Hubble Archives

June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 by Evan Gough

Barred Spiral NGC 3895 Captured by Hubble

Far away in the Ursa Major constellation is a swirling galaxy that would not look out of place on a coffee made by a starry-eyed barista. NGC 3895 is a barred spiral galaxy that was first spotted by William Herschel in 1790 and was later observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble's orbit high above the Earth's distorting atmosphere allows astronomers to make the very high resolution observations that are essential to opening new windows on planets, stars and galaxies — such as this beautiful view of NGC 3895. The telescope is positioned approximately 570 km above the ground, where it whirls around Earth at 28 000 kilometres per hour and takes 96 minutes to complete one orbit.

NGC 3895 is a barred spiral galaxy in the Ursa Major constellation. It’s about 145 million light years away from our home, the Milky Way, and its diameter is about 45,000 light years. William Herschel discovered it way back in 1790.

Now the Hubble Space Telescope has given us another gorgeous image of it. Thanks Hubble!

May 27, 2020May 27, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

This Dwarf Galaxy is all by Itself

Unlike a spiral or elliptical galaxy, the galaxy KK 246 looks like glitter spilled across a black velvet sheet. KK 246, also known as ESO 461-036, is a dwarf irregular galaxy residing within the Local Void. This image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble/E. Shaya et al.

In these days of social distancing, it appears this beautiful little galaxy is leading by example, sitting all by itself in the middle of a cosmic void.

KK 246, also known as ESO 461-036, is a dwarf irregular galaxy, and ESA aptly described this picture as looking like “glitter spilled across a black velvet sheet.”

But the serene view can be deceiving.

April 28, 2020April 28, 2020 by Matt Williams

Fomalhaut’s Planet Has Gone Missing, But it Might Have Been Something Even More Interesting

Planets don’t simply disappear. And yet, that appears to be what happened to Fomalhaut b (aka. Dagon), an exoplanet candidate located 25 light-years from Earth. Observed for the first time by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004, then confirmed by follow-up observations in 2008 and 2012, this exoplanet candidate was the first to be detected in visible wavelengths (i.e. the Direct Imaging Method.)

Over time, this candidate got fainter and wider until it disappeared from sight altogether. This led to all kinds of speculation, which included the possibility of a collision that reduced the planet to debris. Recently, a team of astronomers from the University of Arizona has suggested another possibility – Fomalhaut b was never a planet at all, but an expanding cloud of dust from two planetesimals that smashed together.

January 7, 2020January 7, 2020 by Evan Gough

Hubble Captured a Photo of This Huge Spiral Galaxy, 2.5 Times Bigger than the Milky Way With 10 Times the Stars

This Hubble Space Telescope photograph showcases the majestic spiral galaxy UGC 2885, located 232 million light-years away in the northern constellation Perseus. The galaxy is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars. A number of foreground stars in our Milky Way can be seen in the image, identified by their diffraction spikes. The brightest star photobombs the galaxy's disk. The galaxy has been nicknamed "Rubin's galaxy," after astronomer Vera Rubin (1928 – 2016), who studied the galaxy's rotation rate in search of dark matter. Credits: NASA, ESA and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville)

This galaxy looks a lot like our own Milky Way galaxy. But while our galaxy is actively forming lots of new stars, this one is birthing stars at only half the rate of the Milky Way. It’s been mostly quiet for billions of years, feeding lightly on the thin gas in intergalactic space.

January 3, 2020January 3, 2020 by Matt Williams

“Super-Puff” Exoplanets Aren’t Like Anything We’ve Got in the Solar System

Artist's impression of the Kepler 51 system. Credits: NASA, ESA, and L. Hustak, J. Olmsted, D. Player and F. Summers (STScI)

The study of extrasolar planets has really exploded in recent years. Currently, astronomers have been able to confirm the existence of 4,104 planets beyond our Solar System, with another 4900 awaiting confirmation. The study of these many planets has revealed things about the range of possible planets in our Universe and taught us that there are many for which there are no analogs in our Solar System.

For example, thanks to new data obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have learned more about a new class of exoplanet known as “super-puff” planets. Planets in this class are essentially young gas giants that are comparable in size to Jupiter but have masses that are just a few times greater than that of Earth. This results in their atmospheres having the density of cotton candy, hence the delightful nickname!

October 17, 2019October 17, 2019 by Evan Gough

Here’s the Picture We’ve Been Waiting for. Hubble’s Photo of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

A Hubble image of comet 2I/Borisov speeding through our Solar System. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

Leave it up to the good ole Hubble Space Telescope. The workhorse telescope has given us a photo of the new interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. Take that, fancy new telescopes.

September 12, 2019September 12, 2019 by Evan Gough

Here’s Hubble’s Newest Image of Saturn

The latest view of Saturn from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures exquisite details of the ring system — which looks like a phonograph record with grooves that represent detailed structure within the rings — and atmospheric details that once could only be captured by spacecraft visiting the distant world. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed Saturn on June 20, 2019, as the planet made its closest approach to Earth, at about 845 million miles away. This image is the second in a yearly series of snapshots taken as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project. OPAL is helping scientists understand the atmospheric dynamics and evolution of our solar system's gas giant planets. In Saturn's case, astronomers will be able to track shifting weather patterns and other changes to identify trends. Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team

Hubble has captured a new image of Saturn that makes you wonder if it’s even real. The image is so crisp it makes it look like Saturn is just floating in space. Which it is.

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019 by Evan Gough

Water Discovered in the Atmosphere of an Exoplanet in the Habitable zone. It Might Be Rain

An artist's concept of K2-18b, a super-Earth exoplanet that could support life. But, not all habitable planets are pale blue dots. Some are dry and yellow. Courtesy STScI

Astronomers using the Hubble space telescope have discovered water in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in its star’s habitable zone. If confirmed, it will be the first time we’ve detected water—a critical ingredient for life as we know it—on an exoplanet. The water was detected as vapour in the atmosphere, but the temperature of the planet means it could sustain liquid water on its surface, if it’s rocky.

July 3, 2019July 3, 2019 by Evan Gough

Hubble has a Brand New Picture of the Massive Star Eta Carinae. It Could Detonate as a Supernova Any Day Now

Telescopes, including Hubble, have monitored the Eta Carinae star system for more than two decades. It has been prone to violent outbursts, including an episode in the 1840s during which ejected material formed the bipolar bubbles seen here. Now, using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to probe the nebula in ultraviolet light, astronomers have uncovered the glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas (shown in blue) in places they had not seen it before. The luminous magnesium resides in the space between the dusty bipolar bubbles and the outer shock-heated nitrogen-rich filaments (shown in red). The streaks visible in the blue region outside the lower-left lobe are a striking feature of the image. These streaks are created when the star’s light rays poke through the dust clumps scattered along the bubble’s surface. Wherever the ultraviolet light strikes the dense dust, it leaves a long, thin shadow that extends beyond the lobe into the surrounding gas. Eta Carinae resides 7500 light-years away. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson), and J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute, New York)

7500 light years away is an object that (almost) needs no introduction: Eta Carinae. If you haven’t heard of it you should be following Universe Today more. Eta Carinae is a well-known and often-studied object in astronomy, partly because it’s prone to the kind of violent outbursts that really grab your attention.

June 25, 2019June 25, 2019 by Evan Gough

Hubble is the Ultimate Multitasker: Discovering Asteroids While it’s Doing Other Observations

Some asteroids from within our Solar System have photobombed deep images of the Universe taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These asteroids reside, on average, only about 260 million kilometres from Earth — right around the corner in astronomical terms. Yet they've horned their way into this picture of thousands of galaxies scattered across space and time at inconceivably farther distances. This Hubble photo of a random patch of sky is part of the Frontier Fields survey. The colourful image contains thousands of galaxies, including massive yellowish ellipticals and majestic blue spirals. Much smaller, fragmentary blue galaxies are sprinkled throughout the field. The reddest objects are most likely the farthest galaxies, whose light has been stretched into the red part of the spectrum by the expansion of space. Intruding across the picture are asteroid trails that appear as curved or S-shaped streaks. Rather than leaving one long trail, the asteroids appear in multiple Hubble exposures that have been combined into one image. Of the 20 total asteroid sightings for this field, seven are unique objects. Of these seven asteroids, only two were earlier identified. The others were too faint to be seen previously. The trails look curved due to an observational effect called parallax. As Hubble orbits around Earth, an asteroid will appear to move along an arc with respect to the vastly more distant background stars and galaxies. The motion of Earth around the Sun, and the motion of the asteroids along their orbits, are other contributing factors to the apparent skewing of asteroid paths. All the asteroids were found manually, the majority by "blinking" consecutive exposures to capture apparent asteroid motion. Astronomers found a unique asteroid for every 10 to 20 hours of exposure time. The Frontier Fields program is a collaboration among several space telescopes and ground-based observatories to study six massive galaxy clusters and their effects. Using a diff

It looks like a poster of the famous Hubble Deep Field, marked with white streaks by a child, or put away carelessly and scratched in the process. But it’s not. The white streaks aren’t accidents; they’re the paths of asteroids.