Hubble photo's

[syscom3]

The three iconic space pillars photographed by NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 might have met their
demise, according to new evidence from NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope.

A new, striking image from Spitzer shows the intact dust
towers next to a giant cloud of hot dust thought to have
been scorched by the blast of a star that exploded, or went
supernova. Astronomers speculate that the supernova's
shock wave could have already reached the dusty towers,
causing them to topple about 6,000 years ago. However,
because light from this region takes 7,000 years to reach
Earth, we won't be able to capture photos of the destruction
for another 1,000 years or so.

Spitzer's view of the region shows the entire Eagle nebula,
a vast and stormy community of stars set amid clouds
and steep pillars made of gas and dust, including the
three well-known "Pillars of Creation."

"I remember seeing a photograph of these pillars more than
a decade ago and being inspired to become an astronomer,"
said Nicolas Flagey of The Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
in France. "Now, we have discovered something new about
this region we thought we understood so well." Flagey, a
visiting graduate student at NASA's Spitzer Science Center
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, presented
the results at the American Astronomical Society meeting in
Seattle.

Astronomers have long predicted that a supernova blast
wave would mean the end for the popular pillars. The region
is littered with 20 or so stars ripe for exploding, so it was only
a matter of time, they reasoned, before one would blow up.
The new Spitzer observations suggest one of these stellar
time bombs has in fact already detonated, an event humans
most likely witnessed 1,000 to 2,000 years ago as an unusually
bright star in the sky.

Whenever the mighty pillars do crumble, gas and dust will be
blown away, exposing newborn stars that were forming inside.
A new generation of stars might also spring up from the dusty
wreckage.

Spitzer is a space telescope that detects infrared, longer-wavelength
light that our eyes cannot see. This allows the observatory to
both see the dust and see through it, depending on which infrared
wavelength is being observed. In Spitzer's new look at the Eagle
nebula, the three pillars appear small and ghostly transparent.
They are colored green in this particular view. In the largest of
the three columns, an embedded star is seen forming inside the tip.

Above the pillars is the enormous cloud of hot dust, colored red
in the picture, which astronomers think was seared by the blast
wave of a supernova explosion. Flagey and his team say evidence
for this scenario comes from similarities observed between this
hot dust and dust around known supernova remnants. The dust
also appears to have a shell-like shape, implying that a supernova
blast wave is traveling outward and sculpting it.

The mysterious dust was first revealed in previous images from
the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory, but
Spitzer's longer-wavelength infrared instrument was able to tentatively
match the dust to a supernova event.

"Something else besides starlight is heating this dust," said Dr.
Alberto Noriega-Crespo, Flagey's advisor at the Spitzer Science Center.
"With Spitzer, we now have the missing long-wavelength infrared
data that are giving us an answer."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the
Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at
the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer
made the new observations. The infrared array camera was built
by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The
instrument's principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The multiband imaging
photometer for Spitzer was built by Ball Aerospace Corporation,
Boulder, Colo.; the University of Arizona; and Boeing North American,
Canoga Park, Calif. Its principal investigator is Dr. George Rieke
of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

[syscom3]

Todays astronomy lesson.

Celebrating supernova's 20th anniversary with Hubble
SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE
Posted: February 22, 2007

Twenty years ago, astronomers witnessed one of the brightest stellar explosions in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called SN 1987A, blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on Feb. 23, 1987.

Observations of SN 1987A, made over the past 20 years by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and many other major ground- and space-based telescopes, have significantly changed astronomers' views of how massive stars end their lives. Astronomers credit Hubble's sharp vision with yielding important clues about the massive star's demise.

"The sharp pictures from the Hubble telescope help us ask and answer new questions about Supernova 1987A," said Robert Kirshner, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "In fact, without Hubble we wouldn't even know what to ask."

Kirshner is the lead investigator of an international collaboration to study the doomed star. Studying supernovae like SN 1987A is important because the exploding stars create elements, such as carbon and iron, that make up new stars, galaxies, and even humans. The iron in a person's blood, for example, was manufactured in supernova explosions. SN 1987A ejected 20,000 Earth masses of radioactive iron. The core of the shredded star glows because of radioactive titanium that was cooked up in the explosion.

The star is 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It actually blew up about 161,000 B.C., but its light reached the Earth in 1987.

"The Hubble observations have helped us rewrite the textbooks on exploding stars. We found that the actual world is more complicated and interesting than anyone dared to imagine. There are mysterious triple rings of glowing gas and powerful blasts sent out from the explosion that are just having an impact now, 20 years later."

Before SN 1987A, astronomers had a "simplified, idealized model of a supernova," Kirshner explained. "We thought the explosions were spherical and we didn't think much about the gas a star would exhale in the thousands of years before it exploded. The actual shreds of the star in SN 1987A are elongated-more like a jellybean than a gumball, and the fastest-moving debris is slamming into the gas that was already out there from previous millennia. Who would have guessed?"

Hubble wasn't even around when astronomers first spotted the supernova in 1987. When Hubble was launched three years later, astronomers didn't waste any time in using the telescope to study the stellar blast. Its first peek was in 1990, the year the observatory launched. Since then, the telescope has taken hundreds of pictures of the doomed star.

The Hubble studies have revealed the following details about the supernova:

* A glowing ring, about a light-year in diameter, around the supernova. The ring was there at least 20,000 years before the star exploded. X-rays from the explosion energized the gas in the ring, making it glow for two decades.

* Two outer loops of glowing gas that had not been identified in ground-based telescope images.

* A dumbbell-shaped central structure that has now grown to one-tenth of a light-year long. The structure consists of two blobs of debris in the center of the supernova racing away from each other at roughly 20 million miles an hour.

* The onrushing stellar shock wave from the stellar explosion is slamming into, heating up, and illuminating the inner regions of the narrow ring surrounding the doomed star.

Hubble continues to watch as the blast debris moves through the ring. The light show makes the glowing ring look like a pearl necklace. Astronomers think the whole ring will be illuminated in a few years.

The glowing ring is expected to become bright enough to illuminate the star's surroundings, which will provide astronomers with new information on how the star ejected material before the explosion.

Astronomers are analyzing images by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to try to understand the fate of the dust that surrounds the exploded star and in the neighborhood around the blast.

"We will learn more in the future when the shock wave moves through the inner ring and slams into the outer rings and illuminates them," Kirshner said. "It could lead to clues about the last 20,000 years of the star. But there are many things that are still a mystery. We still do not understand the evolution of the star before the explosion or how the three rings formed. We also think that the star may be part of a binary system."

Astronomers also are still looking for evidence of a black hole or a neutron star left behind by the blast. The fiery death of massive stars usually creates these energetic objects. Most astronomers think a neutron star formed 20 years ago. Kirshner said the object could be obscured by dust or it could have become a black hole.

He plans to use the infrared capabilities of the Wide Field Camera 3 - an instrument scheduled to be installed during the upcoming Hubble servicing mission - to hunt for a stellar remnant. Scientists will use another instrument scheduled for installment during the mission, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, to analyze the supernova's chemical composition and velocities.

The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013, will be able to see infrared light from the ring that is 10 times brighter than what astronomers see today. The debris inside the ring will begin to brighten, and astronomers will get another chance to study the interior of an exploded star.

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Celebrating supernova's 20th anniversary with Hubble

[syscom3]

Beauty of barred spiral galaxy shown by Hubble
HUBBLE INFORMATION CENTER NEWS RELEASE
Posted: April 5, 2007

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an unrivalled snapshot of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672. This remarkable image provides a high definition view of the galaxy's large bar, its fields of star-forming clouds and dark bands of interstellar dust.

NGC 1672, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy's strong galactic bar. NGC 1672 is a prototypical barred spiral galaxy and differs from normal spiral galaxies in that the spiral arms do not twist all the way into the centre. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus.

Astronomers believe that barred spirals have a unique mechanism that channels gas from the disk inwards towards the nucleus. This allows the bar portion of the galaxy to serve as an area of new star generation. It appears that the bars are short-lived, begging the question: will non-barred galaxies develop a bar in the future, or have they already hosted one that has disappeared?

In the new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, clusters of hot young blue stars form along the spiral arms, and ionize surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas that glow red. Delicate curtains of dust partially obscure and redden the light of the stars behind them. NGC 1672's symmetric look is emphasized by the four principal arms, edged by eye-catching dust lanes that extend out from the center.

Galaxies lying behind NGC 1672 give the illusion they are embedded in the foreground galaxy, even though they are really much farther away. They also appear reddened as they shine through NGC 1672's dust. A few bright foreground stars inside our own Milky Way Galaxy appear in the image as bright, diamond-like objects.

NGC 1672 is a member of the family of Seyfert galaxies, named after the astronomer, Carl Keenan Seyfert, who studied a family of galaxies with active nuclei extensively in the 1940s. The energy output of these nuclei can sometimes outshine their host galaxies. The active galaxy family include the exotically named quasars and blazars. Although each type has distinctive characteristics, they are thought to be all driven by the same engine - supermassive black holes - but are viewed from different angles.

The new Hubble observations, performed with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the observatory, have shed light on the process of starburst activity and on why some galaxies are ablaze with extremely active star formation.

NGC 1672 is more than 60 million light-years away in the direction of the Southern constellation of Dorado. These observations of NGC 1672 were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in August of 2005. This composite image contains filters that isolate light from the blue, green, and infrared portions of the spectrum, as well as emission from ionized hydrogen.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

[Matt308]

Wow. Just dust in a cereal bowl. If we winked out tomorrow, would anyone notice?

[syscom3]

One of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras has been released to celebrate the 17th anniversary of the launch and deployment of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows a 50 light-year-wide view of the tumultuous central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth - and death - is taking place.

Hubble's new view of the Carina Nebula shows the process of star birth at a new level of detail. The bizarre landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. These stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born.

This immense nebula contains a dozen or more brilliant stars that are estimated to be at least 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. The most opulent is the star eta Carinae, seen at far left. Eta Carinae is in the final stages of its brief eruptive lifespan, as shown by two billowing lobes of gas and dust that presage its upcoming explosion as a titanic supernova.

The fireworks in the Carina region started three million years ago when the nebula's first generation of newborn stars condensed and ignited in the middle of a huge cloud of cold molecular hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carved out an expanding bubble of hot gas. The island-like clumps of dark clouds scattered across the nebula are nodules of dust and gas that have so far resisted being eaten away by photoionisation.

The hurricane-strength blast of stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation within the cavity is now compressing the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen. This is triggering a second stage of new star formation.

Our Sun and Solar System may have been born inside such a cosmic crucible 4.6 billion years ago. In looking at the Carina Nebula we are seeing star formation as it commonly occurs along the dense spiral arms of a galaxy.

This immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina, the Keel of the old southern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts from Greek mythology.

This image is an immense (29,566 x 14,321 pixels) mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Colour information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulphur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

In its 17 years of exploring the heavens, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made nearly 800,000 observations and snapped nearly 500,000 images of more than 25,000 celestial objects. Hubble does not travel to stars, planets and galaxies. It takes pictures of them as it whirls around Earth at 17,500 miles an hour. In its 17-year lifetime, the telescope has made nearly 100,000 trips around our planet. Those trips have racked up plenty of frequent-flier-miles, about 2.4 billion, which is the equivalent of a round trip to Saturn.

The 17 years' worth of observations has produced more than 30 terabytes of data, equal to about 25 percent of the information stored in the Library of Congress.

Each day the orbiting observatory generates about 10 gigabytes of data, enough information to fill the hard drive of a typical home computer in two weeks.

The Hubble archive sends about 66 gigabytes of data each day to astronomers throughout the world.

Astronomers using Hubble data have published nearly 7,000 scientific papers, making it one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

[Matt308]

And they want to let this instrument die. Shame on all of those morons who are not willing to take a risk to ensure such an important scientific tool is not maintained. Shame on you.

[Lucky13]

*speechless*

[syscom3]

Stellar fireworks are ablaze in galaxy, Hubble shows
HUBBLE ESA INFORMATION CENTRE NEWS RELEASE
Posted: July 9, 2007

Nearly 12.5 million light-years away in the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449 a veritable stellar "fireworks" is on display - here shown in exquisite detail through the eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hundreds of thousands of vibrant blue and red stars are visible in this new image of galaxy NGC 4449 taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hot bluish white clusters of massive stars are scattered throughout the galaxy, interspersed with numerous dustier reddish regions of current star formation. Massive dark clouds of gas and dust are silhouetted against the flaming starlight.

NGC 4449 has been forming stars since several billion years ago, but currently it is experiencing a star formation event at a much higher rate than in the past. This unusual explosive and intense star formation activity qualifies as a starburst. At the current rate, the gas supply that feeds the stellar production would only last for another billion years or so.

Starbursts usually occur in the central regions of galaxies, but NGC 4449 has a more widespread star formation activity, since the very youngest stars are observed both in the nucleus and in streams surrounding the galaxy.

A "global" starburst like NGC 4449 resembles primordial star forming galaxies which grew by merging with and accreting smaller stellar systems. Since NGC 4449 is close enough to be observed in great detail, it is the ideal laboratory for the investigation of what may have occurred during galactic formation and evolution in the early Universe.

It's likely that the current widespread starburst was triggered by interaction or merging with a smaller companion. NGC 4449 belongs to a group of galaxies in the constellation Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. Astronomers think that NGC 4449's star formation has been influenced by interactions with several of its neighbours.

This image was taken in November 2005 by an international science team led by Alessandra Aloisi of European Space Agency (ESA)/the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore. Other team members include Francesca Annibali (STScI), Claus Leitherer (STScI), Jennifer Mack (STScI), Marco Sirianni (ESA/STScI), Monica Tosi (INAF-OAB), and Roeland van der Marel (STScI).

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys observed the NGC 4449 in blue, visible, infrared, and Hydrogen-alpha light.

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Stellar fireworks are ablaze in dwarf galaxy

[Lucky13]

Sombrero Galaxy....


Whirlpool Galaxy....

[Lucky13]

I just thought that this might be interesting....
SKY-MAP.ORG

[syscom3]

Todays amazing Hubble picture:

Finding blue blobs in space sounds like an encounter with an alien out of a science fiction movie.
But the Hubble Space Telescope's powerful vision has resolved strange objects nicknamed "blobs"
and found them to be brilliant blue clusters of stars born in the swirls and eddies of a galactic
smashup 200 million years ago.

The findings are being reported by Duilia de Mello of the Catholic University of America, Washington,
D.C. and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and her colleagues at the 211th meeting
of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

Such "blue blobs"-weighing tens of thousands of solar masses-have never been seen in detail
before in such sparse locations, say researchers. They are more massive than most open clusters
found inside galaxies but a fraction of the mass of globular star clusters that orbit a galaxy.

Because the orphan stars don't belong to any particular galaxy, the heavier elements produced in
their fusion furnaces may easily be expelled back into intergalactic space. This may offer clues as
to how the early universe was "polluted" with heavier elements early in its history, say researchers.

The mystery is that the "blue blobs" are found along a wispy bridge of gas strung among three
colliding galaxies, M81, M82, and NGC 3077, residing approximately 12 million light-years from
Earth. This is not the place astronomers expect to find star clusters: in the "abyssal plain" of
intergalactic space. "We could not believe it, the stars were in the middle of nowhere," says de Mello.

The "blue blobs" are clumped together in a structure called Arp's Loop, along the tenuous gas
bridge. The gas filaments were considered too thin to accumulate enough material to actually
build these many stars, says de Mello. But Hubble reveals the "blue blobs" contain the equivalent
of five Orion Nebulae.

After finding that these "blobs" were resolved into stars, the team used the Hubble image to
measure an age for the clusters of less than 200 million years with many stars as young and
even younger than 10 million years. Not coincidentally, 200 million years is the estimated age of
the galactic collision that created the tidal gas streamers, pulled between the galaxies like taffy.

De Mello and her team propose that the star clusters in this diffuse structure might have formed
from gas collisions and subsequent turbulence, which enhanced locally the density of the gas
streams. Galaxy collisions were much more frequent in the early universe, so "blue blobs" should
have been common. After the stars burned out or exploded, the heavier elements forged in their
nuclear furnaces would have been ejected to enrich intergalactic space.

Radio observations with the Very Large Array of radio telescopes in Socorro, New Mexico, gave a
detailed map of the intergalactic bridge that revealed knots of denser gas. Studies with the 3.5-meter
WIYN telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona mapped the optical light glow of hydrogen along the
bridge. Observations with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) ultraviolet space telescope
revealed an ultraviolet glow at the knots, and that earned them the nickname "blue blobs."
But GALEX did not have the resolution to see individual stars or clusters. Only Hubble's Advanced
Camera for Surveys at last revealed the point sources of the ultraviolet radiation.

[Konigstiger205]

Too bad we won't be around when mankind will explore these things....so much to explore and to find out...

[Lucky13]

You may not be fellas, I intend to live forever....

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by Lucky13

You may not be fellas, I intend to live forever....

Your words on this forum will allow to you live in "spirit" forever

[Matt308]

Did you guys read about the latest optical telescope that is being built that is about 150ft across. It is made up of mirrored components each controlled individually to properly align as a single collection lens and manipulated by computer feedback to minimize vibrations. I want to say it was being built someplace in Europe. It is supposed to have 10 times the resolution of Hubble from a terrestrial telescope. The design itself was a marvel.