Posted on by Ken Kremer

‘NASA Johnson Style’ Parodies ‘Gangnam Style’ Music Video

Check this out and get in the groove to enjoy some really cool fun from NASA

NASA interns and NASA astronauts have joined forces to create a very humorous and entertaining music video parody of the “Gangnam Style” mega hit by international pop sensation PSY – It’s called “NASA Johnson Style” and its New!

A team of interns from NASA’s Johnson Space Center (pictured below) in Houston created original lyrics, convinced several initially incredulous astronauts to dance along and shot the video at several NASA centers. Then they integrated the whole kit and kaboodle with the “Gangnam Style” instrumental track. Scotty would be proud of the intricate engineering demanded to pull this off – but where are the tribbles !

Image caption: Mike Massimino (center) poses with the intern video team after filming at JSC. Photo credit: Nicole Cloutier

The video features a fun loving crew of NASA astronauts including Mike Massimino, who deftly repaired the Hubble Space Telescope twice among other things, Clayton Anderson and Tracy Caldwell Dyson who lived and worked for many months aboard the International Space Station, and Mike Coats, a Shuttle commander and the retiring Director of the Johnson Space Center.

The video also features actual footage from the International Space Station , Apollo Moonwalks, Curiosity on Mars, Dawn at Vesta, Houston Mission control, the SLS and Orion Crew vehicle as well as real research labs and scientists here on Earth. So it’s fun and meant to be educational as well.

“Gangnam Style” by the Korean singing star PSY is the most popular YouTube music ever and is enjoyed by millions more every day since it was released last summer. It has spawned numerous other parodies.

And in case you missed last summer’s mega hit parody straight from the Red Planet – click on this: “We’re NASA and We Know It (Mars Curiosity)” – Note: this is NOT a NASA production

Now, turn up the volume and enjoy some light hearted cheer in this Holiday season.

Ken Kremer

Posted on by John Williams

Hubble Census Unveils Galaxies Shining Near Cosmic Dawn

This new image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) 2012 campaign reveals a previously unseen population of seven faraway galaxies, which are observed as they appeared in a period 350 million to 600 million years after the Big Bang. Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Ellis (Caltech), and the UDF 2012 Team

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have spotted some of the most distant, dim and ancient galaxies ever detected in a new survey. The images, taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC 3) looks further back in time than any previous Hubble observation, providing information about the conditions in the early Universe.

“This is like a scientific version of the story of Genesis,” said astronomer Avi Loeb from Harvard University.

The seven distant galaxies represent a previously unseen population of galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than 3 percent of its present age. In these deepest images to date from Hubble, astronomers were able to take a sample of the amount of galaxies at the time. The results show a smooth decline in the number of galaxies with increasing look-back time to about 450 million years after the Big Bang.

The data provides the first reliable census of this uncharted period of cosmic history, according to the scientists. As astronomers look even deeper into the Universe, galaxy numbers appear to drop off smoothly leading them to believe that the “cosmic dawn” was gradual, not a dramatic event.

“Observations of the microwave afterglow from the Big Bang tell us that reionization happened more than about 13 billion years ago,” said Brant Robertson of the University of Arizona in Tucson, a member of the survey team. “Our data confirms that reionization was a drawn-out process occurring over several hundred million years with galaxies slowly building up their stars and chemical elements. There wasn’t a single dramatic moment when galaxies formed; it was a gradual process.”

These galaxies were found as part of an ambitious Hubble survey of an intensively studied patch of sky known as the Ultra Deep Field (UDF), which was originally taken in 2003-2004, focusing in on a small area in the sky in the constellation Fornax. In the new 2012 campaign, called UDF 2012, a team of astronomers led by Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology used the WFC3 to peer deeper into space in near-infrared light than any previous Hubble observation. The observations were made over a period of six weeks during August and September 2012, and the first scientific results are now appearing in a series of scientific papers. The UDF 2012 team is publicly releasing these unique data, after preparing them for other research groups to use.

“Hubble is achieving just great science,” said John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and NASA’s associate administrator for science, speaking at a briefing about the new survey. “This is an origins story, where we’re going back to the beginning, back to the first stars that appeared in the Universe. This validates that when we get James Webb Space Telescope online it will have a lot to look at and a lot to do.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is slated to launch in 2018.

Astronomers detected seven galaxies in the time period 400-600 million years after the Big Bang. All extremely distant, they ranged in distance with redshifts from 8.6 to nearly 12.

Astronomers study the distant universe in near-infrared light because the expansion of space stretches ultraviolet and visible light from galaxies into infrared wavelengths, a phenomenon called “redshift.” The more distant a galaxy, the higher its redshift.

Notably, one of the galaxies may be a distance record breaker, observed 380 million years after the birth of our universe in the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of 11.9. This is the galaxy UDFj-39546284, which was previously detected and was originally suggested as the most distant object ever found nearly two years ago by Hubble. Later observations put it at a redshift of 10.3, but the newly refined observations put it even more distant.

A timeline of the Universe and our observations of it. Credit: University of Arizona.

Scientists think that the universe began with the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. Hydrogen formed about 400,000 years later but with no stars, spacetime was dark. About 200 million years later, hydrogen clouds collapsed forming the first stars and galaxies; what astronomers call the “cosmic dawn.” Light from these new stars began breaking down hydrogen into protons and electrons during a time period called cosmic reionization. In the present universe, scientists see galaxies growing in mass and size with the synthesis of elements, leading to the formation of complex molecules including the components to create life. Our Sun and solar system formed just over 4 billion years ago.

“The team pushed Hubble to its limits. This is probably the farthest back Hubble can look, according to the study leader, Richard Ellis. “We are pushing Hubble well beyond what it was designed to do.”

Read more about the findings and the HUDF 2012 Campaign at the HubbleSite.

Read the team’s paper: The Abundance of Star-Forming Galaxies in the Redshift Range 8.5 to 12: New Results from the 2012 Hubble Ultra Deep Field Campaign

Additional Sources: CalTech ESA Hubble

Posted on by John Williams

Pink Galactic Smackdown Results in Cosmic Bulls-eye

Bright pink nebulae encircle spiral galaxy NGC 922 in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA. Zoom: John Williams/TerraZoom and Zoomify

Galaxies pack a wallop. A galactic bulls-eye ringed with pink nebulae is the only evidence of a rare galactic collision of NGC 922 that occurred millions of years ago. Clicking the button on the far right of the toolbar will allow awesomecosmicsauce to tantalize your eyes and work all of the pixels on your computer screen. Pressing the “ESC” will return you to the present universe.

Explore this awesome image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. While lovely, something is amiss in this image. NGC 922 used to be a spiral galaxy. As you zoom across the image, the spiral arms look distorted and disrupted. Hints of a galactic interaction are strewn across the galaxy from the large numbers of bright pink nebulae and blue stars to the spray of dim stars toward the top of the image. Ripples set up as the smaller galaxy passed through the gas and dust clouds of NGC 922 created new star formation. Ultraviolet radiation from these bright new stars cause hydrogen gas in the surrounding nebula to glow a characteristic pink. The tugs of gravity hurled thousands of stars outward.

Episode 60 of the Hubblecast explores NGC 922, a galaxy that has been hit square-on by another. Ripples of star-formation are still propagating out across thousands of light-years of space over 300 million years after the collision, making it a prime example of what astronomers call a collisional ring galaxy.

Scientists believe that millions of years ago a small galaxy, known as 2MASXI J0224301-244443, plunged through the heart of NGC 922. Sometimes, if a small galaxy hits a larger galaxy just right, a circle is formed. But more often than not, galaxies are not aligned perfectly. When a galaxy smacks another off center, one side of the ring is brighter than the other. NGC 922 is a prime example of what astronomers call collisional ring galaxies. Although only a few ring galaxies are seen in our cosmic neighborhood, of which the Cartwheel Galaxy is the most spectacular, ring galaxies appear to be commonplace as we peer further into the past.

As you explore the empty places of the image, look for faraway background galaxies. Several dim spiral galaxies dot the image both outside the galaxy and within the star-speckled interior.

NGC 922 is found about 330 million light-years from Earth toward the constellation Fornax. Sky mapper and French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille introduced Fornax, the Furnace, in 1756. Fornax is relatively devoid of stars allowing astronomers to peer deep into the universe. The constellation was the perfect target for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image.

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 922. Credit: NASA, ESA

Source: ESA Hubble

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Stunning Gallery of Previously Unpublished Images from “Hubble’s Universe”

Distant star-forming region NGC 2467. Credit: NASA/ESA, Courtesy of “Hubble’s Universe.”

The new book, Hubble’s Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images includes several previously unpublished images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and author Terence Dickinson has graciously shared a few of those images with Universe Today. All images are courtesy of NASA, ESA, and “Hubble’s Universe.”

Find out how you can win a copy of “Hubble’s Universe” here.

Read our full review of this book here.

Above is NGC 2467, a nebula similar to the Orion Nebula, but 11 times farther away, in the southern constellation Puppis. A churning foam of strangely shaped dust clouds forms the backdrop to the newborn blue stars emerging from the gas and dust. Most of the radiation that is eating away at the cloud is being emitted by the single brilliant massive star near the center of the image. Its fierce radiation has cleared the surrounding area, and some of the next generation of stars are forming in the denser regions around the edge.

See more beautiful Hubble images below:

The star cluster NGC2060 contains a supernova that exploded about 10,000 years ago, blowing out gas surrounding the cluster.

A celestial shell of interstellar gas being shocked by the blast wave from a supernova, the Ornament Nebula was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope and combined with X-ray images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The supernova – the explosive destruction of a star – occurred nearly 400 years ago and is 23 light-years across. The nebula is expanding at the rate of the Earth-to-Moon distance every minute.

Glorious Saturn. This exquisite Hubble portrait of Saturn shows the famous rings nearly edge-on. Some of the larger of Saturn’s more than five dozen moons are seen, including most prominently Titan, the largest, casting its inky shadow on the planet. The rings are composed of trillions of icy particles that probably originated with the collision of large moons aeons ago.

Egg Nebula. Concentric dust layers extend over one-tenth of a light-year from this dying sun. Running almost vertically through the image, a thick dust belt blocks the light of the central star. Twin beams of light radiate from the hidden star, illuminating the pitch-black dust like a flashlight shining in a smoky room. The nebula was photographed through polarizing filters to measure how the dust reflects light.

NGC6384. Star birth in this relatively quiescent middle-aged galaxy has declined. Noticeably missing are pinkish nebulas that are the sites of new star formation. Radiation and stellar winds from superhot, young blue stars have cleared out the remaining gas, shutting down any further production of stars. A bright concentration of starlight marks the galaxy’s center. Spiraling outward, dust lanes are silhouetted against the population of whitish middle-aged stars. Much younger blue stars trace the spiral arms.

ARP 273. A cosmic waltz between two galaxies is the result of gravitational tidal distortion from their close proximity to each other. Despite the fact that they are separated by tens of thousands of light-years, a tenuous tidal bridge of material stretches between the pair. The swath of blue across the top is the combined light from clusters of bright, hot, young blue stars, The smaller, nearly edge-on companion galaxy shows intense star formation at its nucleus, which was probably triggered by the interactions. More close encounters and an eventual merger are the likely future of this galaxy duo.

Stephan’s Quintet. One of the most famous examples of interacting galaxies is Stephan’s Quintet. Three of the galaxies have distorted shapes, elongated spiral arms and long, gaseous tidal tails containing myriad star clusters. The interactions among the galaxies have sparked a frenzy of star birth in the pair of intertwined galaxies just above center. This drama is being played out against a rich background of far more distant galaxies. The galaxy at lower left is in the foreground and not part of the grouping. It is 40 million light-years from Earth, while the remaining members of the quintet reside 290 million light-years away.

Galaxy Panorama. This is just 1 of 10 photos of that create a panorama of distant galaxies. Perhaps better than anything else in this book, these images open a window on the universe of galaxies – arguably, the Hubble Space Telescopes’ greatest gift so far. The image reveals a rich tapestry of thousands of galaxies stretching back through most of the universe’s history. The closest galaxies in the foreground emitted their observed light about a billion years ago. The most distant galaxies, a few of the very faint red specks, are seen as they appeared more than 13 billion years ago. The image combines a broad range of colors, from the ultraviolet, through visible light and into the near infrared. Such a detailed view of the deep universe in this combination of color, clarity, accuracy and depth has never before been assembled. The panorama shows galaxy shapes that, at each earlier epoch, appear increasingly chaotic as galaxies grew through accretion, collisions and mergers. The galaxies range from the mature spirals and elliptical in the foreground to smaller, fainter, irregularly shaped galaxies, most of which are farther away and, therefore, existed further back in time. The smaller galaxies are considered the building blocks of the large galaxies we see today.

Ants in space? Designated Menzel 3 (Mz 3), and called the Ant Nebula, this member of Hubble’s celestial menagerie resembles the head and thorax of a garden ant. The central star in Mz3 might have a closely orbiting companion that is exerting strong gravitational tidal forces which are shaping the outflowing gas. The very massive young star Eta Carinae shows a similar outflow pattern to that of Mz3.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the 86-kilometer-wide lunar impact crater Tycho. Because the Moon has been mapped in great detail by lunar orbiting spacecraft, there is relatively little call for Hubble’s intense gaze to be turned toward the Earth’s natural satellite.

This image was published earlier this year, and shows the dazzling globular star cluster Messier 9, or simply M9, contains hordes of stars swarming in a spherical cloud about 25,000 light-years from Earth. It is too faint to be seen with the naked eye, and when it was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1764, he observed it only as a faint smudge in his small telescope. He classified the cluster as a nebula (“cloud” in Latin). This Hubble Space Telescope portrait, the best image yet of M9, reveals 250,000 individual stars.

Posted on by Evan Gough

Book Review: “Hubble’s Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images”

The Hubble Space Telescope has been the subject of several books and articles, and certainly much more will be written about it in the future, as its status as the world’s most successful science experiment will guarantee that. And though breathtaking images are what hooks many people on the telescope, the Hubble was designed and built to do more than just take pretty pictures. The Hubble was planned and built to shed light on several different issues in astronomy and cosmology.

A new book, “Hubble’s Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images,” by Terence Dickinson, explains the important contributions Hubble has made in the areas of galactic evolution, dark matter and dark energy, and the expansion rate of the Universe. After a quick recounting of the Hubble’s launch and its well-documented initial problems, the author spells out Hubble’s top discoveries, including Hubble’s contribution to our understanding of the super-massive black holes at the centre of galaxies and our first looks at the atmospheres of extra-solar planets.

But the book is more than just clear and readable explanations of discoveries in astronomy. It’s a stunning picture book, equally at home in the living room as it is in the study. The array of pictures is simply awesome, and as Universe Today readers know, astronomy photos can suck anyone in.

See a gallery of new images from the book here.

Find out how you can win a copy of this book here.
The Hubble Space Telescope and the people that work with it are responsible for the images in this book, but it takes a special person to put a book like this together. The author, Terence Dickinson, is well-known in astronomy circles. If you don’t know who he is, you should. He’s the author of the top-selling star-gazing guide in the world, “NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe,” as well as 14 other books. He’s won numerous awards for science-writing and for the popularization of science. An accomplished astro-photographer, one of his photos of the Moon has been on a U.S. postage stamp. He’s even been awarded the Order of Canada, the country’s second highest honour for merit. Terence Dickinson has a healthy passion for science, and has spent his life igniting that passion in others.

“Hubble’s Universe” is loaded with hundreds of photos of the kind we’ve become used to from Hubble, and some in the book have never before been published (see some of them here). The beauty of glowing gas clouds, the rich luminescence of filaments of gas and dust in distant nebulae, the beauty of the planets in our own solar system. This book is basically a feast of astrophotography.

While many books have been written about Hubble, this one will stack up against any of them. All Hubble books have stunning images in them, but what makes this one special is Dickinson’s ability for explanation. The writing is very accessible while still doing an outstanding job of handling some difficult subjects. If you’ve ever struggled with explanations of things like Dark Matter and Dark Energy, “Hubble’s Universe” will bring clarity, without any dumbing down of the subject matter.

You won’t regret buying this book, for yourself or perhaps for someone else. It’s destined to be a staple in libraries and astronomy collections. I’ll be bold and go a little further. “Hubble’s Universe” is destined to be a classic much like some of Dickinson’s other books.

Here’s a video of Dickinson discussing Hubble and his new book:

Posted on by Jason Major

The Brightest Galaxies in the Universe Were Invisible… Until Now

Hubble images of six of the starburst galaxies first found by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory (Keck data shown below each in blue)

Many of the brightest, most actively star-forming galaxies in the Universe were actually undetectable by Earth-based observatories, hidden from view by thick clouds of opaque dust and gas. Thanks to ESA’s Herschel space observatory, which views the Universe in infrared, an enormous amount of these “starburst” galaxies have recently been uncovered, allowing astronomers to measure their distances with the twin telescopes of Hawaii’s W.M. Keck Observatory. What they found is quite surprising: at least 767 previously unknown galaxies, many of them generating new stars at incredible rates.

Although nearly invisible at optical wavelengths these newly-found galaxies shine brightly in far-infrared, making them visible to Herschel, which can peer through even the densest dust clouds. Once astronomers knew where the galaxies are located, they were able to target them with Hubble and, most importantly, the two 10-meter Keck telescopes — the two largest optical telescopes in the world.

By gathering literally hundreds of hours of spectral data on the galaxies with the Keck telescopes, estimates of their distances could be determined as well as their temperatures and how often new stars are born within them.

“While some of the galaxies are nearby, most are very distant; we even found galaxies that are so far that their light has taken 12 billion years to travel here, so we are seeing them when the Universe was only a ninth of its current age,” said Dr. Caitlin Casey, Hubble fellow at the UH Manoa Institute for Astronomy and lead scientist on the survey. “Now that we have a pretty good idea of how important this type of galaxy is in forming huge numbers of stars in the Universe, the next step is to figure out why and how they formed.”

A representation of the distribution of nearly 300 starbursts in one 1.4 x 1.4 degree field of view.

The galaxies, many of them observed as they were during the early stages of their formation, are producing new stars at a rate of 100 to 500 a year — with a mass equivalent of several thousand Suns — hence the moniker “starburst” galaxy. By comparison the Milky Way galaxy only births one or two Sun-mass stars per year.

The reason behind this explosion of star formation in these galaxies is unknown, but it’s thought that collisions between young galaxies may be the cause.

Another possibility is that galaxies had much more gas and dust during the early Universe, allowing for much higher star formation rates than what’s seen today.

“It’s a hotly debated topic that requires details on the shape and rotation of the galaxies before it can be resolved,” said Dr. Casey.

Still, the discovery of these “hidden” galaxies is a major step forward in understanding the evolution of star formation in the Universe.

“Our study confirms the importance of starburst galaxies in the cosmic history of star formation. Models that try to reproduce the formation and evolution of galaxies will have to take these results into account.”

– Dr. Caitlin Casey, Hubble fellow at the UH Manoa Institute for Astronomy

“For the first time, we have been able to measure distances, star formation rates, and temperatures for a brand new set of 767 previously unidentified galaxies,” said Dr. Scott Chapman, a co-author on the studies. “The previous similar survey of distant infrared starbursts only covered 73 galaxies. This is a huge improvement.”

The papers detailing the results were published today online in the Astrophysical Journal.

Sources: W.M. Keck Observatory article and ESA’s news release.

Image credits: ESA–C. Carreau/C. Casey (University of Hawai’i); COSMOS field: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE/HerMES Key Programme; Hubble images: NASA, ESA. Inset image courtesy W. M. Keck Observatory.

Posted on by Jason Major

Gigantic Plasma Jets Pour From the Heart of Hercules A

Combined Hubble (optical) and VLA (radio) images show enormous radio jets shooting out from the galaxy Hercules A

Combined Hubble (optical) and VLA (radio) images show enormous radio jets shooting out from the galaxy Hercules A

Talk about pouring your heart out! Astronomers using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the recently-upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico have identified gigantic jets of plasma, subatomic particles and magnetic fields blasting out of the center of Hercules A, a massive galaxy 2 billion light-years away.

The image above is a combination of optical images from Hubble and radio data gathered by the multi-dish VLA. If our eyes could see in the high-energy spectrum of radio, this is what Hercules A — the otherwise ordinary-looking elliptical galaxy in the center — would really look like.

(Of course, if we could see in radio our entire sky would be a very optically busy place!)

Also known as 3C 348, Hercules A is incredibly massive — nearly 1,000 times the mass of our Milky Way galaxy with a similarly scaled-up version of  a supermassive black hole at its center. Due to its powerful gravity and intense magnetic field Hercules A’s monster black hole is firing superheated material far out into space from its rotational poles. Although invisible in optical light, these jets are bright in radio wavelengths and are thus revealed through VLA observations.

Traveling close to the speed of light, the jets stretch for nearly 1.5 million light-years from both sides of the galaxy. Ring-shaped structures within them suggest that occasional strong outbursts of material have occurred in the past.

Announced on November 29, these findings illustrate the combined imaging power of two of astronomy’s most valuable and cutting-edge tools: Hubble and the newly-updated VLA. The video below shows how it was all done… check it out.

Read more on the NRAO press release here.

Image credits: NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Source: NRAO.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Holiday Gift Idea: Hubble Star Cards

Universe Today writer John Williams is a busy guy. Not only does he write about space and astronomy, he also has his own graphic design and web company called TerraZoom, is the curator of the award winning Starry Critters website, and is a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador. A couple of years ago John created a card game called Hubble Star Cards, and the game won a Hubble Gold Star award in 2010 from NASA and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) for its inspiring use of the amazing imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. As the description says, “the vivid, stunning images motivate and engage children of all ages to learn about objects in space.”

Hubble Star Cards are now available in a high-quality, stunningly beautiful printed card set.

The cards are a just a bit larger than a normal card deck, at 3 inches by 5×5 inches, so the beautiful Hubble images are bigger and better.

They sell for $24.95, but Universe Today readers can get 15% off using UNIVERSE as a coupon code. Check them out at the Hubblestarcards.com website.

“Hubble has a unique ability to draw the public into exploring space,” says John. “Through beautiful images of planets, star clusters, pillars of dust, and galaxies, Hubble provides a crucial stepping stone in the process of scientific inquiry. Hubble Star Cards create a hand-held experience that opens the door to new questions and answers. You can actually hold the Universe, all of creation, in the palm of your hand and have fun learning about it at the same time.”

The game includes 60 cards categorized by planets, planetary nebulae, supernovae remnants, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. The cards include an image, a basic description, a key to the type of object, location in the sky, constellation, and distance from Earth. Possible games include War, Go Fish, Sorting, Distances and Matching. Although targeted for students 8 and older, preschoolers have played many of the games just by using the amazing imagery as a guide.

Get more info about the Hubble Star Cards here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Now Even Further: Ancient Galaxy is Latest Candidate for Most Distant

It seems that every few months or so comes a new discovery of a new “most distant galaxy ever found.” It’s not really a surprise that new benchmarks are reached with such an amazing frequency as our telescopes get better and astronomers refine their techniques for observing faraway and ancient objects. This latest “most distant” is pretty interesting in that it was found by combining observations from two space telescopes – Hubble and Spitzer – as well as using massive galaxy clusters as gravitational lenses to magnify the distant galaxy behind them. It’s also extremely small and may not even be a fully developed galaxy at the time we are seeing it.

While this galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, appears as a diminutive blob in the new images, astronomers say it offers a peek back into a time when the universe was just 3 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. This newly discovered galaxy was observed 420 million years after the Big Bang, and its light has traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth.

“This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy,” said Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute, lead author of a new paper on the observations. “Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments.”

The discovery comes from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), a program that combines the power of space telescopes with the natural zoom of gravitational lensing to reveal distant galaxies in the early Universe. Observations with Spitzer’s infrared eyes allowed for confirmation of this object.

The light from MACS0647-JD was magnified by a massive galaxy cluster named MACS J0647+7015, and without the cluster’s magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen the remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope. The cluster’s gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear about eight, seven, and two times brighter than they otherwise would that enabled astronomers to detect the galaxy more efficiently and with greater confidence.

“This cluster does what no manmade telescope can do,” said Marc Postman, also from STScI. “Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy.”

MACS0647-JD is just a fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy, and is so small it may not even be a fully formed galaxy. Data show the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

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The galaxy was observed with 17 filters, spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Coe discovered the galaxy in February while poring over a catalogue of thousands of gravitationally lensed objects found in Hubble observations of 17 clusters in the CLASH survey. But the galaxy appeared only in the two reddest filters.

“So either MACS0647-JD is a very red object, only shining at red wavelengths, or it is extremely distant and its light has been ‘redshifted’ to these wavelengths, or some combination of the two,” Coe said. “We considered this full range of possibilities.”

The CLASH team identified multiple images of eight galaxies lensed by the galaxy cluster. Their positions allowed the team to produce a map of the cluster’s mass, which is primarily composed of dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up the bulk of the universe’s mass. “It’s like a big puzzle,” said Coe. “We have to arrange the mass in the cluster so that it deflects the light of each galaxy to the positions observed.” The team’s analysis revealed that the cluster’s mass distribution produced three lensed images of MACS0647-JD at the positions and relative brightness observed in the Hubble image.

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object’s identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs, and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

Redshift is a consequence of the expansion of space over cosmic time. Astronomers study the distant universe in near-infrared light because the expansion of space stretches ultraviolet and visible light from galaxies into infrared wavelengths. Coe estimates MACS0647-JD has a redshift of 11, the highest yet observed.

Images of the galaxy at longer wavelengths obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope played a key role in the analysis. If the object were intrinsically red, it would appear bright in the Spitzer images. Instead, the galaxy barely was detected, if at all, indicating its great distance. The research team plans to use Spitzer to obtain deeper observations of the galaxy, which should yield confident detections as well as estimates of the object’s age and dust content.

MACS0647-JD galaxy, however, may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object’s light into thousands of colors. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team’s extensive analysis. “All three of the lensed galaxy images match fairly well and are in positions you would expect for a galaxy at that remote distance when you look at the predictions from our best lens models for this cluster,” Coe said.

The new distance champion is the second remote galaxy uncovered in the CLASH survey, a multi-wavelength census of 25 hefty galaxy clusters with Hubble’s ACS and WFC3. Earlier this year, the CLASH team announced the discovery of a galaxy that existed when the universe was 490 million years old, 70 million years later than the new record-breaking galaxy. So far, the survey has completed observations for 20 of the 25 clusters.

The team hopes to use Hubble to search for more dwarf galaxies at these early epochs. If these infant galaxies are numerous, then they could have provided the energy to burn off the fog of hydrogen that blanketed the universe, a process called re-ionization. Re-ionization ultimately made the universe transparent to light.

Read the team’s paper (pdf).

Sources: HubbleSite, ESA Hubble

Posted on by John Williams

Stirred, Not Shaken. Black Hole Antics Puff Up Whopper of a Galaxy

Its massive gravitational field warping space, the huge elliptical galaxy A2261-BCG, seems to have a diffuse halo of stars instead of a bright central galactic core. Image credit: NASA/ESA Hubble

Bloated far beyond the size of normal galaxies, one or more black holes may have puffed up an elliptical galaxy to a whopping size, according to astronomers. To their surprise, however, the black holes are missing.

Normally, scientists measure a concentrated peak of light surrounding the central black hole surrounded by a fuzzy halo of stars. Instead, astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, find that the galaxy, known as A2261-BCG, is just a diffuse, bloated foggy patch of light. The intensity of starlight remains even across the entire galaxy. Past Hubble observations show supermassive black holes, each weighing billions of times more than our Sun, reside at the cores of nearly all galaxies.

“Expecting to find a black hole in every galaxy is sort of like expecting to find a pit inside a peach,” explained astronomer and co-author Tod Lauer in a press release. Lauer is with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. “With this Hubble observation, we cut into the biggest peach and we can’t find the pit. We don’t know for sure that the black hole is not there, but Hubble shows that there’s no concentration of stars in the core.”

So where are the black holes?

Astronomers, in a paper that appeared in the September 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, have two ideas, both involving galactic billiards, for the galaxy’s puffy appearance. In one scenario, a pair of merging black holes gravitationally stir up then scatter the galaxy’s stars. In another, the merging black holes are ejected leaving the swarm of stars with no gravitational anchor allowing them to wander outward.

Galaxy cores tend to be sized proportionally to the wheeling expanse of the host galaxy. In the case of A2261-BCG, which spans about a million light-years (10 times that of our Milky Way Galaxy), the central region is three times larger than other very luminous galaxies, according to the paper. The monster galaxy is the most massive and brightest galaxy in the Abell 2261 galaxy cluster.

Team leader Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., said in the press release that the galaxy stood out in the Hubble image. “When I first saw the image of this galaxy, I knew right away it was unusual,” Postman explained. “The core was very diffuse and very large. The challenge was then to make sense of all the data, given what we knew from previous Hubble observations, and come up with a plausible explanation for the intriguing nature of this particular galaxy.”

The team admits the ejected black-hole ideas sound far-fetched, “but that’s what makes observing the universe so intriguing — sometimes you find the unexpected,” said Postman.

As a follow-up, the team is searching for the sound of material falling into the black hole using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico. Comparing the VLA data with Hubble images will allow the researchers to confirm the existence of a black hole and map its location.

Source: Hubblesite