it a fitting celebration of Halloween. Hubble has captured a ghoulish gallery of halloween images over the years — from ghostly faces and cosmic bats to a carved pumpkin formed from binary stars. This year’s image resembles a single, baleful eye of cosmic proportions glaring out from within a cloud of smoke.
While these observations make for a striking image, they were originally made to answer pressing scientific questions about CW Leonis. As the closest carbon star to Earth, CW Leonis gives astronomers the chance to understand the interaction between the star and its surrounding envelope. This is a particularly interesting object to study as the envelope of CW Leonis is relatively turbulent, with a complex inner structure that astronomers believe may be sculpted by a nearby companion star.
The bright beams of light radiating outwards from CW Leonis are one of the most intriguing parts of this image, as they've changed in brightness within a 15 year period — an incredibly short span of time in astronomical terms. Astronomers speculate that gaps in the shroud of dust surrounding CW Leonis may allow these beams of starlight to pierce through and illuminate dust further from the star. However the exact cause of the dramatic changes in their brightness is as yet unexplained.
Detailed Hubble observations of CW Leonis taken over the last two decades also show the expansion of ring-like threads of ejected material around the star — CW Leonis’s sloughed-off outer layers.
This image incorporates observations from 2011 and 2016 by one of Hubble’s workhorse instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3. CW Leonis is brightest in the red filters, R and I, and therefore the simmering orange colour pervading the centre of the image well represents the real colour of the star.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Ueta, H. Kim; CC BY 4.0
This image shows the remains of an ancient delta in Jezero Crater, which NASA's Perseverance Mars rover will explore for signs of fossilized microbial life. The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA's Mars Express orbiter.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
Hereford, and its surrounding colourful patchwork of agricultural fields, is featured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image.
Hereford, which is the county seat of Deaf Smith County in Texas, is widely known for its agriculture industry. Known as the beef capital of the world owing to its large number of cattle fed, Hereford can be spotted in the centre-bottom of the image. The area is known for its semiarid climate, with heavy farming and ranching sustained by irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer – a massive underground reservoir spanning eight landlocked states.
A variety of crops are grown in the area including corn, wheat, maize, soybeans and onions. Circular shapes in the image are an example of centre-pivot irrigation systems, where equipment rotates around a central pivot and crops are watered with sprinklers. This type of irrigation helps farmers manage their watering demands as well as help conserve their precious water sources.
This composite image over the High Plains in Texas was created by combining three separate Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission spanning from 17 March to 21 April 2019.
Shades of red, yellow and green depict changes in vegetation growth at the beginning of the season. Black patches of land indicate very low vegetation for the season, while white signifies a high level of vegetation during these dates. The Normalised Difference Vegetation Index is widely used in remote sensing as it gives scientists an accurate measure of health and status of plant growth.
The US Route 60 can be seen cutting across the bottom-right of the image. The motorway is a major east-west US route, which runs over 4200 km from southwest Arizona to the Atlantic Ocean coast in Virginia.
This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
On 20 June 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope spent just over one hour observing Messier 92 (M92), a globular cluster 27,000 light-years away in the Milky Way halo. The observation – among the very first science observations undertaken by Webb – is part of Early Release Science (ERS) program 1334, one of 13 ERS programs designed to help astronomers understand how to use Webb and make the most of its scientific capabilities.
This image of the globular cluster M92 was captured by Webb’s NIRCam instrument. Globular clusters are dense masses of tightly packed stars that all formed around the same time. In M92, there are about 300,000 stars packed into a ball about 100 light-years across. The night sky of a planet in the middle of M92 would shine with thousands of stars that appear thousands of times brighter than those in our own sky. The image shows stars at different distances from the center, which helps astronomers understand the motion of stars in the cluster, and the physics of that motion.
The black strip in the center is a chip gap, the result of the separation between two long-wavelength detectors of Webb's NIRCam instrument. The gap covers the dense center of the cluster, which is too bright to capture at the same time as the fainter, less dense outskirts of the cluster.
This image is a composite of four exposures using four different filters: F090W (0.9 microns in wavelength) is shown in blue; F150W (1.5 microns) in cyan; F277W (2.77 microns) in yellow; and F444W (4.44 microns) in red. The image is about 5 arcminutes (39 light-years) across.
[Image Description: A rectangular image oriented horizontally appears to be two separate square images with a wide black gap in between. Both squares are filled with blue, white, yellow, and red points of light of different size and brightness, most of which are stars. Altogether, the stars appear to form a loose ball-like shape whose core is obscured by the gap in the middle of the image.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Pagan (STScI)
This ground-based view of the Tarantula Nebula shows the nebula in its entirety. It is the brightest region of star formation in the local Universe. Hubble’s field of view covers just a tiny spot in the upper-right quadrant of this image, though it reveals detail invisible here, including a supernova remnant.
Credits: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin
This year, ESA's ground station boffins are planning to deploy a new cryogenically cooled "antenna feed" – a gizmo used to transmit and receive deep space signals – on the Agency's three deep-space antennas.
The ground stations routinely communicate with missions like BepiColombo – heading to Mercury, Gaia – surveying stars in our Galaxy, and ESA's two spacecraft at the Red Planet, Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
ESA’s 35-metre antennas receive data from working spacecraft, in what’s called a ‘downlink’. As the Agency prepares to launch new missions deeper into our Solar System in the next few years, including Juice to Jupiter and the ExoMars Rover, as well as missions designed to generate large quantities of data, such as the future Sun-watching Lagrange mission, use of the stations' downlink capacity is set to grow significantly.
This means the stations have to 'up their game', and the new antenna feed is expected improve data return by 40% at the high frequencies used for spacecraft command and control. The feed must be cooled to just 10 K (just 10 degrees from absolute zero, about -263 C) for normal operation.
"While receiving extremely faint signals, the new feed should be capable of transmitting command signals to spacecraft at very high power of more than 25 kilowatts", says ESA ground station engineer Stéphane Halté.
"This is similar to the amount of power transmitted by 25 000 mobile phones switched on simultaneously."
The prototype antenna feed was mounted on NASA’s Deep Space Station 13 (pictured), at NASA's High Power Transmitter Test facility, in Goldstone, California. It was tested in December 2018 with the assistance of experts from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab's Deep Space Network.
Testing successful, this ESA/NASA cooperation has cleared the way for the new technology to be rolled out at across ESA’s deep space ground stations, part of the Estrack network, within this year.
Credits: ESA
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is all smiles alongside her Crew-4 mates during a training session at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, USA.
Samantha is the next ESA astronaut to fly to space and is expected to be launched to the International Space Station in spring 2022. This is the second mission for Samantha who spent approximately 200 days in space in 2015 for her Futura mission.
Samantha is launching with familiar faces. Fellow mission specialist Jessica Watkins was part of NASA’s NEEMO 23 crew, in which Samantha served as commander. The team spent 10 days living and working at the world's only undersea research station, Aquarius, located 19 m below the surface of the ocean off the coast of Florida.
Upon hearing the announcement, Samantha tweeted her congratulations, saying: “So proud of you, Watty! After sharing the @NASA_NEEMO adventure on NEEMO23, I’m grateful to have you as a crewmate again on #Crew4. It will be fun!”
Rounding off Crew-4 are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren as the commander and Bob “Farmer” Hines as pilot of their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. This is Kjell’s second flight and Bob’s first.
Samantha is the third European astronaut to launch on SpaceX, after Thomas Pesquet in early 2021 and current ESA astronaut-in-space Matthias Maurer in late 2021.
Training for Samantha’s second mission has included International Space Station refresher sessions at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and Roscosmos’s Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Moscow.
Get #Cristofoready for Samantha’s mission on the blog.
Credits: NASA/SpaceX
The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission moving from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Multi-Payload Processing Facility to the Florida spaceport’s Launch Abort System Facility on July 10, 2021.
In that package is the Orion spacecraft which consists of the NASA’s Crew Module, the Crew Module Adapter and ESA’s European Service Module. Together these modules will power the spacecraft around the Moon and back. Over 30 engines, four solar wings, 8.6 tons of propellant and 11 km of cables are inside. For the first Artemis mission they will work in harmony to travel from Earth to the Moon, make two flybys and return.
For the European Service Module this is just another small step on its way to the Moon. With parts made in ten countries in Europe and assembled in Bremen, Germany, the complete module was flown to Kennedy Space Center at the end of 2018 to be integrated with the crew module.
The spacecraft is now being integrated with the launch abort system. This module placed on top kicks in if an anomaly occurs during launch and will propel astronauts to safety away from the rocket.
Launching later this year, Artemis I will be a test of the Orion spacecraft and its SLS rocket ahead of crewed flights to the Moon.
Credits: NASA–Isaac Watson
For the first time, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken simultaneous observations of the same target.
These images, Hubble on left and Webb on the right, show observations of Dimorphos several hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally impacted the moonlet asteroid. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid by modifying its orbit.
Both Webb and Hubble observed the asteroid before and after the collision took place.
Scientists will use the combined observations from Hubble and Webb to gain knowledge about the nature of the surface of Dimorphos, how much material was ejected by the collision, how fast it was ejected, and the distribution of particle sizes in the expanding dust cloud.
In the coming months, scientists will also use Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) to observe Dimorphos further. Spectroscopic data will provide researchers with insight into the asteroid’s composition. Hubble will monitor Dimorphos ten more times over the next three weeks to monitor how the ejecta cloud expands and fades over time.
Hubble observations were conducted in one filter, WFC3/UVIS F350LP (assigned the colour blue), while Webb observed at F070W (0.7 microns, assigned the colour red).
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI; CC BY 4.0
The Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 (MTG-I1) first image – view of Europe. This ‘zoom in’ over Europe taken from MTG-I1’s first image shows beautiful cloud features such as the ‘cloud streets’ over the Greek Islands created by wind, the so-called Von Karman vortices – also created by wind – downstream of the Canary Islands and cumulus cloud fields over the Libyan coast. The snow on the Alps and in Norway is also visible in greater detail than is possible to ascertain from the imaging instruments on Meteosat Second Generation satellites. The extra channels of MTG-I1’s Flexible Combined Imager, 16 compared to 12 on the MSG SEVIRI instruments, not only produce better true-colour imagery, but will also be useful to better detect dust, haze, smoke, cloud properties and wildfires, among others.
Credits: EUMETSAT/ESA
Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice ready for launch on the ELA-3 launch pad at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 12 April 2023.
Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Following launch, Juice will embark on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, arriving in July 2031 with the aid of momentum and direction gained from four gravity-assist fly-bys of the Earth-Moon system, Venus and, twice, Earth.
Flight VA 260 will be the final Ariane 5 flight to carry an ESA mission to space.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
A jagged slice in a crater wall on Mars stands out brightly against the darker terrain in this image taken by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter at 7pm local time on 1 May 2021.
Despite the low light in this late evening image, several north-facing icy scarps are distinctly visible because of their covering of bright white carbon dioxide frost. The frost disappears in spring, but remains late on these scarps because of their pole-facing orientation.
This 11 km diameter crater is located in the northern plains of Mars at 55°16'51.6"N/106°25'3.4"W, north of Alba Mons.
TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planet’s atmospheric gases, and mapping the planet’s surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023.
Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Venus on 15 October as the spacecraft passed the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre.
The image was taken at 03:37 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2, shortly before closest approach at 03:58 UTC. The medium-gain antenna of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter is visible at the top of the image, along with the magnetometer boom, which extends from the top right of the frame. At the time of the image being taken, the spacecraft was within 17 000 km from Venus.
The cameras provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The image has been lightly processed to enhance the brightness and contrast.
The manoeuvre, the first at Venus and the second of nine flybys overall, helped steer the spacecraft on course for Mercury. During its seven-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury to brake against the gravitational pull of the Sun in order to enter orbit around Mercury. BepiColombo, which comprises ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is scheduled to reach its target orbit around the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System in 2025.
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The Universe is simply so vast that it can be difficult to maintain a sense of scale. Many galaxies we see through telescopes such as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the source of this beautiful Picture of the Week, look relatively similar: spiralling arms, a glowing centre, and a mixture of bright specks of star formation and dark ripples of cosmic dust weaving throughout.
This galaxy, a spiral galaxy named NGC 772, is no exception. It actually has much in common with our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Each boasts a few satellite galaxies, small galaxies that closely orbit and are gravitationally bound to their parent galaxies. One of NGC 772’s spiral arms has been distorted and disrupted by one of these satellites (NGC 770 — not visible in the image here), leaving it elongated and asymmetrical.
However, the two are also different in a few key ways. For one, NGC 772 is both a peculiar and an unbarred spiral galaxy; respectively, this means that it is somewhat odd in size, shape, or composition, and that it lacks a central feature known as a bar, which we see in many galaxies throughout the cosmos — including the Milky Way. These bars are built of gas and stars, and are thought to funnel and transport material through the galactic core, possibly fueling and igniting various processes such as star formation.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Seth et al.; CC BY 4.0
Galaxies are well known as the birthplaces of stars and planets thanks to the overwhelmingly large amount of dust and gas within them. Over time, cold gas coalesces into molecular clouds, leading to the further emergence of star-forming regions.
This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts a fantastic new class of star-forming nursery, known as Free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules, or frEGGs for short. This object, known as J025027.7+600849, is located in the constellation of Cassiopeia.
When a massive new star (or stars) starts to shine while still within the cool molecular cloud from which it formed, its energetic radiation can ionise the cloud’s hydrogen and create a large, hot bubble of ionised gas. Amazingly, located within this bubble of hot gas around a nearby massive star are the frEGGs: dark compact globules of dust and gas, some of which are also giving birth to low-mass stars. The boundary between the cool, dusty frEGG and hot gas bubble is seen as the glowing purple/blue edges in this fascinating image.
Learning more about these odd objects can help astronomers understand how stars like our Sun form under external influences. In fact, our Sun may have even been born in a frEGG!
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sahai; CC BY 4.0
Many colourful stars are packed close together in this image of the globular cluster NGC 1805, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This tight grouping of thousands of stars is located near the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. The stars orbit closely to one another, like bees swarming around a hive. In the dense centre of one of these clusters, stars are 100 to 1000 times closer together than the nearest stars are to our Sun, making planetary systems around them unlikely.
The striking difference in star colours is illustrated beautifully in this image, which combines two different types of light: blue stars, shining brightest in near-ultraviolet light, and red stars, illuminated in red and near-infrared. Space telescopes like Hubble can observe in the ultraviolet because they are positioned above Earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs most of this wavelength, making it inaccessible to ground-based facilities.
This young globular cluster can be seen from the southern hemisphere, in the Dorado constellation, which is Portugese for dolphinfish. Usually, globular clusters contain stars which are born at the same time; however, NGC 1805 is unusual as it appears to host two different populations of stars with ages millions of years apart. Observing such clusters of stars can help astronomers understand how stars evolve, and what factors determine whether they end their lives as white dwarfs, or explode as supernovae.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Kalirai; CC BY 4.0
Researchers identified a previously unknown lensed galaxy for the first time in new near-infrared data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
Examine the white elliptical galaxy on the left. A faint red arc appears in the inset at 10 o’clock. This is a very distant galaxy whose appearance is warped in Webb’s image. Its light is bent by the gravity of the elliptical foreground galaxy. Plus, its appearance is duplicated. The stretched red arc reappears – as a dot – at 4 o’clock.
These images of the lensed galaxy are so faint and so red that they went unrecognised in Hubble data, but are unmistakable in Webb’s near-infrared image. Simulations of gravitationally lensed galaxies like this help researchers reconstruct how much mass is in individual stars, along with how much dark matter is in the core of this galaxy.
This image includes ultraviolet and visible data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Click here to find out more about the relationship between the two galaxies seen in this image.
Note: This image highlights Webb’s science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Rogier Windhorst (ASU), William Keel (University of Alabama), Stuart Wyithe (University of Melbourne), JWST PEARLS Team, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The powerful NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has found an unexpectedly rich ‘undiscovered country’ of early galaxies that has been largely hidden until now.
A few days after officially starting science operations, Webb propelled astronomers into a realm of early galaxies, previously hidden beyond the grasp of all other telescopes. Webb is now unveiling a very rich Universe where the first forming galaxies look remarkably different from the mature galaxies seen around us today.
Researchers have found two exceptionally bright galaxies that existed approximately 300 and 400 million years after the Big Bang. Their extreme brightness is puzzling to astronomers.
The young galaxies are transforming gas into stars as fast as they can and they appear compacted into spherical or disc shapes that are much smaller than our Milky Way galaxy. The onset of stellar birth may have been just 100 million years after the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago.
Two of the most distant galaxies seen to date are captured in these Webb pictures of the outer regions of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744. The galaxies are not inside the cluster, but many billions of light-years behind it.
The galaxy featured in the image at the top centre is extracted from the image on the left. It existed only 450 million years after the Big Bang.
The galaxy featured in the image at the bottom centre is extracted from the image on the right. It existed 350 million years after the Big Bang.
Both galaxies are seen really close in time to the Big Bang which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. These galaxies are tiny compared to our Milky Way, being just a few percent of its size, even the unexpectedly elongated galaxy showcased in the top centre image.
More information about this image
Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international collaboration agreement, ESA provided the telescope’s launch service, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, which was designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona. Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, T. Treu (UCLA); CC BY 4.0
Herbig-Haro objects are some of the rarer sights in the night sky, taking the form of thin spindly jets of matter floating amongst the surrounding gas and stars. The two Herbig-Haro objects catalogued as HH46 and HH47, seen in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, were spotted in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), at a distance of over 1400 light-years from Earth. Prior to its discovery in 1977 by the American astronomer R. D. Schwartz, the exact mechanism by which these multi-coloured objects formed was unknown.
Before 1997 it was theorised by Schwartz and others that the objects could be a type of reflection nebula, or a type of shock wave formed from the gas emitted from a star interacting with the surrounding matter. The mystery was finally solved when a protostar, unseen in this image, was discovered at the centre of the long jets of matter. The outflows of matter, some 10 light-years across, were ejected from the newly born star and violently propelled outwards at speeds of over 150 kilometres per second. Upon reaching the surrounding gas, the collision created the bright shock waves seen here.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini; CC BY 4.0
Space Science image of the week:
This spooky sight, imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, resembles fog lit by a streetlamp swirling around a curiously shaped hole – and there is some truth in that. While the ‘fog’ is dust and gas lit up by the star, the ‘hole’ really is an empty patch of sky.
When the dark patch was first imaged, it was assumed to be a very cold, dense cloud of gas and dust, so thick as to be totally opaque in visible light, and blocking all light behind it. In general, such globules are known to be small cocoons of forming stars, but thanks to ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, which would have been able to see any hints of star formation at infrared wavelengths but did not, along with ground-based observations, it turned out to be a truly empty patch of sky.
Astronomers think that is was formed when jets of gas from some of the young stars in the wider region punctured the sheet of dust and gas that forms the surrounding nebula. The powerful radiation from a nearby mature star may also have helped to clear the hole.
The bright star seen here is V380 Orionis, a young star 3.5 times the mass of our own Sun. It appears white owing to its high surface temperature of about 10 000ºC – nearly twice that of the Sun. The star is so young that it is still surrounded by a cloud of material left over from its formation. This bright material in the area pictured here is only visible because of the light from the star; it does not emit any visible light of its own. This is the signature of a ‘reflection nebula’ – this one is known as NGC 1999.
This image was first published on the Hubble site in March 2000. The Herschel discovery was made in 2010.
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI)
Looking its best ever is the star cluster NGC 2203, here imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Aside from its dazzling good looks, this cluster of stars contains lots of astronomical treats that have helped astronomers puzzle together the lifetimes of stars.
A main sequence star, like our Sun, is the term applied to a star during the longest period of its life, when it burns fuel steadily. Our Sun’s fuel will run out in approximately 6 billion years, and it will then move on to the next stage of its life when it will turn into a red giant. Astronomers studying NGC 2203, which contais stars that are roughly twice as massive as our Sun, found that their rotation might be a factor as to why some of the stars stay longer than usual in this main-sequence phase of their life.
This is the best resolution obtained of the star cluster to date.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Girardiñ; CC BY 4.0
This image, captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5714, about 130 million light-years away in the constellation of Boötes (the Herdsman). NGC 5714 is classified as a Sc spiral galaxy, but its spiral arms — the dominating feature of spiral galaxies — are almost impossible to see, as NGC 1787 presents itself at an almost perfectly edge-on angle.
Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, NGC 5714 was host to a fascinating and rare event in 2003. A faint supernova appeared about 8000 light-years below the central bulge of NGC 5714. Supernovae are the huge, violent explosions of dying stars, and the one that exploded in NGC 5714 — not visible in this much later image — was classified as a Type Ib/c supernova and named SN 2003dr. It was particularly interesting because its spectrum showed strong signatures of calcium.
Calcium-rich supernovae are rare and hence of great interest to astronomers. Astronomers still struggle to explain these particular explosions as their existence presents a challenge to both observation and theory. In particular, their appearance outside of galaxies, their lower luminosity compared to other supernovae, and their rapid evolution are still open questions for researchers.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0
New Year’s Eve may be past, but we are not done with fireworks just yet. This image, which includes data from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, shows the remnants of an explosion – not of the colourful type ignited during celebrations, but of the stellar kind.
The object in the image, dubbed G54.1+0.3, is a supernova remnant, the leftovers of a massive star that died a violent death. It is located about 20,000 light-years away from us, in the northern constellation of Sagitta, the arrow.
As the star ran out of fuel, it shed its outer layers in a powerful explosion while its core collapsed due to gravity, eventually forming an extremely dense neutron star. The remnant of this particular explosion is a pulsar, a fast-rotating neutron star that shines brightly in the radio and X-ray parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Besides the stellar remnant, the dust and gas in the surrounding envelope are also quite remarkable. According to a recent study by J. Rho and collaborators, these layers contain silica – also known as silicon dioxide, or SiO2 – a major component of many types of rocks on Earth, making up about 60 percent of our planet’s crust. The study is the first to show that this key ingredient of everyday materials like glass and sand can be formed in supernova explosions.
This image combines infrared and X-ray data collected by three space observatories and radio observations obtained from the ground.
The data from Herschel, shown in green hues in this view and corresponding to the far-infrared wavelength of 70 microns, played a key part in helping astronomers detect silica in the dusty envelope of this supernova remnant, along with mid-infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, corresponding to 24 microns and shown in blue.
The radio data, obtained with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico, USA, are shown in red, while yellow hues show the X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory
Operating between 2009 and 2013, Herschel left a legacy of treasured data that are still producing a multitude of scientific results every year. The study of supernova remnant G54.1+0.3 is based on archival data from one of the observatory’s key programmes, the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey (Hi-GAL).
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CXC/ESA/NRAO/J. Rho (SETI Institute)