ASTRONOMY

2022-07-04 06:14:28 A mosaic of images can often be more valuable than individual images. After all, much of what the Horsehead Nebula reveals can’t be seen in visible light.

This nebula was observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in infrared light, revealing many stars throughout the pillar’s least dense regions. This is due to most of the light at shorter wavelengths, such as blue light, being unable to penetrate dust. Longer wavelengths of light can pierce through, allowing us to see objects that emit those wavelengths. All stars emit infrared light, which has a longer wavelength than visible light, giving us a unique view of the classic nebula.

The James Webb Space Telescope, which is capable of seeing at infrared ranges that Hubble cannot observe, will allow us to pore over even more of these hidden details as it observes the Horsehead Nebula.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

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2022-07-02 17:42:41 This Hubble image contains thousands of galaxies. But it also contains some cosmic photobombers!

The streaks you see here are actually the trails of asteroids.

They appear curved due to something called parallax; as Hubble orbits around Earth, an asteroid will look like it moves along an arc in comparison to much more distant background stars and galaxies. This effect is kind of like what you see from a moving car, when trees by the side of the road appear to be passing by faster than background objects that are faraway.

Image Credits: NASA, ESA, and B. Sunnquist and J. Mack (STScI)

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2022-07-01 09:33:42 About 4,300 light-years away, the remains of a Sun-like star glow!

This HubbleClassic image captures the nebula NGC 2371. The remnant star visible at its center is the super-hot core of the former red giant, now stripped of its outer layers.

Image credits: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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2022-06-30 17:35:13 RCW 120 is located about 5,500 light-years from Earth. The glowing sapphire nebula — an expanding bubble of mostly hydrogen gas & soot — has been sculpted by the energetic light and ferocious winds from a giant star. This ever-so-elegant blob is roughly 13 light-years across.

X-ray (Chandra): NASA, CXC, Penn State/K. Getman, et al.;
Infrared (Spitzer): NASA, JPL

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2022-06-28 20:02:01 Space mice!

This colliding pair of spiral galaxies is nicknamed “The Mice” because of the long tails of stars and gas emanating from each galaxy.

Otherwise called NGC 4676, this pair will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy.

NGC 4676 is located about 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices.

Music credit : “Ice Peaks,” Thomas Daniel Bellingham [PRS], Ninja Tune Production Music, Universal Production Music

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2022-06-27 20:12:14 Not just one, but a whole cluster of galaxies shines in this week’s HubbleFriday image!

The streaks of light are actually images of even more distant galaxies, and are the result of an astrophysical phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This occurs when the gravity of a massive cosmic object (like a galaxy cluster!) is so strong it affects the path of light passing through it. More in the comments :

Image credits : ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Ebeling; Acknowledgment : L. Shatz

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2022-06-26 13:30:09 Who’s up for second helpings of beautiful planet Mercury?!

Our ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft flew past the planet yesterday for a gravity assist and returned these incredible views with its three selfie cameras.

Swipe for more + labelled images
Sunrise and shadows
First sighting of giant impact basin Caloris
Craters and volcanic plains

Once in orbit at the end of 2025, the BepiColombo mission will study all aspects of the innermost planet to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star.

ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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2022-06-25 16:06:20 Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 not only looks like a dandelion caught in a breeze, it's spreading its "seeds" into space like one too. Traveling at roughly 7 million km/hour, much of the galaxy's gas is being torn away, encouraging new star formation in the stream of material left behind.

X-ray (Chandra): NASA, CXC, UAH/M.Sun et al;
Optical (Hubble): NASA, ESA, & the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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2022-06-24 12:20:48 This HubbleClassic view shows NGC 6090, a pair of spiral galaxies with overlapping central regions and two long tidal tails made of material ripped out of the galaxies by gravitational interactions.

The two visible cores are approximately 10,000 light-years apart!

NGC 6090 is about 400 million light-years away in the constellation Draco.

Image credits : NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University), and G. Ostlin (Stockholm University)

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2022-06-23 11:30:06 Ever wondered what the music of the spheres would sound like?

Hubble brings us cosmic sights, but these astronomical marvels can be experienced through sound when scientists assign pitch and volume to an image’s data.

Take this sonification of the star cluster Caldwell 73, for example. As the radar scans around in this sonification, the radius of the stars is mapped to pitch, so stars farther from the center are higher pitched. The entire image is converted to the sound of a choir, while the orange and red stars are represented by a marimba, and the blue stars are represented by a glockenspiel.

No sound can travel in space, but sonifications provide a new way of experiencing and conceptualizing data.

Happy #WorldMusicDay!

Sonification credits : NASA/ESA/G. Piotto; Processing : Gladys Kober; Sonification : SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

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