Hubble Space Telescope Archives

March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 by Alan Boyle

A New Record! Hubble Detects an Individual Star From a Time When the Universe Was Less Than a Billion Years Old

Gravitationally lensed image of Earendel — The star nicknamed Earendel, indicated by the white arrow, is positioned along a ripple in spacetime toat gives the image extreme magnification. Credit: NASA / ESA / Brian Welch (JHU) / Dan Coe (STScI) / Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

A star that sounds as if it came from “The Lord of the Rings” now marks one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s farthest frontiers: The fuzzy point of light, known as Earendel, has been dated to a mere 900 million years after the Big Bang and appears to represent the farthest-out individual star seen to date.

Based on its redshift value of 6.2, Earendel’s light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, astronomers report in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. That distance mark outshines Hubble’s previous record-holder for a single star, which registered a redshift of 1.5 and is thought to have existed when the universe was 4 billion years old.

The newly reported record comes with caveats. First of all, we’re talking here about a single star rather than star clusters or galaxies. Hubble has seen agglomerations of stars that go back farther in time.

“Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges, with the light from millions of stars blending together,” lead author Brian Welch, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, said today in a news release. “The galaxy hosting this star has been magnified and distorted by gravitational lensing into a long crescent that we named the Sunrise Arc.”

A close look at the arc turned up several bright spots, but the characteristics of the light coming from Earendel pointed to a high redshift, which translates into extreme distance. The higher the redshift, the faster the source of the light is receding from us in an ever-more-quickly expanding universe.

February 6, 2022February 6, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

The First Rogue Black Hole has Been Discovered, and it’s Only 5,000 Light-Years Away

Microlensing strikes again. Astronomers have been using the technique to detect everything from rogue planets to the most distant star ever seen. Now, astronomers have officially found another elusive object that has long been theorized and that we first reported on back in 2009 but has never directly detected – a rogue black hole.

December 31, 2021December 31, 2021 by Matt Williams

An Exoplanet Found Protected by a Magnetosphere

Today’s astronomers are busy building the census of extrasolar planets, which has reached a total of 4,884 confirmed planets, with another 8,288 candidates awaiting confirmation. Now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally been launched, future surveys will be reaching beyond mere discovery and will be focused more on characterization. In essence, future exoplanet surveys will determine with greater certainty which planets are habitable and which are not.

One characteristic that they will be on the lookout for in particular is the presence of planetary magnetic fields (aka. magnetospheres). On Earth, the atmosphere and all life on the surface are protected by a magnetic field, which is why they are considered crucial to habitability. Using data from the venerated Hubble Space Telescope (HST), an international team of astronomers reported the detection of a magnetic field around an exoplanet for the first time!

December 9, 2021December 9, 2021 by Matt Williams

Hubble is Fully Operational Once Again

The Hubble Space Telescope hovers at the boundary of Earth and space in this picture, taken after Hubble's second servicing mission in 1997.

In the history of space exploration, a handful of missions have set new records for ruggedness and longevity. On Mars, the undisputed champion is the Opportunity rover, which was slated to run for 90 days but remained in operation for 15 years instead! In orbit around Mars, that honor goes to the 2001 Mars Odyssey, which is still operational 20 years after it arrived around the Red Planet.

In deep space, the title for the longest-running mission goes to the Voyager 1 probe, which has spent the past 44 years exploring the Solar System and what lies beyond. But in Earth orbit, the longevity prize goes to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which is once again fully operational after experiencing technical issues. With this latest restoration of operations, Hubble is well on its way to completing 32 years of service.

December 6, 2021January 11, 2022 by Tammy Plotner

Messier 95 – the NGC 3351 Barred Spiral Galaxy

Welcome back to Messier Monday! Today, we continue in our tribute to our dear friend, Tammy Plotner, by looking at the barred spiral galaxy known as Messier 95!

During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noticed the presence of several “nebulous objects” while surveying the night sky. Originally mistaking these objects for comets, he began to catalog them so that others would not make the same mistake. Today, the resulting list (known as the Messier Catalog) includes over 100 objects and is one of the most influential catalogs of Deep Space Objects.

One of these objects is Messier 95 (aka. NGC 3351), a barred spiral galaxy located about 33 million light-years away. Measuring over 80,000 light-years, or 24.58 kiloparsecs (kpc) in diameter, this galaxy is one of several that fall into the M96 Group, located in the constellation Leo. This Group consists of between 8 and 24 galaxies in total and three Messier Objects: M95, M96, and M105.

December 6, 2021December 6, 2021 by Matt Williams

Colliding Gases at the Heart of the Running Man Nebula

Behold, the Herbig-Haro object known as HH45, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)! These objects are a rarely seen type of nebula made up of luminous clouds of dust and gas. These occur when newborn stars form within a nebula and eject hot gas, colliding with the surrounding gas and dust. The result is bright shock waves that look like mounded, luminous clouds in space!

November 29, 2021November 29, 2021 by Evan Gough

This is a Classic Example of a Reflection Nebula, Where the Reflected Light From Young Hot Stars Illuminates a Protostellar Cloud of Gas and Dust

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a portion of the reflection nebula IC 2631 that contains a protostar, the hot, dense core of a forming star that is accumulating gas and dust. Image Credit: Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

The interplay of energy and matter creates beautiful sights. Here on Earth, we enjoy rainbows, auroras, and sunsets and sunrises. But out in space, nature creates extraordinarily dazzling structures called nebulae that can span hundreds of light-years. Nebulae are probably the most beautiful objects out there.

While searching for young stars and their circumstellar disks, Hubble captured a classic reflection nebula.

November 29, 2021November 29, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

A Gravitational Lens Shows the Same Galaxy Three Times

This star- and galaxy-studded image was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The galaxy visible in the bottom right corner of the image, named SGAS 0033+02 is a triple gravitational lens. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Wuyts.

Images from the Hubble Space Telescope are often mind-bending in both their beauty and wealth of scientific wonder. And sometimes, Hubble captures light-bending images too.

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) snapped a photo of a galaxy where the light has been bent by gravitational lensing, so that the galaxy show up not just once, but three times. But the multiple views aren’t exact replicas of each other — they appear as different shapes.

November 11, 2021November 11, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Hubble is Back Online — Partially

The venerable Hubble Space Telescope. After 30 years, it's still a productive scientific workhorse. Image Credit: NASA/ESA

The Hubble Space Telescope has been in ‘safe mode’ since October 23, with all of the science instruments offline and unavailable for observations. However, engineers have now been able to bring one instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), back online, and have restarted its science observations. NASA said engineers are still investigating the issue as the other four instruments remain offline.

October 18, 2021October 18, 2021 by Matt Williams

Europa has Water in its Atmosphere

Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope recently revealed water vapour in the atmosphere of Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons. A new analysis of archival images and spectra has now revealed that water vapour is also present in the atmosphere of Jupter’s icy moon Europa. The analysis found that a water vapour atmosphere is present only on one hemisphere of the moon. This result advances our understanding of the atmospheric structure of icy moons, and helps lay the groundwork for upcoming science missions which will explore Jupiter’s icy moons.

Since the Voyager probes passed through the Jupiter system in 1979, scientists have been intrigued and mystified by its moon Europa. Once the images these probes acquired of the moon’s icy surface returned to Earth, scientists began to speculate about the possibility of a subsurface ocean. Since then, the detection of plume activity and other lines of evidence have bolstered this theory and fed speculation that there could be life beneath Europa’s icy surface.

According to new research, another critical piece of evidence of Europa’s watery nature has at least been confirmed. Using a similar technique that confirmed the presence of atmospheric water vapor in Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, Lorenz Roth of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology confirmed that Europa has water vapor in its atmosphere. This discovery could lead to a greater understanding of Europa’s atmosphere and surface environment, informing missions headed there in the near future.