Hubble Space Telescope Archives

January 25, 2014December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Stunning Astrophoto Captures Awe Inspiring NASA Rocket Launch Amidst Star Trails – Gallery

The rotation of the Earth captured in the trails of the stars over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Jan 23, 2014. NASA’s latest Tracking & Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-L, is seen here hitching a fiery ride to orbit atop an Atlas-V rocket, as viewed from the Turn Basin on Kennedy Space Center just a few miles away. Credit: Mike Killian/www.MikeKillianPhotography.com/AmericaSpace
see Atlas V/TDRS-L Launch Galley below
Story updated[/caption]

Space photographer Mike Killian has captured an absolutely stunning astrophoto of this week’s Atlas V blastoff that innovatively combines astronomy and rocketry – its the streak shot featured above. See additional Atlas launch imagery below – and here.

Mike’s awe inspiring imagery melds Thursday night’s (Jan. 23) spectacular Atlas V liftoff of NASA’s latest Tracking & Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with brilliant star trails, reflecting the Earth’s rotation, moving in the crystal clear dark sky overhead and brilliantly glowing xenons and flaming reflections in the waters beneath.

Update 30 Jan: This fabulous star trails/streak image has been featured as the APOD on Jan 30, 2014.

TDRS-L awaits launch atop Atlas V rocket. Credit: Mike Killian/mikekillianphotography.com

The 3.8 ton TDRS-L communications satellite was successfully delivered by the Atlas V to orbit where it will become an essential member of NASA’s vital network to relay all the crucial science and engineering data from a wide variety of science satellites – including the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V launched at 9:33 p.m. from Pad 40.

Read my complete Atlas V/TDRS-L launch story – here.

Killian’s very creative image makes it looks as though the fiery rocket plume is slicing and dicing a path though the wandering stars as its thundering off the pad, arcing out over the Atlantic Ocean and soaring on to orbit.

And it’s all perfectly framed – as detailed below in my interview with Mike Killian.

Water reflection shot of NASA TDRS-L satellite launch aboard Atlas V rocket on Jan. 23, 2014. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II - www.scriptunasimages.com — Water reflection shot of NASA TDRS-L satellite launch aboard Atlas V rocket on Jan. 23, 2014. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II – www.scriptunasimages.com

Mike is a space friend of mine and we recently spent launch week together photographing the Jan. 9 Antares rocket launch from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia, amidst the bone chilling cold of the Polar Vortex – which by the way has returned! See a photo of us freezing together at NASA Wallops – below!!

See our Antares launch imagery – here and here.

Be sure to enjoy the Atlas V gallery herein including more space photog friends including Jeff Seibert, Alan Walters, Walter Scriptunas II and nasatech.net

NASA TDRS-L relay satellite launch aboard Atlas V rocket on Jan. 23, 2014. Credit: Jeff Seibert/wired4space.com

Mike’s magnificent new astrophoto was snapped from the Press Site at the Kennedy Space Center – located right next to the world famous countdown clock and the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

The two launch sites – NASA Wallops and Cape Canaveral/NASA Kennedy Space Center – sit about 800 miles apart on the US East Coast.

His stunning new astrophoto was several years in the making and the result of rather careful planning and of course some good luck too.

Mike is a very experienced and exceptionally talented and accomplished photographer in general.

So for the benefit of Universe Today readers, I asked Mike to describe how he planned, executed and processed the fabulous Jan. 23 star trail/Atlas launch photo.

“I’ve wanted to attempt this shot for 2 years now & finally the conditions for it came together Thursday night – no moonlight, no clouds, barely a breeze, mostly dry air & enough TIME between sunset and liftoff to capture some descent star trails,” Mike Killian told me.

What was the shooting time and equipment involved?

“Approximate total shooting time was about 3 hours, 380 20-second exposures @ ISO 400, shot with a Canon T4i w/ a 11-16mm Tokina 2.8 lens,” said Killian.

“For the launch I adjusted those setting for the rocket’s bright flame, did that exposure, then took the images and stacked using Photoshop. All images are the exact same framing.”

Killian took the photos from right along the edge of the water basin at the Press Site at the Kennedy Space Center, located right next to the VAB where NASA’s Saturn V Moon rockets and Space Shuttles were processed for launch.

Why shoot from Kennedy Space Center instead of Cape Canaveral?

“I chose to shoot from the water’s edge at Turn Basin mainly because of the water, I always like a nice reflection from the xenon lights and the launch itself.

“Plus I knew nobody would shoot from there, as both the VAB roof & Cape Canaveral were available for media to view from (both have fantastic views).”

“I wanted to do something different.”

“Generally we get an hour or so at whatever area we are shooting any given launch from, before heading back to the press site.”

“But since the Turn Basin is AT the press site, the location was open for several hours due to TDRS-L being a night launch.”

“So I had enough time to attempt this shot from about as close as you can get (4 miles or so)!

Is Mike pleased with the result?

“I’m happy with how this one came out!” Mike ecstatically told me.

For some background on the VAB and the imminent end of public tours inside – read my new VAB story, here.

And here’s my daytime shot showing the Turn Basin and Mike’s approximate shooting location at the KSC Press Site. Mike is shooting in the opposite direction – from waters edge looking to the right.

View of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the Turn Basin adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center Press Center and the countdown clock. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Orion, Chang’e-3, Orbital Sciences, SpaceX, commercial space, LADEE, Mars and more news.

Ken Kremer

Remote camera shot of NASA TDRS-L relay satellite launch aboard Atlas V rocket on Jan. 23, 2014. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II - www.scriptunasimages.com — Remote camera shot of NASA TDRS-L relay satellite launch aboard Atlas V rocket on Jan. 23, 2014. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II – www.scriptunasimages.com

The TDRS-L mission begins as the Atlas V-401 roars from the pad. Credit: nasatech.net

NASA’s TDRS-L blasts off atop Atlas V rocket on Jan. 23, 2014. Credit: Mike Killian/mikekillianphotography.com

Spectacular Go Pro TDRS Launch Video by Matthew Travis

Space journalists Ken Kremer/Universe Today (left) and Mike Killian and Alan Walters of AmericaSpace (center, right) setting remote cameras at Antares launch pad amidst bone chilling cold for the photos featured herein. Credit: Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com — Space journalists Ken Kremer/Universe Today (left) and Mike Killian and Alan Walters of AmericaSpace (center, right) setting remote cameras at Antares launch pad amidst bone chilling cold. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace

January 23, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Black Hole Steals Gas From Trillions Of Stars

A composite image (X-ray and optical wavelengths) showing galaxy cluster RX J1532.9+3021 and the black hole at its center. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford/J.Hlavacek-Larrondo et al, Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/M.Postman & CLASH team

Got gas? The black hole in galaxy cluster RX J1532.9+3021 is keeping it all for itself and stopping trillions of stars from coming to be, according to new research. You can see data above from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) and the Hubble Space Telescope (yellow).

The drama is taking place about 3.9 billion light-years from Earth, showing an extreme phenomenon that has been noted in other galaxies on smaller scales, Chandra officials stated.

“The large amount of hot gas near the center of the cluster presents a puzzle,” a statement read. “Hot gas glowing with X-rays should cool, and the dense gas in the center of the cluster should cool the fastest. The pressure in this cool central gas is then expected to drop, causing gas further out to sink in towards the galaxy, forming trillions of stars along the way. However, astronomers have found no such evidence for this burst of stars forming at the center of this cluster.”

Black hole with disc and jets visualization courtesy of ESA

What’s blocking the stars (according to data from Chandra and the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array) could be supersonic jets blasting from the black hole and shoving the gas in the area away, forming cavities on either side of the galaxy. These cavities, by the way, are immense — at 100,000 light-years across each, this makes them about as wide as our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

The big question is where that power came from. Perhaps the black hole is “ultramassive” (10 billion times of the sun) and has ample mass to shoot out those jets without eating itself up and producing radiation. Or, the black hole could be smaller (a billion times that of the sun) but spinning quickly, which would allow it to send out those jets.

You can find more details in a November 2013 paper from The Astrophysical Journal (also available in a prepublished version on Arxiv.) The research was led by Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo from Stanford University.

Source: Chandra X-Ray Observatory

January 8, 2014December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Space Telescopes Look Back 13.2 Billion Years and See Surprisingly Luminous Galaxies

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope joined forces to discover and characterize four unusually bright galaxies as they appeared more than 13 billion years ago, just 500 million years after the big bang. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz; Yale University), R. Bouwens and I. Labbé (Leiden University), and the Science Team.

What was the Universe like more than 13 billion years ago, just 500 million years after the big bang? New data from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes reveal some surprisingly bright galaxies that are about 10 to 20 times more luminous than anything seen previously in that epoch.

Garth Illingworth from the University of California, Santa Cruz said the discovery of these four bright galaxies came from combining the power of both telescopes, but these galaxies lie right at the limit of the telescopes’ capabilities.

“We’re actually reaching back 13.2 billion years through the life of the Universe — that’s 96% of the life of the Universe that we are looking back at these galaxies,” said Illingworth, speaking at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington D.C. this week. “That’s an astonishing undertaking and an astonishing accomplishment that Hubble and Spitzer have achieved.”

Detail of the Hubble and Spitzer observations of a galaxy from the early Universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz; Yale University), R. Bouwens and I. Labbé (Leiden University), and the Science Team.

Illingworth said the typical galaxy candidate from that far back in time is very faint and hard to see. But these new galaxies are about 15-20 % brighter than what astronomers have seen before at redshift 10.

The tiny are bright because they are bursting with star formation activity. The brightest one is forming stars approximately 50 times faster than the Milky Way does today. Although these fledgling galaxies are only one-twentieth the size of the Milky Way, they probably contain around a billion stars crammed together.

Astronomers think these bright, young galaxies grew exceptionally fast because of interactions and mergers of smaller infant galaxies that started forming stars even earlier in the Universe. Since the ancient time billions of years ago when the light that we now see started its long journey to us, they have probably kept growing to become similar to the largest modern galaxies. Many of the stars of these infant galaxies likely live on today in the centers of giant elliptical galaxies, much larger even than our own Milky Way.

Slide from Garth Illingworth's presentation at the 223rd American Astronomical Society meeting, describing the discovery of bright galaxies from early in the Universe. Credit: Garth Illingworth. — Slide from Garth Illingworth’s presentation at the 223rd American Astronomical Society meeting, describing the discovery of bright galaxies from early in the Universe. Credit: Garth Illingworth.

Illingworth said this era appears to be a timeframe where things were changing quite rapidly. “We’ve gone back to a very interesting time when the Universe is changing,” he said.

The galaxies were first detected with Hubble, and astronomers were able to measure their star-formation rates and sizes. But using Spitzer, the scientists were also able to measure the galaxies’ masses.

“This is the first-ever measurement of the mass density of the galaxies when the Universe was at 500 million years of age,” Illingworth said. “These galaxies are about a billion times the mass of our Sun, which is massive for those times, but still only 1% the mass of the Milky Way.”

Illingworth added that the mass measurements are rough estimates because of how challenging the task was.

Illingworth and team member Ivo Labbé from Leiden University said they are looking forward to finding out more about these galaxies, particularly from future observations with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

“At the same time, the extreme masses and star formation rates are really mysterious,” Labbé said, “and we are eager to confirm them with future observations on our powerful telescopes.”

You can find out more about these early galaxies — and more — at the First Galaxies website.

Hubble Finds ‘Clear Signal’ of Water in 5 Exoplanet Atmospheres

To determine what’s in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, astronomers watch the planet pass in front of its host star and look at which wavelengths of light are transmitted and which are partially absorbed. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

For the first time, astronomers have found conclusive evidence of water in the hazy atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, two teams of scientists found faint but clear signatures of water in the atmospheres of five exoplanets. All five are so-called ‘hot Jupiters,’ massive worlds that orbit close to their host stars.

“To actually detect the atmosphere of an exoplanet is extraordinarily difficult. But we were able to pull out a very clear signal, and it is water,” said Drake Deming from the University of Maryland, who led a study characterizing the atmospheres of two of the five planets.

“We’re very confident that we see a water signature for multiple planets,” said Avi Mandell, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and lead author of another paper on the remaining three exoplanets. “This work really opens the door for comparing how much water is present in atmospheres on different kinds of exoplanets, for example hotter versus cooler ones.”

The five planets are all well-studied, and would not be friendly places for life as we know it — with blazing temperatures and unusual conditions. WASP-17b is an unusual planet in a retrograde orbit, and sodium had already been detected in its atmosphere.

HD209458b is much-studied windy world, with raging storms, and organic molecules and water had already been detected on this planet in previous studies.

The atmosphere of WASP-12b already has been found to hold vast amounts of carbon as well as water. WASP-19b orbits a nearby star, and has one of the shortest orbital periods of any known planetary body, about 0.7888399 days or approximately 18.932 hours. XO-1b has the distinction of being discovered by amateur astronomers

The astronomers involved in the new studies say the strengths of the water signatures in each world varied, with WASP-17b and HD209458b having the strongest signals.

Currently, studying exoplanet atmospheres can be done when the planets are passing in front of their stars. Researchers can identify the gases in a planet’s atmosphere by determining which wavelengths of the star’s light are transmitted and which are partially absorbed. Deming’s team employed a new technique with longer exposure times, which increased the sensitivity of their measurements.

In both studies, scientists used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to explore the details of absorption of light through the planets’ atmospheres. The observations were made in a range of infrared wavelengths where a pattern that signifies the presence of water would appear if water were present. The teams compared the shapes and intensities of the absorption profiles, and the consistency of the signatures gave them confidence they saw water.

“These studies, combined with other Hubble observations, are showing us that there are a surprisingly large number of systems for which the signal of water is either attenuated or completely absent,” said Heather Knutson of the California Institute of Technology, a co-author on Deming’s paper. “This suggests that cloudy or hazy atmospheres may in fact be rather common for hot Jupiters.”

Read the teams paper: Deming et al, Mandell et al.

Sources: HubbleSite, University of Maryland.

August 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

What’s A Kilonova? You’re Looking At It!

Remnants of a gamma-ray burst (called GRB 130603B) are visible in these Hubble Space Telescope pictures. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI/AURA)

As astute readers of Universe Today, you likely know what a supernova is: a stellar explosion that signals the end game for certain kinds of stars. Above, however, is a picture of a kilonova, which happens when two really dense objects come together.

This fireball arose after a short-term (1/10 of a second) gamma-ray burst came into view of the Swift space telescope on June 3. Nine days later, the Hubble Space Telescope looked at the same area to see if there were any remnants, and spotted a faint red object that was confirmed in independent observations.

It’s the first time astronomers have been able to see a connection between gamma-ray bursts and kilonovas, although it was predicted before. They’re saying this is the first evidence that short-duration gamma ray bursts arise as two super-dense stellar objects come together.

So what’s the connection? Astronomers suspect it’s this sequence of events:

Two binary neutron stars (really dense stars) start to move closer to each other;
The system sends out gravitational radiation that make ripples in space-time;
These waves make the stars move even closer together;
In the milliseconds before the explosion, the two stars “merge into a death spiral that kicks out highly radioactive material,” as NASA states, with material that gets warmer, gets bigger and sends out light;
The kilonova occurs with the detonation of a white dwarf. While it’s bright, 1,000 times brighter than a nova, it’s only 1/10th to 1/100th the brightness of an average supernova.

An artistic image of the explosion of a star leading to a gamma-ray burst. (Source: FUW/Tentaris/Maciej Fro?ow)

“This observation finally solves the mystery of the origin of short gamma ray bursts,” stated Nial Tanvir of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who is also the lead author.

“Many astronomers, including our group, have already provided a great deal of evidence that long-duration gamma ray bursts (those lasting more than two seconds) are produced by the collapse of extremely massive stars. But we only had weak circumstantial evidence that short bursts were produced by the merger of compact objects. This result now appears to provide definitive proof supporting that scenario.”

Check out more details on the burst on HubbleSite. The scientific paper associated with these results was published in Nature Aug. 3.

Source: NASA

July 15, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Researcher Finds a New Moon Around Neptune in Hubble Data

This composite Hubble Space Telescope picture shows the location of a newly discovered moon, designated S/2004 N 1, orbiting the giant planet Neptune, nearly 4.8 billion km (3 billion miles) from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute).

It took sharp and patient eyes, but researcher Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute has found a tiny moon orbiting Neptune that’s never been seen before. Showalter used archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope to find the moon, designated S/2004 N 1, which is estimated to be no more than 19 km (12 miles) across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptunian system. This is the 14th known moon of Neptune.

S/2004 N 1 is so small and dim that it is roughly 100 million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye, NASA said. Even Voyager 2 –which flew past Neptune in 1989 to survey planet’s system of moons and rings – didn’t catch a view of this moon, even though data from Voyager 2 revealed several other moons.

Neptune photographed by Voyage. Image credit: NASA/JPL — Neptune photographed by Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL

Showalter was studying the faint arcs, or segments of rings, around Neptune earlier this month.

“The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system,” he said. “It’s the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete — the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs.”

The method involved tracking the movement of a white dot that appears over and over again in more than 150 archival Neptune photographs taken by Hubble from 2004 to 2009.

Showalter noticed the white dot about 100,000 km (65,400 miles) from Neptune, located between the orbits of the Neptunian moons Larissa and Proteus. Showalter plotted a circular orbit for the moon, which completes one revolution around Neptune every 23 hours.

Showalter should get the “Eagle Eyes” award for 2013!

Source: HubbleSite

July 11, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Hubble Confirms Exoplanet Has a Blue Atmosphere

Artist’s impression of the deep blue planet HD 189733b, based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA.

Since its discovery in 2005, exoplanet HD 189733b has been one of the most-observed planets orbiting another star, as its size, compact orbit, and proximity to Earth has made it a relatively easy target — as extrasolar planets go. From previous studies, astronomers thought the planet may have an enticing blue-sky atmosphere. Now, further examinations with the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed this planet really does harbor an azure blue atmosphere, very similar to Earth’s ocean blue color.

But this is no ‘pale blue dot’ ocean world. It is a huge gas giant orbiting very close to its host star. It gets blasted with X-rays from its star — tens of thousands of times stronger than the Earth receives from the Sun — and endures wild temperature swings, reaching scorching temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Celsius. Astronomers say it likely rains glass – sideways — in howling 7,000 kilometer-per-hour winds.

Nope, not a place you’d want to visit.

But the new Hubble observations of its color are the first time an exoplanet’s color has been measured and confirmed. The astronomers measured how much light was reflected off the surface of HD 189733b — a property known as albedo.

“This planet has been studied well in the past, both by ourselves and other teams,” says Frédéric Pont of the University of Exeter, UK, co-author of a new paper. “But measuring its colour is a real first — we can actually imagine what this planet would look like if we were able to look at it directly.”

HD 189733b is a Jupiter-sized extrasolar planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star that is in a binary system called HD 189733 in the constellation of Vulpecula, near the Dumbell Nebula, approximately 62 light years from Earth.

The planet’s blue atmosphere does not come from the reflection of a warm ocean, but is due to a hazy, turbulent atmosphere thought to be laced with silicate particles, which scatter blue light. Earlier observations using different methods have reported evidence for scattering of blue light on the planet, but these most recent Hubble observations give robust confirming evidence, the researchers said.

To make their measurements, the team used Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) to look at the system before, during, and after the planet passed behind its host star as it orbited. As it slipped behind its star, the light reflected from the planet was temporarily blocked from view, and the amount of light observed from the system dropped – not by much, about one part in 10,000 — but this was enough for STIS to determine the albedo.

“We saw the brightness of the whole system drop in the blue part of the spectrum when the planet passed behind its star,” explains Tom Evans of the University of Oxford, UK, first author of the paper. “From this, we can gather that the planet is blue, because the signal remained constant at the other colours we measured.”

Albedo is a measure of how much incident radiation is reflected. The greater the albedo, the greater the amount of light reflected. This value ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 being perfect reflectivity and 0 being a completely black surface. The Earth has an albedo of around 0.4.

According to the team’s paper, HD 189733b has an albedo of 0.4 ± 0.12.

The team says this determination will help in future studies of the atmospheres of other extra solar planets, as well as continuing the studies of one of the most-examined planets orbiting another star.

“It’s difficult to know exactly what causes the colour of a planet’s atmosphere, even for planets in the Solar System,” says Pont [5]. “But these new observations add another piece to the puzzle over the nature and atmosphere of HD 189733b. We are slowly painting a more complete picture of this exotic planet.”

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July 2, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Comet ISON: The Timelapse Hubble Movie

A false-color, visible-light image of Comet ISON taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The Hubble Space Telescope team has released a video of Comet ISON as it is tearing toward its encounter with the Sun, zooming at 77,250 km/h (48,000 miles per hour). The comet’s motion is captured in a timelapse movie, below, made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013. On that date, the comet was 650 million km (403 million miles) from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

This sungrazing comet will come closest to the Sun in November 2013, and the debate is on whether it will dazzle the skies and be visible in the daytime or fizzle out due to its close proximity to the Sun.

The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span, compressed into five seconds. In that 43 minutes, the comet traveled about 55,000 km (34,000 miles). ISON streaks silently against the background stars.

Source: HubbleSite

June 7, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

How a Hubble Image Goes from Photons to Finished Beauty

Arp 274 is a trio of galaxies. They appear to be partially overlapping in this image, but may be located at different distances. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

How does raw data from the Hubble Space Telescope end up to become a finished gorgeous color image, like the one of Arp 274, above? It’s an interesting process, because the cameras on Hubble do not take color pictures.

The Hubble team released a video today showing the process of creating an image of Arp 274:

Color images from the spacecraft are assembled from separate black & white images taken through color filters. For one image, the spacecraft has to take three pictures, usually through a red, a green, and a blue filter and then each of those photos gets downlinked to Earth. They are then combined with software into a color image. This happens automatically inside off-the-shelf color cameras that we use here on Earth. But Hubble has almost 40 color filters ranging from ultraviolet (“bluer” than our eyes can see,) through the visible spectrum, to infrared (“redder” than what is visible to humans.) This gives the imaging teams infinitely more flexibility, allowing them to eke out whatever science information they are looking for, as well as, sometimes, allowing them to take a little artistic license.

You can read our previous article about “true and false color” and the art of extraterrestrial photography.

May 23, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

The Ring Nebula is Really a Football-Shaped Jelly Donut

Hubble Space Telescope view of the Ring Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

Sometimes the popular names given to an astronomical object hit the mark of describing its features. Other times…. not so much. Case in point, the Ring Nebula. While the distinctive loop shape and colorful beauty have made it one of the most famous celestial discs, it is not really a classic “ring.” And this recent image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an amazing new level of detail in this iconic nebula.

“The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it’s like a jelly doughnut, because it’s filled with material in the middle,” said C. Robert O’Dell of Vanderbilt University, who led a research team that used Hubble and several ground-based telescopes to obtain the best view yet of the Ring nebula. The images show a more complex structure than astronomers once thought and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D model of the nebula.

“With Hubble’s detail, we see a completely different shape than what’s been thought about historically for this classic nebula,” O’Dell said. “The new Hubble observations show the nebula in much clearer detail, and we see things are not as simple as we previously thought.”

The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 1 light-year across. Located in the constellation Lyra, the nebula is a popular target for amateur astronomers.

Previous observations by several telescopes had detected the gaseous material in the ring’s central region. But the new view by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 shows the nebula’s structure in more detail. O’Dell’s team suggests the ring wraps around a blue, football-shaped structure. Each end of the structure protrudes out of opposite sides of the ring.

This video zooms into the constellation Lyra to the location of the Ring Nebula and the new image from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Large Binocular Telescope:

In the analysis, the research team also obtained images from the Large Binocular Telescope at the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona and spectroscopic data from the San Pedro Martir Observatory in Baja California, Mexico.

The nebula is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. In the Hubble image, the blue structure is the glow of helium. Radiation from the white dwarf star, the white dot in the center of the ring, is exciting the helium to glow. The white dwarf is the stellar remnant of a sun-like star that has exhausted its hydrogen fuel and has shed its outer layers of gas to gravitationally collapse to a compact object.

O’Dell’s team was surprised at the detailed Hubble views of the dark, irregular knots of dense gas embedded along the inner rim of the ring, which look like spokes in a bicycle wheel. These gaseous tentacles formed when expanding hot gas pushed into cool gas ejected previously by the doomed star. The knots are more resistant to erosion by the wave of ultraviolet light unleashed by the star. The Hubble images have allowed the team to match up the knots with the spikes of light around the bright, main ring, which are a shadow effect. Astronomers have found similar knots in other planetary nebulae.

This illustration depicts a sideways view of the Ring Nebula, as deduced by astronomers using new Hubble observations. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

All of this gas was expelled by the central star about 4,000 years ago. The original star was several times more massive than our sun. After billions of years converting hydrogen to helium in its core, the star began to run out of fuel. It then ballooned in size, becoming a red giant. During this phase, the star shed its outer gaseous layers into space and began to collapse as fusion reactions began to die out. A gusher of ultraviolet light from the dying star energized the gas, making it glow.

The outer rings were formed when faster-moving gas slammed into slower-moving material. The nebula is expanding at more than 43,000 miles an hour, but the center is moving faster than the expansion of the main ring. O’Dell’s team measured the nebula’s expansion by comparing the new Hubble observations with Hubble studies made in 1998.

The Ring Nebula will continue to expand for another 10,000 years, a short phase in the lifetime of the star. The nebula will become fainter and fainter until it merges with the interstellar medium.

Studying the Ring Nebula’s fate will provide insight into the sun’s demise in another 6 billion years. The sun is less massive than the Ring Nebula’s progenitor star, so it will not have an opulent ending.

“When the sun becomes a white dwarf, it will heat more slowly after it ejects its outer gaseous layers,” O’Dell said. “The material will be farther away once it becomes hot enough to illuminate the gas. This larger distance means the sun’s nebula will be fainter because it is more extended.”

Source: HubbleSite