Images of two iconic planetary nebulae taken by the Hubble Space Telescope are revealing new information about how they develop their dramatic features. Researchers from Rochester Institute of Technology and Green Bank Observatory presented new findings about the Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302) and the Jewel Bug Nebula (NGC 7027) at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Friday, Jan….
Tag: space telescope
Striped brown dwarf looks a lot like Jupiter
The surface features of brown dwarfs – objects midway in mass between planets and stars – can’t be seen. But researchers have found a way to reveal Jupiter-like stripes and bands in the atmosphere of the closest brown dwarf, Luhman 16B. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/brown-dwarf-luhman-16b-jupiter-like-stripes…
6 space missions to look forward to in 2021
Here are some of the space missions to keep an eye out for in 2021. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/6-space-missions-2021-artemis-chandrayaa3-jameswebb…
Researchers rewind the clock to calculate age and site of supernova blast
Astronomers are winding back the clock on the expanding remains of a nearby, exploded star. By using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, they retraced the speedy shrapnel from the blast to calculate a more accurate estimate of the location and time of the stellar detonation. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-rewind-clock-age-site-supernova.html…
NASA Spacecraft Discovers the Universe is Less Crowded Than We Thought
An anonymous reader shares a report: While we might think of space as a vast sea of blackness, all we have to do is look up at night to see that it’s punctuated by countless stars, galaxies and even a few planets visible to the naked eye. Scientists recently used data from NASA’s New Horizons mission out beyond Pluto to measure…
A new look at the universe’s oldest light
New work agrees with older research suggesting the oldest light in the universe – from the most distant galaxy yet known – started its journey toward us 13.77 billion years ago. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/a-new-look-at-the-universes-oldest-light…
Roman Space Telescope could image 100 Hubble ultra deep fields at once
One of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most iconic images is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which unveiled myriad galaxies across the universe, stretching back to within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang. Hubble peered at a single patch of seemingly empty sky for hundreds of hours beginning in September 2003, and astronomers first unveiled this galaxy tapestry in…
Image: Hubble views a dazzling ‘fireworks galaxy’
The galaxy NGC 6946 is nothing short of spectacular. In the last century alone, NGC 6946 has experienced 10 observed supernovae, earning its nickname as the Fireworks Galaxy. In comparison, our Milky Way averages just one to two supernova events per century. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the stars, spiral arms, and various stellar environments of NGC 6946 in…
A new NASA space telescope, SPHEREx, is moving ahead
NASA’s upcoming space telescope, the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, or SPHEREx, is one step closer to launch. The mission has officially entered Phase C, in NASA lingo. That means the agency has approved preliminary design plans for the observatory, and work can begin on creating a final, detailed design, as well as…
A Giant Black Hole Keeps Evading Detecting and Scientists Can’t Explain It
“An enormous black hole keeps slipping through astronomers’ nets…” reports Space.com: The big galaxy at the core of the cluster Abell 2261, which lies about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth, should have an even larger central black hole — a light-gobbling monster that weighs as much as 3 billion to 100 billion suns, astronomers estimate from the galaxy’s mass. But the…