Tag: Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Views the Lights of a Galactic Bar

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2 min read Hubble Views the Lights of a Galactic Bar This Hubble Space Telescope image reveals details in the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4731. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the broad and sweeping spiral galaxy NGC 4731. It lies in the constellation Virgo and is located 43 million light-years from Earth. This highly detailed image uses data collected from six different filters. The abundance of color illustrates the galaxy’s billowing clouds of gas, dark dust bands, bright pink star-forming…

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Bejeweled galaxy of ‘Bernice’s Hair’ sparkles in new Hubble Telescope photo

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A bejeweled galaxy shines brightly in a stunning new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.  The nearby spiral galaxy, formally known as NGC 4689, lies only 54 million light-years from Earth. It is located in the constellation Coma Berenices, which means “Berenice’s Hair” in Latin and refers to Queen Berenice II of Egypt. As such, NGC 4689 swirls through the Queen’s sparkling strands.  And that name once had a literal meaning. “Some people of Berenice’s time would have meant this quite literally, as the story goes that her court astronomer…

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A billionaire hopes to upgrade the Hubble Telescope on a private SpaceX mission, but could it really happen?

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NASA’s iconic Hubble observatory still has years of life left in it, and there are ideas in the works to perhaps keep it going for longer — but those proposals may be facing uphill battles. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, has been serviced five times by astronauts and remains in good health. But the telescope is aging and slowly falling toward Earth through natural drag from the atmosphere, so billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman helped spearhead a proposal to send a maintenance mission to the telescope…

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Hubble Captures a Bright Spiral in the Queen’s Hair

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2 min read Hubble Captures a Bright Spiral in the Queen’s Hair This Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee, and the PHANGS-HST Team This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the jewel-bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689, which lies 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation has the distinction of being the only one of the 88 constellations officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as one named after the historical figure, Queen…

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Hubble Views the Dawn of a Sun-like Star 

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This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a triple-star star system. NASA, ESA, G. Duchene (Universite de Grenoble I); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) Looking like a glittering cosmic geode, a trio of dazzling stars blaze from the hollowed-out cavity of a reflection nebula in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The triple-star system is made up of the variable star HP Tau, HP Tau G2, and HP Tau G3. HP Tau is known as a T Tauri star, a type of young variable star that…

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Hubble Views Cosmic Dust Lanes

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2 min read Hubble Views Cosmic Dust Lanes This Hubble Space Telescope image showcases a nearly edge-on view of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4753. ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Kelsey Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a nearly edge-on view of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4753. Lenticular galaxies have an elliptical shape and ill-defined spiral arms. This image is the object’s sharpest view to date, showcasing Hubble’s incredible resolving power and ability to reveal complex dust structures. NGC 4753 resides around 60 million light-years from…

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Dusty galaxy looks like a cosmic net in gorgeous new Hubble Telescope photo

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A new Hubble image highlights the intricacies of a distant galaxy glowing with a bright white core surrounded by complex dust structures.  A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures the sharpest view yet of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4753. The photo, released on Monday (May 13), offers a nearly edge-on view of the galaxy, revealing its bright central bulge.  Lenticular galaxies are a cross between spirals and ellipticals; they exhibit an elliptical shape but have ill-defined spiral arms. Given NGC 4753’s low-density environment and complex structure, this particular…

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Hubble Celebrates the 15th Anniversary of Servicing Mission 4

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8 Min Read Hubble Celebrates the 15th Anniversary of Servicing Mission 4 Michael Good (on the end of the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System) works to refurbish and upgrade Hubble during Servicing Mission 4. Credits: NASA Fifteen years ago, human hands touched NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope for the last time. As astronauts performed finishing tasks on the telescope during its final servicing mission in May 2009, they knew they had successfully concluded one of the most challenging and ambitious series of spacewalks ever conducted. But they couldn’t have known at the…

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Hubble Glimpses a Star-Forming Factory

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2 min read Hubble Glimpses a Star-Forming Factory This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope highlights the spiral galaxy UGC 9684. The celestial object showcased in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the spiral galaxy UGC 9684, which lies around 240 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Boötes. This image shows an impressive example of several classic galactic features, including a clear bar in the galaxy’s center, and a halo surrounding its disk. The data for this Hubble image came from a study of Type-II…

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Hubble Hunts Visible Light Sources of X-Rays

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2 min read Hubble Hunts Visible Light Sources of X-Rays This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the dwarf galaxy IC 776. ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Sun This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the dwarf galaxy IC 776. This swirling collection of new and old stars is located in the constellation Virgo, in the Virgo galaxy cluster, 100 million light-years from Earth. Although IC 776 is a dwarf galaxy, it’s also classified as a SAB-type or ‘weakly barred’ spiral. This highly detailed Hubble view demonstrates that complexity. IC 776…

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