Latest news with #JosephDePasquale
CBS News
24-04-2025
- Science
- CBS News
NASA releases stunning photos of planets, far-flung galaxies to mark Hubble anniversary
On April 24, 1990, all 24,000 pounds of the Hubble Space Telescope were tucked away inside the Discovery space shuttle when it launched into space. Thirty-five years later, NASA says Hubble has proven to have "opened a new window to the universe," with more than 1.6 million observations to date filled with compelling and surprising images of galaxies, planets and our own solar system. To celebrate the anniversary milestone, NASA has released stunning photos taken by the telescope in its decades among the stars. Among them is an image of Mars, taken 61 million miles from Earth. "Thin water-ice clouds, revealed by Hubble's unique ultraviolet capability, give the Red Planet a frosty appearance," Hubble said along with the photo on social media. A photo of Mars taken by Hubble NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI) In a news release commemorating Hubble's decades around the sun, NASA said the telescope "is a glowing success story of America's technological prowess, unyielding scientific curiosity, and a reiteration of our nation's pioneering spirit." "Its stunning imagery inspired people across the globe, and the data behind those images revealed surprises about everything from early galaxies to planets in our own solar system," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The fact that it is still operating today is a testament to the value of our flagship observatories, and provides critical lessons for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which we plan to be serviceable in the spirit of Hubble." Another image captured by Hubble shows the nebula NGC 2899, which NASA's Hubble account on X described as being "sculpted by the outflow of radiation and stellar winds from a 40,000-degree-Fahrenheit dying star at its center." An image of planetary nebula NGC 2899 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Hubble has looked at roughly 55,000 astronomical targets during its time in space, resulting in over 22,000 scientific papers as of February. Aside from the James Webb Space Telescope, it has contributed to the biggest dataset for a NASA astrophysics mission, with over 400 terabytes of data. Among the observations it has captured are planetary seasons, black hole jets traveling at nearly the speed of light, stellar convulsions, asteroid collisions and expanding supernova bubbles. One of those observations, a portion of the star-forming Rosette Nebula, shows dark clouds of hydrogen gas laced with dust. An image showing a small portion of the Rosette Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Hubble's ability to capture the cosmos isn't just visually stunning, but has provided numerous scientific breakthroughs. Before the telescope's launch, telescopes grounded on Earth couldn't see as far into space, limiting estimates for the age of the universe and knowledge of space in general. Hubble was able to capture deep field images that showed galaxies dating back to the early universe, allowing scientists to precisely measure the universe's expansion. Using the telescope, scientists were also able to determine that supermassive black holes are common among galaxies and measure the atmospheres of exoplanets — and it even contributed to the discovery of dark energy. An image of barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Hubble sees mini galaxies surrounding Andromeda are pretty wild
Surrounding the Andromeda galaxy, three dozen tiny galaxies aren't behaving the way scientists expected. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has trained on Andromeda for a deep dive into how its orbiting satellite galaxies formed and changed over time. What they found revealed a population of dwarf galaxies that are quite unlike the ones circling the Milky Way. Some 2.5 million light-years away, these space neighborhoods formed the bulk of their stars long ago. But rather than halting production, as computer simulations would suggest, they continued slowly making new stars out of a stockpile of gas. "Star formation really continued to much later times, which is not at all what you would expect for these dwarf galaxies," said Alessandro Savino, an astronomer at UC Berkeley, in a statement. "No one knows what to make of that so far." SEE ALSO: A tiny galaxy ceased making stars for billions of years. Then it rebooted. Hubble captured a bird's eye view of the known dwarf galaxies orbiting the large Andromeda galaxy. These 36 smaller satellites are circled in yellow. Credit: NASA / ESA / Alessandro Savino / Joseph DePasquale / Akira Fujii DSS2 In the past, scientists primarily observed dwarf galaxies near the Milky Way, but they were never sure whether those were representative of others in the universe. That's why they pointed Hubble, which orbits Earth, at the closest large galaxy, which has its own bevy of satellite galaxies. The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, is based on observations from over 1,000 telescope orbits. The sweeping science campaign allowed astronomers to build a detailed 3D map of Andromeda's 36 dwarf galaxies and reconstruct how they made new stars over the 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang. The images have provided a unique bird' s-eye view of Andromeda and its environment. In addition to the dwarf galaxies' prolonged star-bearing years, scientists were surprised to find that half were sitting on the same plane and moving in the same direction. However, mergers and collisions usually result in objects traveling in inconsistent directions. "That's weird," said Daniel Weisz, the principal investigator at UC Berkeley, in a statement. "It was actually a total surprise to find the satellites in that configuration, and we still don't fully understand why they appear that way." Astronomers have learned that galaxies tend to start out small and grow larger by collecting gas and merging with other galaxies. But most dwarf galaxies that made stars before the so-called Epoch of Reionization never got back to business after. Reionization was an era of major transition that occurred more than 13 billion years ago. It was when the baby universe transformed from a neutral state to one filled with free electrons and protons. The above animation gives a fly-around view of the Andromeda galaxy and its surrounding dwarf galaxies, based on Hubble data. Because most of the tiny galaxies turned off their star-making activity in the first few billion years of the universe, many scientists have thought reionization was the reason. However, some researchers are calling that idea into question. Astronomers suspect Andromeda had a major collision with another galaxy relatively recently, perhaps 2 to 5 billion years ago. The Milky Way, on the other hand, probably hasn't had a run-in with another galaxy for 8 to 10 billion years. Andromeda's collision — and its more massive scale — could explain the galaxy's exotic and diverse satellite system. The study has only deepened the team's speculation that dwarf galaxies aren't all like the ones close to home. They can have a wide range of fates, the researchers posit, and it'll take more observations to ascertain why. "Everything scattered in the Andromeda system is very asymmetric and perturbed. It does appear that something significant happened not too long ago," Weisz said. "Our work has shown that low-mass galaxies in other ecosystems have followed different evolutionary paths than what we know from the Milky Way satellite galaxies."
