Hubble Space Telescope Archives

July 21, 2021July 22, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Here are the First New Pictures From the Fully Operational Hubble

Normal science observations were restarted on July 17, 2021 for the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/ StScI.

The astronomy community breathed a huge sigh of relief earlier this week when the Space Telescope Science Institute announced the Hubble Space Telescope’s major computer issues had been fixed. In a grueling month of recovery work, every expert – even retired Hubble engineers and scientists — was brought in for consultation. Their ultimate success is a tribute to the legacy of problem-solving and innovation NASA has been famous for over the years. And now, the telescope is back doing what it was built to do, taking incredible pictures of the cosmos and sending them down to Earth.

Here are the first images since the long-distance repair, two pictures of galaxies. One shows a galaxy with unusual extended spiral arms, and the other is the first high-resolution view of an intriguing pair of colliding galaxies.

July 19, 2021July 19, 2021 by Matt Williams

Good News! NASA Announces that they have Fixed Hubble!

Will China's new space telescope out-perform the Hubble? Image: — The Hubble Space Telescope. Image: NASA

Update: Hubble took its first picture since it went into safe mode on June 13th! More info here.

On Sunday, June 13^th, the Hubble Space Telescope gave the astronomical community a fright when its payload computer suddenly stopped working. This prompted the main computer to put the telescope and its scientific instruments into safe mode. What followed was many tense weeks as the operations team for the HST tried to figure out what the source of the problem was and come up with a strategy for turning Hubble back on.

On Friday, July 17th, after more than a month of checking, re-checking, and attempted restarts, the operations team for Hubble identified the root of the problem and restored power to the telescope’s hardware and all of its instruments. Science operations can now resume, and the pioneering space telescope that gave us over thirty years of dedicated astronomy, cosmology, and astrophysics, still has some life in her!

July 2, 2021July 2, 2021 by Matt Williams

NASA Continues to Try and Rescue Failing Hubble

Things are not looking very good for the Hubble Space Telescope right now. On Sunday, June 13^th, the telescope’s payload computer suddenly stopped working, prompting the main computer to put the telescope into safe mode. While the telescope itself and its science instruments remain in working order, science operations have been suspended until the operations team can figure out how to get the payload computer back online.

While attempting to restart the computer, the operations team has also tried to trace the issue to specific components in the payload computer and switch to their backup modules. As of June 30th, the team began looking into the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) and the Power Control Unit (PCU). Meanwhile, NASA is busy preparing and testing procedures to switch to backup hardware if either of these components are the culprit.

June 25, 2021July 19, 2021 by Matt Williams

There’s a Problem With Hubble, and NASA Hasn’t Been Able to fix it yet

The Hubble Space Telescope could be considered the first of the Super Telescopes. In this image it is being released from the carbo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990. Image: By NASA/IMAX - http://mix.msfc.nasa.gov/abstracts.php?p=1711, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6061254

For over thirty years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been in continuous operation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and revealing never-before-seen aspects of the Universe. In addition to capturing breathtaking images of our Solar System and discovering extrasolar planets, Hubble also probed the deepest reaches of time and space, causing astrophysicists to revise many of their previously-held theories about the cosmos.

Unfortunately, Hubble may finally be reaching the end of its lifespan. In recent weeks, NASA identified a problem with the telescope’s payload computer which suddenly stopped working. This caused Hubble and all of its scientific instruments to go into safe mode and shut down. After many days of tests and checks, technicians at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have yet to identify the root of the problem and get Hubble back online.

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers saw the Same Supernova Three Times Thanks to Gravitational Lensing. And in Twenty Years They Think They’ll see it one More Time

It is hard for humans to wrap their heads around the fact that there are galaxies so far away that the light coming from them can be warped in a way that they actually experience a type of time delay. But that is exactly what is happening with extreme forms of gravitational lensing, such as those that give us the beautiful images of Einstein rings. In fact, the time dilation around some of these galaxies can be so extreme that the light from a single event, such as a supernova, can actually show up on Earth at dramatically different times. That is exactly what a team led by Dr. Steven Rodney at the University of South Carolina and Dr. Gabriel Brammer of the University of Copenhagen has found. Except three copies of this supernova have already appeared – and the team thinks it will show up again one more time, 20 years from now.

June 7, 2021June 7, 2021 by Matt Williams

Time to Update Your Desktop Wallpaper With This Perfect Spiral Galaxy: NGC 691

This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, imaged in fantastic detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). This galaxy is the eponymous member of the NGC 691 galaxy group, a group of gravitationally bound galaxies that lie about 120 million light-years from Earth. Objects such as NGC 691 are observed by Hubble using a range of filters. Each filter only allows certain wavelengths of light to reach Hubble’s WFC3. The images collected using different filters are then coloured by specialised visual artists who can make informed choices about which colour best corresponds to which filter. By combining the coloured images from individual filters, a full-colour image of the astronomical object can be recreated. In this way, we can get remarkably good insight into the nature and appearance of these objects. Links Video of the Eponymous NGC 691

In 1990, the field of astronomy was forever changed with the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. While it was not the first space observatory, its unprecedented resolution and versatility allowed for the deepest and most detailed images of the Universe ever taken. The latest image to be released by the mission features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, which was captured in amazing detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

May 24, 2021May 24, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

Hubble Has Tracked Down the Source of 5 Different Fast Radio Bursts

In a new survey, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have managed to pinpoint the location of several Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). FRBs are powerful jets of energy that, until recently, had mysterious, unknown origins. The research team, which includes University of California Santa Cruz’ Alexandra Manning and Sunil Simha, as well as Northwestern University’s Wen-fai Fong, performed a survey of eight FRBs, from which they were able to determine that five of them originated from a spiral arm in their host galaxies.

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

Newly Forming Stars Don’t Blast Away Material as Previously Believed. So Why Do They Stop Growing?

We thought we understood how stars are formed. It turns out, we don’t. Not completely, anyway. A new study, recently conducted using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, is sending astronomers back to the drawing board to rewrite the accepted model of stellar formation.

March 12, 2021March 12, 2021 by Ralph Crewe

A Planet Lost Its Atmosphere, So Its Volcanoes Made It a New One

Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Hurt (IPAC/Caltech)

A red-dwarf star called Gliese 1132 or GJ 1132 for short (astronomers and their fun nicknames!) smolders on some 41 light-years from the sun in the southern constellation Vela, just a few degrees away from the southern cross. In 2015, astronomers using the MEarth South telescope array at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile found an Earth-sized planet orbiting extremely close to the little red star. Known as GJ 1132b, the planet orbits in a blistering 1.6 days. Its original hydrogen and helium atmosphere is thought to have long since been blown away by the powerful stellar winds experienced by the planet due to its extreme proximity to its parent. New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope revealed a surprise from the speedy exoplanet; it seems to have re-formed an atmosphere!

March 7, 2021March 7, 2021 by Matt Williams

Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is Getting an Upgraded new Infrared Filter

NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is now named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, after NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy. Credits: NASA

In 2025, the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope will launch to space. Named in honor of NASA’s first chief astronomer (and the “Mother of Hubble“), the Roman telescope will be the most advanced and powerful observatory ever deployed. With a camera as sensitive as its predecessors, and next-generation surveying capabilities, Roman will have the power of “One-Hundred Hubbles.”

In order to meet its scientific objectives and explore some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos, Roman will be fitted with a number of infrared filters. But with the decision to add a new near-infrared filter, Roman will exceed its original design and be able to explore 20% of the infrared Universe. This opens the door for exciting new research and discoveries, from the edge of the Solar System to the farthest reaches of space.