Composite Image Shows Emissions Driven By Black Hole
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomy is more than merely using optical telescopes to take pretty pictures of distant nebulae and galaxies. Researchers also seek to understand complex systems in the universe...
Latest Hubble Space Telescope Stories
WASHINGTON, May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place -- the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) These dead stars are located 150 light-years from Earth in a relatively young star cluster, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus. The star cluster is only 625 million years old. The white dwarfs are...
NASA NASA engineer Acey Herrera recently checked out copper test wires inside the thermal shield of the Mid-Infrared Instrument, known as MIRI, that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The shield is designed to protect the vital MIRI instrument from excess heat. At the time of the photo, the thermal shield was about to go through rigorous environmental testing to ensure it can perform properly in the extreme cold temperatures that it will encounter in space. Herrera is...
NASA Like a special gift being unwrapped, construction crews began removing 16,000 square feet of plastic shrink-wrap from space shuttle Atlantis on April 25 as work continues for the famed spacecraft's new $100 million home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Atlantis has been enclosed in the plastic since November of last year to protect the priceless artifact from dust and debris during construction of the facility where it will be displayed. "This is the next step in...
VIDEO: [Zooming Into The Horsehead Nebula] | VIDEO: [The Gaseous Landscape Of The Horsehead Nebula] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 23rd year in orbit, and to commemorate the veteran observatory, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have released an amazing image of the Horsehead Nebula. For 23 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been making cutting-edge observations of several of the sky's best objects....
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. (Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers, in collaboration with University of Leicester planetary scientists, has organized the largest ever observational campaign of Saturn's auroras. To expand our knowledge of the planet's northern lights, a host of space and ground-based telescopes will focus on the ringed gas giant for the month-long project. Scientists from the University's Department of Physics and Astronomy have worked with NASA...
SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Between March 18 and April 8, Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] invited fans to participate in "Innovation Madness," a tournament-style competition to vote for the ultimate Lockheed Martin innovation on the company's Facebook page. Approximately 32 innovations from Lockheed Martin's storied 100-year history were featured in the tournament, which was part of the corporation's year-long centennial commemoration. The venerable Hubble Space...
HubbleSite NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) have announced the selection of 17 new Hubble Fellows. STScI in Baltimore, Md., administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA. The Hubble Fellowship Program now includes all research relevant to present and future missions in NASA's Cosmic Origins theme. These missions currently include the Herschel Space Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Stratospheric...
WASHINGTON, April 4, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest supernova so far of the type used to measure cosmic distances. Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago. (Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) SN Wilson belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae. These bright beacons are prized by astronomers because they provide a...
ESA/Hubble The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has broken the record in the quest to find the furthest supernova of the type used to measure cosmic distances. This supernova exploded more than 10 billion years ago (redshift 1.914), at a time the Universe was in its early formative years and stars were being born at a rapid rate. The supernova, designated SN UDS10Wil, belongs to a special class of exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae. These bright beacons are prized by astronomers...
Latest Hubble Space Telescope Reference Libraries
Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center on December 2, 1993 at 4:27 AM EST and landed at Kennedy on December 13 at 12:25 AM EST. The shuttle orbited 163 times at an altitude of 321 nautical miles at an inclination of 28.45 degrees and travelled 4.4 million miles. The mission lasted 10 days, 19 hours, 58 minutes, and 37 seconds. This was the first mission to repair and maintain the Hubble Space Telescope. It involved the second longest spacewalk to date at nearly 8 hours. The final...
Scott Altman is a test pilot and NASA astronaut. He was born Scott Douglas Altman on August 15, 1959 in Lincoln, Illinois. He grew up in Pekin, Illimois and graduated from Pekin Community High School in 1977. He continued on to the University of Illinois, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. He was commissioned in the United States Navy in August 1981 and received his Navy wings of gold in February 1983. Altman was deployed to the Western...
Adaptive Optics -- Adaptive optics is a technology to improve the performance of Earth-based telescopes, reversing the effect of atmospheric distortions. When light from a star or another astronomical object enters the Earth's atmosphere, the different temperature layers and different wind speeds distort and move the image in various ways (see seeing for a proper discussion). The net result is that an 8 meters or 10 meters telescope (like the VLT or Keck), while theoretically capable...
Hubble's Variable Nebula -- Hubble's variable nebula is named (like the Hubble telescope itself) after the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who carried out some of the early studies of this object. It is a fan-shaped cloud of gas and dust which is illuminated by R Monocerotis (R Mon), the bright star at the bottom end of the nebula. Dense condensations of dust near the star cast shadows out into the nebula, and as they move the illumination changes, giving rise to the variations first...
Hourglass Nebula -- This is an image of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This Hubble image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. This picture has been composed from three separate images taken in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly-ionized...
![Jupiter\](/media/gallery/universe/thumbs/thumbs_iod-universe-042613.jpg "Jupiter\")
