Search Results for: Hubble

Baby stars illuminating the dust that surrounds them

10:03 am

Baby stars illuminating dark dust
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope showing the wispy bluish clouds made of dark dust that we can only see because the dust is illuminated by the reflected light from the five red and blue stars nearby. Think of the Moon, lit only by the reflected light of the Sun.

The photo however was not taken to study the clouds, but these baby stars, located in one of the closest star forming regions of the Milky Way.

GN 04.32.8 is a small part of the stellar nursery known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud. At only roughly 480 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, it’s one of the best locations for studying newly forming stars. This reflection nebula is illuminated by the system of three bright stars in the centre of this image, mainly the variable star V1025 Tauri in the very centre. One of those stars overlaps with part of the nebula: this is another variable star that is named HP Tauri, but is classified as a T Tauri star, for its similarity to yet another variable star elsewhere in the Taurus Molecular Complex. T Tauri stars are very active, chaotic stars at an early stage of their evolution, so it’s no surprise that they appear in a prolific stellar nursery like this one! The three stars are also named HP Tau, HP Tau G2 and HP Tau G3; they’re believed to be gravitationally bound to each other, forming a triple system.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice the small, squashed, orange spot, just left of centre below the clouds of the nebula, that’s crossed by a dark line. This is a newly-formed protostar, hidden in a protoplanetary disc that obstructs some of its light. Because the disc is edge-on to us, it’s an ideal candidate for study. Astronomers are using Hubble here to examine it closely, seeking to learn about the kinds of exoplanets that might be formed in discs like it.

As beautiful as this image is, it is that tiny protostar near the bottom that likely attracts the most interest from astronomers.

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The subject of this week’s Hubble Picture of the Week is a reflection nebula, identified as GN 04.32.8. Reflection nebulae are clouds of dust in space that don’t emit their own light, as other nebulae do. Instead, the light from nearby stars hits and scatters off their dust, lighting them up. Because of the way the light scatters, many reflection nebulae tend to appear blue, GN 04.32.8 included. GN 04.32.8 is a small part of the stellar nursery known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud. At only roughly 480 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, it’s one of the best locations for studying newly forming stars. This reflection nebula is illuminated by the system of three bright stars in the centre of this image, mainly the variable star V1025 Tauri in the very centre. One of those stars overlaps with part of the nebula: this is another variable star that is named HP Tauri, but is classified as a T Tauri star, for its similarity to yet another variable star elsewhere in the Taurus Molecular Complex. T Tauri stars are very active, chaotic stars at an early stage of their evolution, so it’s no surprise that they appear in a prolific stellar nursery like this one! The three stars are also named HP Tau, HP Tau G2 and HP Tau G3; they’re believed to be gravitationally bound to each other, forming a triple system. Eagle-eyed viewers might notice the small, squashed, orange spot, just left of centre below the clouds of the nebula, that’s crossed by a dark line. This is a newly-formed protostar, hidden in a protoplanetary disc that obstructs some of its light. Because the disc is edge-on to us, it’s an ideal candidate for study. Astronomers are using Hubble here to examine it closely, seeking to learn about the kinds of exoplanets that might be formed in discs like it. [Image Description: A long, smoky, greyish-blue cloud in the centre of the image curves in an arc around three bright stars, each with long cross-shaped diffraction spikes. The cloud is lit more brightly on the inner side facing the stars, and fades into the dark background on the outer side. A few other stars and points of light surround the cloud: one small star below it has a dark band crossing its centre.]

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A graceful spiral galaxy

2:35 pm

A graceful spiral galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a project to study galaxies with very active central supermassive black holes.

What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its centre, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of the Sun is growing. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show. Material trapped by the black hole emits light from gamma rays to radio waves and can brighten and fade without warning. But in some galaxies, including UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light. Despite this, UGC 11397’s actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission — high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in visible light by a doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.

To me what sets this galaxy apart is its natural beauty. It also reminds me of the universe’s vastness. Located about 250 million light years away, those hazy spiral arms represent millions of stars, many of which likely harbor planets and maybe even life.

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The light that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this Picture of the Week reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its source was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy: it sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust. What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its centre, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of the Sun is growing. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show. Material trapped by the black hole emits light from gamma rays to radio waves and can brighten and fade without warning. But in some galaxies, including UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light.  Despite this, UGC 11397’s actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission — high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in visible light by a doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas. Using Hubble, researchers will study hundreds of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbour a supermassive black hole that is gaining mass. The Hubble observations will help researchers weigh nearby supermassive black holes, understand how black holes grew early in the Universe’s history, and even study how stars form in the extreme environment found at the very centre of a galaxy. [Image Description: A spiral galaxy, seen at an angle that gives it an oval shape. It has two spiral arms that curl out from the centre. They start narrow but broaden out as they wrap around the galaxy before merging into a faint halo. The galaxy’s disc is golden in the centre with a bright core, and pale blue outside that. A swirl of dark dust strands and speckled blue star-forming regions follow the arms through the disc.]

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Trump’s NASA budget cuts and rejection of Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator signal a very bright future for American space

1:09 pm

To most Americans interested in space exploration, my headline above must seem extremely counter-intuitive. For decades Americans have seen NASA as our space program, with any cuts at NASA seen as hindering that effort. Similarly, Isaacman, a businessman and private astronaut who has personally paid for two flights in space, had initially been nominated by Trump to become NASA administrator expressly because of that commercial space background. For Trump to reject such a person now seems at the surface incredibly damaging to NASA’s recent effort to work with the private sector.

All of that seems true, but it really is not. Both of these actions by Trump are simply what may be the last acts in the major change that has been engulfing the American space industry now for the past decade.

Jared Isaacman

Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk
Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk in September 2024

First, let’s consider Isaacman. Before Trump had nominated him for NASA administrator, he had been a free American doing exactly what he wanted to do. As a very wealthy and successful businessman, he had decided to use that wealth to not only fly in space — fulfilling a personal dream — but to also use those flights to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s hospital, whose work he considered priceless and wanted supported. He ended up flying two space missions, becoming the first private citizen to do a spacewalk, while also raising more than $200 million for St. Jude’s.

Isaacman’s second flight was also the first in what he hoped would be his own long term manned space program, which he dubbed Polaris. The first mission did this spacewalk from a SpaceX capsule. The second would hopefully do a repair mission to Hubble, or if rejected by NASA some other work in orbit. And the third would fly in SpaceX’s Starship around the Moon.

As this program was funded entirely by Isaacman and used no government funds, it was generally free from criticism. If anything, Americans hailed it as ambitious and courageous. He was following his own American dream, and doing it on his own dime.

This history however made him appear on the surface to be a perfect choice for NASA administrator under Trump, especially in a time where America’s space effort is shifting more and more to the private sector.

Everything changed however once Trump nominated him. He had to suspend his private Polaris program. He had to kow-tow to politicians, telling them what they wanted to hear. And he was no longer his own boss.
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New calculations suggest Andromeda might not collide with Milky Way

9:00 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists using new data from the Hubble Space Telescope as well as Europe’s Gaia space telescope, combined with many computer models, have determined that the 2012 prediction that the Andromeda galaxy would collide with Milky Way in five billion years was much more uncertain. From the abstract of the paper:

[W]e consider the latest and most accurate observations by the Gaia and Hubble space telescopes, along with recent consensus mass estimates, to derive possible future scenarios and identify the main sources of uncertainty in the evolution of the Local Group over the next 10 billion years. We found that the next most massive Local Group member galaxies — namely, M33 and the Large Magellanic Cloud—distinctly and radically affect the Milky Way — Andromeda orbit. Although including M33 increases the merger probability, the orbit of the Large Magellanic Cloud runs perpendicular to the Milky Way–Andromeda orbit and makes their merger less probable.

In the full system, we found that uncertainties in the present positions, motions and masses of all galaxies leave room for drastically different outcomes and a probability of close to 50% that there will be no Milky Way–Andromeda merger during the next 10 billion years. Based on the best available data, the fate of our Galaxy is still completely open.

The press release at the first link above makes it sounds as the previous prediction of a collision had been fully accepted as certain by the entire astronomical community, and that is balder-dash. It was simply the best guess at the time, highly uncertain. This new prediction — that we really don’t know what will happen based on the data available — is simply the newest best guess.

This new analysis however is certainly more robust and honest.

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NASA unwittingly reveals its bankruptcy by its reliance on AI

10:11 am

Uranus as seen by Hubble in 2014 and 2022
Click for original image.

In what appeared to be a totally inexplicable press release today, NASA posted the two pictures of Uranus to the right. The accompanying text was truly puzzling, describing in a somewhat brainless and inaccurate manner what is in the pictures;

Two views of the planet Uranus appear side-by-side for comparison. At the top, left corner of the left image is a two-line label. The top line reads Uranus November 9, 2014. The bottoms line reads HST WFC3/UVIS. At the top, left corner of the right image is the label November 9, 2022. At the left, bottom corner of each image is a small, horizontal, white line. In both panels, over this line is the value 25,400 miles. Below the line is the value 40,800 kilometers. At the top, right corner of the right image are three, colored labels representing the color filters used to make these pictures. Located on three separate lines, these are F467M in blue, F547M in green, and F485M in red. On the bottom, right corner of the right image are compass arrows showing north toward the top and east toward the left. [emphasis mine]

First, the description doesn’t match the pictures precisely, as if whoever wrote it wasn’t looking at these pictures. Second, the description is ridiculously literal, and really provides no information at all. (Consider for example the highlighted sentence. All it is doing is describing a standard scale bar, in the strangest most stupid manner possible.)

I immediately surmised that someone at NASA has decided to use AI to do this work, and AI (in its typical stupid brilliance) provided this worthless text. The unnamed NASA employee — equally as stupid — then posted it without reading it, assuming AI had done his or her job perfectly.

What makes this display of stupidity even worse is that these pictures, and a real press release, were issued back in 2023, when I posted these pictures initially. Does no one at NASA ever bother to read their own press releases?

Apparently not. The advent of AI has now produced human employees at the space agency who read nothing, know nothing, and do nothing. They instead plug stuff into AI and pump it out to the public mindlessly.

No wonder Trump wants to slash NASA’s budget. We certainly ain’t getting our money’s worth from the people that are there.

I also fully expect NASA management to soon deep-six this press release, or to fix it quickly once they read this post.

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May 29, 2025 Quick space links

3:07 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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A galactic pinwheel

8:39 am

A galactic pinwheel
Click for original image.

It’s cool image time, partly because we have a cool image and partly because there is little news today due to the holiday. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and was released today as the science team’s picture of the week. It shows us a classic pinwheel galaxy located approximately 46 million light years away. From the caption:

A spiral galaxy seen face-on. Its centre is crossed by a broad bar of light. A glowing spiral arm extends from each end of this bar, both making almost a full turn through the galaxy’s disc before fading out.

The bright object with the four spikes of light is a foreground star inside the Milky Way and only 436 light years away. The bright orange specks inside the spiral arms are likely star forming regions, with the blue indicating gas clouds.

As for the holiday, I’ll have more to say about Memorial Day later today.

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A single member of a galaxy pair takes centre stage in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This beautiful spiral galaxy is NGC 3507, which is situated about 46 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. NGC 3507 is classified as a barred spiral because the galaxy’s sweeping spiral arms emerge from the ends of a central bar of stars rather than the central point of the galaxy. Though pictured solo here, NGC 3507 actually travels the Universe with a galactic partner named NGC 3501 that is located outside the frame. NGC 3501 was featured in a previous Picture of the Week. While NGC 3507 is a quintessential galactic pinwheel, its partner resembles a streak of quicksilver across the sky. Despite looking completely different, both are spiral galaxies, simply seen from different angles.  For galaxies that are just a few tens of millions of light-years away, like NGC 3507 and NGC 3501, features like spiral arms, dusty gas clouds, and brilliant star clusters are on full display. More distant galaxies appear less detailed. See if you can spot any faraway galaxies in this image: they tend to be orange or yellow and can be anywhere from circular and starlike to narrow and elongated, with hints of spiral arms. Astronomers use instruments called spectrometers to split the light from these distant galaxies to study the nature of these objects in the early Universe.  In addition to these far-flung companions, NGC 3507 is joined by a far nearer object, marked by four spikes of light: a star within the Milky Way, a mere 436 light-years away from Earth. [Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen face-on. Its centre is crossed by a broad bar of light. A glowing spiral arm extends from each end of this bar, both making almost a full turn through the galaxy’s disc before fading out. The arms contain sparkling blue stars, pink spots of star formation, and dark threads of dust that follow both spiral arms into and across the central bar. A foreground star sits atop the galaxy.] Links Pan: NGC 3507

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May 19, 2025 Quick space links

8:25 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who apologies for their lateness. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

As I noted to him when he sent these links, I had read all these stories and considered them bottom of the barrel and not worth a full post. They do rate however as quick links.

  • Jared Isaacman posts two tweets (here and here) noting how budgets are limited and we must face the reality of NASA budget cuts.
    He specifically slams SLS and the issuance of two lunar lander contracts, to SpaceX and Blue Origin. Says we can’t afford it, while robbing NASA of money it could use for “dozens of scientific programs.”

    He must be confident he has enough confirmation votes in the Senate or he wouldn’t say these things now.

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Hubble snaps picture of barred spiral galaxy

10:04 am

A barred spiral galaxy as seen by Hubble
Click for original image.

Cool image time! While NASA celebrates the 35th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope with photos from its past, astronomers continue to use it to produce new wonders. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by Hubble recently and released today.

NGC 5335 is categorized as a flocculent spiral galaxy with patchy streamers of star formation across its disk. There is a striking lack of well-defined spiral arms that are commonly found among galaxies, including our Milky Way. A notable bar structure slices across the center of the galaxy. The bar channels gas inwards toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Such bars are dynamic in galaxies and may come and go over two-billion-year intervals. They appear in about 30 percent of observed galaxies, including our Milky Way.

The theorized formation process of that bar is based on computer modeling using the limited data we presently have, and thus carries a great deal of uncertainty.

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The Hubble Space Telescope captured in exquisite detail a face-on view of a remarkable-looking galaxy. NGC 5335 is categorized as a flocculent spiral galaxy with patchy streamers of star formation across its disk. There is a striking lack of well-defined spiral arms that are commonly found among galaxies, including our Milky Way. A notable bar structure slices across the center of the galaxy. The bar channels gas inwards toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Such bars are dynamic in galaxies and may come and go over two-billion-year intervals. They appear in about 30 percent of observed galaxies, including our Milky Way. [Image description: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 observed by the Hubble Space Telescope takes up the majority of the view. At its center is a milky yellow, flattened oval that extends bottom left to top. Within the oval is a bright central region that looks circular, with the very center the brightest. In the bright central region is what looks like a bar, extending from top left to bottom right. Around this is a thick swath of blue stars speckled with white regions. Multiple arms wrap up and around in a counterclockwise direction, becoming fainter the farther out they are. Both the white core and the spiral arms are intertwined with dark streaks of dust. The background of space is black. Thousands of distant galaxies in an array of colors are speckled throughout.]

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NASA re-releases a slew of Hubble images to celebrate its 35th anniversary

9:23 am

Eta Carina, in focus, after 1993 repair mission
Eta Carina, in focus, after 1993 repair mission

As part of its celebration of the telescope’s 35th anniversary, NASA on April 25, 2025 re-released what it called 27 key images from the history of the Hubble Space Telescope.

More than half the images are historical, showing the telescope’s conception by astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, its construction, its launch in 1990, and its repair in 1993 of its faulty optics. The subsequent sharp astronomical images include only a few of Hubble’s most famous and significant later photographs, including the first Hubble Deep Field, the Hourglass planetary nebula, and the Pillars of Creation snapshot.

What NASA did not include in this collection however was without doubt to those alive at the time after Hubble was finally repaired its most historically significant photo. That picture is to the right. It shows the exploding star Eta Carina as taken by Hubble in 1993 right after its repair.

For the very first time, we had a telescope above the Earth’s fuzzy atmosphere capable of taking sharp in-focus images of the mysteries of the heavens. And for the first time, we could see in this star its actual nature. It wasn’t simply surrounded by a pretty cloud — as all previous ground-based images had suggested — that cloud was formed by eruptions from the star itself. Those earlier eruptions, which had occurred in the previous century, had spewed from the star’s poles, forming two bi-polar clouds that were expanding away from the star most dramatically.

In the three decades since astronomers have used Hubble and its later upgraded cameras to track those expanding clouds, with the most recent photo taken in 2019. Hubble has shown that such massive heavenly objects are not static, but evolving, and with the right high resolution telescopes in space we can track that evolution, in real time.

At the moment no comparable replacement of Hubble is planned, or even on the drawing board. The Einstein space telescope, just launched, will provide magnificent optical images at a slight lower resolution. So will China’s planned Xuntian space telescope, set for launch in 2027. Neither however matches Hubble’s capabilities.

And Hubble is now long past its original lifespan of fifteen years. Though engineers say it is in good shape, this is not true. It presently has only two trustworthy working gyroscopes. To extend its lift, the telescope is operated on only one gyroscope, with a second held back in reserve. When these go, however, so will Hubble.

Meanwhile, the astronomy community continues to put most of its energy in building giant ground-based telescopes that not only cannot match Hubble but are threatened by the coming wave of new communication constellations. Do they rethink their approach and shift to orbital astronomy?

Nah. Instead, the astronomical community demands new powers to to ban those constellations!

Of all people, one would think astronomers more than anyone else would not put their head in the sand. But that’s what they continue to do.

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April 24, 2025 Quick space links

3:22 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Transiting exoplanet appears to be losing matter with each transit

8:45 am

Astronomers using the TESS space telescope have discovered an exoplanet about 140 light years away that appears to have a tail of trailing material that is gaining mass with each transit as the planet slowly disintegrates.

The typical signal of an orbiting exoplanet looks like a brief dip in a light curve, which repeats regularly, indicating that a compact body such as a planet is briefly passing in front of, and temporarily blocking, the light from its host star.

This typical pattern was unlike what Hon and his colleagues detected from the host star BD+05 4868 A, located in the constellation of Pegasus. Though a transit appeared every 30.5 hours, the brightness took much longer to return to normal, suggesting a long trailing structure still blocking starlight. Even more intriguing, the depth of the dip changed with each orbit, suggesting that whatever was passing in front of the star wasn’t always the same shape or blocking the same amount of light.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. Their calculations estimate the planet will disintegrate entirely in about two million years.

Because of the nature of these transits, the relative nearness of the star system, and the existence of this tail of material, this exoplanet is an excellent candidate for studying the planet’s structure and make-up. The scientists advocate further studies using a range of telescopes, including Webb and Hubble.

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The structure of a ringed planetary nebula revealed in the infrared

9:18 am

A planetary nebula as seen by Webb
Click for original image.

Cool image time! Using the mid-infrared camera on the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to image in false colors the ringed structure surrounding a dying star about 1,500 light years away.

The nebula’s two rings are unevenly illuminated in Webb’s observations, appearing more diffuse at bottom left and top right. They also look fuzzy, or textured. “We think the rings are primarily made up of very small dust grains,” Ressler said. “When those grains are hit by ultraviolet light from the white dwarf star, they heat up ever so slightly, which we think makes them just warm enough to be detected by Webb in mid-infrared light.”

In addition to dust, the telescope also revealed oxygen in its clumpy pink center, particularly at the edges of the bubbles or holes.

NGC 1514 is also notable for what is absent. Carbon and more complex versions of it, smoke-like material known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are common in planetary nebulae (expanding shells of glowing gas expelled by stars late in their lives). Neither were detected in NGC 1514. More complex molecules might not have had time to form due to the orbit of the two central stars, which mixed up the ejected material.

Though this false-color image of a planetary nebular is hardly ground-breaking (Hubble has been producing such pictures for decades), Webb’s better infrared data, in higher resolution, will help astronomers untangle the nebula’s complex geography. It remains however a question whether the improved capabilities of Webb were worth its $10 billion-plus cost. For that money NASA could have built and launched many different astronomical missions in the past two decades, many of which would have been able to match this data for far less.

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Twenty years of Hubble data map one long season on Uranus

9:09 am

Uranus over twenty years
Click for original image.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope multiple times since 2002 have now tracked the changes in its atmosphere during one quarter of its 84 year orbit around the Sun.

The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, shows Hubble’s views across several electromagnetic wavelengths. Uranus’s rotational tilt or inclination is almost 90 degrees, so that it literally rolls on its side as it orbits the Sun. You can see this especially in the bottom two rows. From 2012 to 2022 one pole slowly shifted westward. From the press release:

The Hubble team observed Uranus four times in the 20-year period: in 2002, 2012, 2015, and 2022. They found that, unlike conditions on the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, methane is not uniformly distributed across Uranus. Instead, it is strongly depleted near the poles. This depletion remained relatively constant over the two decades. However, the aerosol and haze structure changed dramatically, brightening significantly in the northern polar region as the planet approaches its northern summer solstice in 2030.

Since we have not yet observed Uranus over one full year, there are a lot of uncertainties in any conclusions the scientists propose. For one, we don’t know the general atmospheric patterns across all four seasons. For another, any changes seen now might simply be the planet’s weather, random events not directly related to long term climate patterns.

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Webb images in the infrared the aurora of Neptune

9:30 am

The aurora of Neptune
Click for original image.

Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope have captured the first infrared images of the aurora of Neptune, confirming that the gas giant produces this phenomenon.

The picture to the right combines infrared data from Webb and optical imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. The white splotches near the bottom of the globe are clouds seen by Hubble. The additional white areas in the center and near the top are clouds detected by Webb, while the greenish regions to the right are aurora activity detected by Webb.

The auroral activity seen on Neptune is also noticeably different from what we are accustomed to seeing here on Earth, or even Jupiter or Saturn. Instead of being confined to the planet’s northern and southern poles, Neptune’s auroras are located at the planet’s geographic mid-latitudes — think where South America is located on Earth.

This is due to the strange nature of Neptune’s magnetic field, originally discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989, which is tilted by 47 degrees from the planet’s rotation axis. Since auroral activity is based where the magnetic fields converge into the planet’s atmosphere, Neptune’s auroras are far from its rotational poles.

The data also found that the temperature of Neptune’s upper atmosphere has cooled significantly since it was first measured by Voyager 2 in 1989, dropping by several hundred degrees.

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March 24, 2025 Quick space links

3:41 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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A galactic ball and spiral interact

9:55 am

A galactic ball and spiral interact
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a study of the star populations in these two interacting galaxies. From the caption:

Arp 105 is a dazzling ongoing merger between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy drawn together by gravity, characterized by a long, drawn out tidal tail of stars and gas more than 362,000 light-years long. The immense tail, which extends beyond this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, was pulled from the two galaxies by their gravitational interactions and is embedded with star clusters and dwarf galaxies.

The three blue objects on the outskirts of both galaxies are thought to be active star-forming regions. Whether all three are part of this collision is unclear, as the object on the lower right might simply be a foreground object based on the available data.

What makes this galactic pair so intriguing is that the two galaxies are so different with very different theorized histories. Elliptical galaxies (“the ball”) are thought to be very old, the result of the long term evolution of spirals. You would therefore not think an elliptical would normally interact with a spiral, as their ages are likely so dissimilar.

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A galaxy surrounded by clusters of hot massive stars

8:44 am

A galaxy surrounded by hot massive stars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxy NGC 5042, located about 48 million light years away. The picture combines data from all of Hubble’s available wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared. From the caption:

Perhaps NGC 5042’s most striking feature is its collection of brilliant pink gas clouds that are studded throughout its spiral arms. These flashy clouds are called H II (pronounced “H-two”) regions, and they get their distinctive colour from hydrogen atoms that have been ionised by ultraviolet light. If you look closely at this image, you’ll see that many of these reddish clouds are associated with clumps of blue stars, often appearing to form a shell around the stars.

H II regions arise in expansive clouds of hydrogen gas, and only hot and massive stars [indicated by blue] produce enough high-energy light to create an H II region. Because the stars capable of creating H II regions only live for a few million years — just a blink of an eye in galactic terms — this image represents a fleeting snapshot of life in this galaxy.

The image also includes one star (distinguished by its four diffraction spikes) and a few background galaxies in yellow, the most obvious found in the upper and lower right.

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This vibrant spiral galaxy and the subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 5042, which resides about 48 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (the water snake). The galaxy nicely fills the frame of this Hubble image, with a single Milky Way star marked by cross-shaped diffraction spikes attempting to blend in with the bright stars along the galaxy’s edge. Hubble observed NGC 5042 in six wavelength bands from the ultraviolet to the infrared to create this multicoloured portrait. The galaxy’s cream-coloured centre is packed with ancient stars, and the galaxy’s spiral arms are decorated with patches of young blue stars. The elongated yellow-orange objects that are scattered around the image are background galaxies far more distant than NGC 5042. Perhaps NGC 5042’s most striking feature is its collection of brilliant pink gas clouds that are studded throughout its spiral arms. These flashy clouds are called H II (pronounced “H-two”) regions, and they get their distinctive colour from hydrogen atoms that have been ionised by ultraviolet light. If you look closely at this image, you’ll see that many of these reddish clouds are associated with clumps of blue stars, often appearing to form a shell around the stars.  H II regions arise in expansive clouds of hydrogen gas, and only hot and massive stars produce enough high-energy light to create an H II region. Because the stars capable of creating H II regions only live for a few million years — just a blink of an eye in galactic terms — this image represents a fleeting snapshot of life in this galaxy. [Image Description: A spiral galaxy. It’s noticeably bright around the central region of its disc, then dims somewhat out to the edge where there are fewer stars. Two spiral arms circle through the disc and emerge beyond its edge, around the galaxy’s sides. Many pink spots of new star formation, as well as dark reddish strands of dust, cover the galaxy. The arms contain some speckled, blue patches containing hot stars.] Links Pan of NGC 5042

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February 25, 2025 Quick space links

3:16 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • On this day in 1969, Mariner 6 was launched on a Mars flyby mission
    Like the previous fly-by mission, Mariner 4, and Mariner 6’s parallel mission, Mariner 7 and launched at approximately the same time, Mariner 6 focused on getting images of the dark areas of Mars as seen from Earth, which we now know are the Martian cratered highlands. Thus, all these missions suggested quite incorrectly that Mars was just like the Moon.
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Hubble takes a close look at one tiny part of the Veil Nebula

12:47 pm

A small section of the Veil Nebula
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of just one very tiny section of the supernova remnant known as the Veil Nebula, located about 2,400 light years away.

The white dot on the inset (showing the entire Veil Nebula) marks the area covered by this closeup, focused on the one bright section of nebula in the Veil’s southwest quadrant. From the caption:

This nebula is the remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the Sun that exploded about 10 000 years ago. … This view combines images taken in three different filters by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, highlighting emission from hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen atoms. This image shows just a small fraction of the Veil Nebula; if you could see the entire nebula without the aid of a telescope, it would be as wide as six full Moons placed side by side.

Astronomers have been using Hubble to take periodic pictures of the Veil Nebular since 1994 in order to track changes as these gaseous gossamer strands evolve over time.

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In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week, Hubble has once again lifted the veil on a famous — and frequently photographed — supernova remnant: the Veil Nebula. This nebula is the remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the Sun that exploded about 10 000 years ago. Situated about 2400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, this photogenic nebula made an appearance as the Picture of the Week previously in 2021. This view combines images taken in three different filters by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, highlighting emission from hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen atoms. This image shows just a small fraction of the Veil Nebula; if you could see the entire nebula without the aid of a telescope, it would be as wide as six full Moons placed side by side. Look in the sidebar of this page to see this image superimposed on its location in the sky, and try zooming out to compare the size of the full nebula! Although this image captures the Veil Nebula at just a single point in time, it will help researchers understand how the supernova remnant has evolved over decades. Combining this snapshot with Hubble observations from 1994 will reveal the motion of individual knots and filaments of gas over that span of time, enhancing our understanding of this stunning nebula. [Image Description: A colourful, glowing nebula that reaches beyond the top and bottom of the image. It is made of translucent clouds of gas: wispy and thin with hard edges in some places, and puffy and opaque in others. Blue, red and yellow colours mix together, showing light emitted by different types of atoms in the hot gas. Bright and pointlike stars are scattered across the nebula. The background is black.]

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Astronomers find galaxy with nine rings

11:15 am

The Bullseye Galaxy
Click for original image.

Using both the Hubble Space Telescope as well as the Keck telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered a galaxy with nine rings, something never seen before.

The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” — a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy — shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a ninth using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Previous observations of other galaxies show a maximum of two or three rings.

More information from Keck can be found here.

Keck Observatory and Hubble’s follow-up observations helped the researchers prove which galaxy plunged through the center of the Bullseye — a blue dwarf galaxy to its center-left. This relatively tiny interloper traveled like a dart through the core of the Bullseye about 50 million years ago, leaving rings in its wake like ripples in a pond. A thin trail of gas now links the pair, though they are currently separated by 130,000 light-years.

The Hubble picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. The small blue dwarf galaxy to the left is believed to be the galaxy that plowed through LEDA 1313424 to create the rings. LEDA is itself thought to be two and a half times the size of the Milky Way, making one of the larger known galaxies.

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Hubble_LEDA1313424_STScIcroppedreducedsharpened

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