Hubble | Universe Today

Astronomers have long wondered why a small, nearby, isolated galaxy is pumping out new stars faster than any galaxy in our local neighborhood. Usually, galaxies need some sort of gravitational interaction with other galaxies to trigger star formation, and galaxy NGC 1569 appeared to be a loner, far away from other galaxies, but churning out new stars like crazy. Now, a new look at the galaxy with the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy is farther away than originally thought, which places NCG 1569 in the middle of a group of about 10 galaxies. Gravitational interactions among the group's galaxies may be compressing gas in NGC 1569 and igniting the star-birthing frenzy.
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The space shuttle mission to repair and update the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed. Mission managers were aiming for a February 2009 launch for STS-125 flight for the fifth and final shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The replacement component for the data handling system that recently caused problems for the telescope not be ready by February, and now NASA is looking for a May 2009 launch. On a positive note, the "other" shuttle mission waiting in the wings, STS-126 to the International Space Station, is looking good and is go for launch. Current launch date is set for November 14 at 7:55 p.m. EST.
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Yes! (*Fist pump*) The Hubble Space Telescope is back in business.

After overcoming a few glitches in bringing the orbiting Hubble back online, engineers and scientists aimed the telescope's prime camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a pair of gorgeous-looking interacting galaxies called Arp 147. Scientists say the image demonstrates the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty. And the two galaxies are oriented so they look like the number 10! How cool is that!
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So far, everything is going well and as planned for the Hubble Space Telescope's long-distance 'brain surgery.' During the night of Oct. 15, Space Telescope Operations Control Center engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center successfully turned on and checked out Side B of Hubble’s Science Instrument Control and Data Handling (SIC&DH) system. Engineers were then able to retrieve the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) instruments. They were being held in safe mode, and were turned on, each showing they had a working interface to the Side B of SIC&DH. The instruments were then commanded back into safe mode, and then at noon today commands will be sent from Side B to each of the instruments. Engineers will then begin calibrations of the telescope’s science instruments, which they hope to finish before midnight Thursday. So this is good news…
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The procedure to begin "brain surgery" on the Hubble Space Telescope will begin at 6:00 am EDT (10:00 GMT) on October 15. The venerable space telescope will be put into electronic hibernation; then engineering teams will work from the ground around the clock for two days to reconfigure a data handler system which failed two weeks ago. If the procedure is successful, science operations could resume as early as Friday, October 17. The Control Unit/Science Data Formatter, which relays science data to Earth, is a redundant system, with two sides. Side A has been used exclusively since the telescope's launch over 18 years ago in 1990. Side B hasn't been powered on since well before launch. "It is obviously a possibility that things will not come up," said Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Space Telescope Systems Management office at the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We have very good confidence this will work. In addition, we have contingency plans built in at each step of the transition where if something does not go the way we expect it to, we'll be able to back out and go down an alternate path."
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Here's another anniversary for you and more fodder to either ease or add to your Hubble "angst": Ten years ago, the Hubble Heritage Project began. What is Hubble Heritage? After the Hubble Space Telescope was fixed of its spherical aberration problem in December of 1993, HST started churning out incredible images. After a few years, the images started to pile up, and the astronomers working with Hubble wanted to share them with the public. So with the Hubble Heritage Project, each month, some of the most breathtaking and attractive images are released and showcased to the public. Along with the images, the astronomers explain the science behind the images, as well. Over the past ten years of doing this, the Heritage team has presented to the public aesthetic images that present the universe from an artistic perspective. Its science as art, and these images are some of the most gorgeous "real" art available anywhere. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this project, above is the latest release. So while we await the fate of Hubble, enjoy this latest release!
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Everyone is suffering from severe angst about the fate of the Hubble Space Telescope, and now, on the heels of Hubble's data controller failure news comes more ANGST. But this is a good ANGST – which is an acronym for ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury. The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) has completed a thorough survey of galaxies in our cosmic backyard, providing clues about how stars form. Using Hubble, astronomers observed around 14 million stars in 69 galaxies, ranging from 6.5 million light-years to 13 million light-years from Earth. Interestingly, some galaxies were found to be full of ancient stars, while others are like sun-making factories. So, if you're suffering from Hubble angst, peruse the images from this newest survey – they may bring you comfort. Either that, or you'll cry from sorrow of what could possibly be lost… (no, no, no — think happy thoughts!!!)…
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A major failure on the Hubble Space Telescope has shut down science operations, as the spacecraft is unable to send any data to Earth, according to an article on NASA Spaceflight.com. The failure is on the “Side A” control system. There is also a back-up system, Side B which has never been used. Attempts will be made to switch to Side B later this week. This switch has never been attempted during the lifetime of the telescope, but it is hoped that the switch will work, allowing the HST to return to functionality. This may have an impact on the STS-125’s mission to repair the Hubble, delaying it to 2009, if managers decide to send up a replacement unit, or if a mitigation plan fails to restore the Telescope’s functionality.

Update: NASA held a news conference this afternoon, and said the servicing mission — which was going to launch on Oct. 14 — is definitely on hold. They will attempt to turn on Side B later this week, and depending on how that goes, they are working on a plan to have the shuttle servicing mission bring up and install a spare Science Instrument Command and Data Handling System sometime in 2009. Phil has the dicey details over at Bad Astronomy
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Because of delays and complications from Hurricane Ike, the launch date for space shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed four days until Oct. 14 at 10:19 p.m. EDT. The delay is not a surprise. The crew and mission controllers missed out on a week of valuable training time when they were forced to evacuate the Houston area when Hurricane Ike which hit on September 13. "You come to the question of either slipping the launch or cutting out events," said STS-125 Commander Scott Altman when the crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday to prepare for a launch rehearsal. "All [our training] needs to be done and we have to make it happen before we fly… And that, of course, may mean a bit of a slip." With Atlantis' launch delay, subsequently shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 supply mission to the International Space Station, also will move from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16 at 7:07 p.m. EST.
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A cooling system for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) science instrument aboard the Hubble telescope experienced an anomaly during a restart, causing the instrument to go into safe mode. After a couple of additional restarts, the problem still persists, and a decision was made for NICMOS to "stand down" while engineers study the anomaly and allow the cooling system to warm up, which may take a couple of weeks. In the short term, this will affect planned science observations, and engineers are hoping to avoid any long term complications. At this point, if the problem cannot be fixed from the ground, it is unclear how it might affect the upcoming servicing mission, scheduled for an Oct. 10 launch.
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This Hubble Space Telescope image of two spiral galaxies shows an interesting feature on the smaller galaxy. Silhouetted in front of the larger background galaxy is a small galaxy, and tentacles of dust can be seen extending beyond the small galaxy's disk of starlight. These dark, dusty structures appear to be devoid of stars, almost like barren branches. They are rarely so visible in a galaxy because there is usually nothing behind them but darkness. But here, with the backdrop of the larger galaxy they are illuminated. Astronomers have never seen dust this far beyond the visible edge of a galaxy, and they don't know if these dusty structures are common features in galaxies.
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A powerful collision of galaxy clusters captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory provides evidence for dark matter and insight into its properties. Observations of the cluster known as MACS J0025.4-1222 indicate that a titanic collision has separated dark matter from ordinary matter. The images also provide an independent confirmation of a similar effect detected previously in a region called the Bullet Cluster. Like the Bullet Cluster, this newly studied cluster shows a clear separation between dark and ordinary matter.
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Complete with tentacles, a supermassive black hole and x-ray emitting gas, a monster of a galaxy has been found by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and is helping astronomers answer a long-standing puzzle. The very active galaxy NGC 1275 has giant but beautiful and delicate filaments influenced and shaped by a beastly-strong extragalactic magnetic field. But how the delicate structures such as those found in this galaxy can withstand the hostile, high-energy environment has been a mystery. But researchers say the beauty and the beast co-exist and are dependent on each other for survival.
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This morning at 7:42 EDT, the Hubble Space Telescope completed it's 100,000th orbit around the Earth. That's about 4.38 billion kilometers (2.72 billion miles), as it clicks along at 8 km per second (5 miles/s), orbiting Earth once every 90 minutes. Hubble's been in orbit for over 18 years now, since its launch on the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. To commemorate occasion, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., released a special image taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 of a nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left) , showing a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. And soon, Hubble will have a little renewal of its own, with the upcoming fifth and final servicing mission in October.
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An international team of astronomers have compiled the largest-ever single collection of "gravitational lens" galaxies, and their survey yielded information on the masses of galaxies, including an inference of the amount of dark matter. Gravitational lensing occurs when two galaxies happen to aligned with one another along our line of sight in the sky. The gravitational field of the nearer galaxy distorts the image of the more distant galaxy into multiple arc-shaped images. Sometimes this effect even creates a complete ring, known as an "Einstein Ring." The findings of this survey helps settle a long standing debate over the relationship between and mass and luminosity in galaxies.
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The Great Red Spot on Jupiter has been observed for over 150 years, and it doesn't appear this anti-cyclonic storm is showing any signs of letting up. How does it maintain its power? Well, like a planetary Pac-Man, it "eats up" other storms, zapping them of their power. The sequence of images here from the Hubble Space Telescope shows three different storms on Jupiter: The Great Red Spot, Red Spot Jr. (otherwise known as Oval BA, to the south of GRS), and Baby Red Spot, to the left of GRS in the first two images. Baby got a little too close to big brother GRS, and may have been snuffed out. But GRS keeps on keeping on. These three natural-color Jupiter images were made from data acquired on May 15, June 28, and July 8, 2008, by the Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.
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This galaxy, Zw II 96 (about 500 million light-years away) resembles the Baby Boom galaxy which lies about 12.3 billion light-years away and appears in images as only a smudge.

A group of telescopes got together recently to check out a little hanky-panky going on in a galaxy in a very remote part of the universe. The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, Japan's Subaru Telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell and the Keck Telescopes, all on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and the Very Large Array in New Mexico pooled their various optical, infrared, submillimeter and radio capabilities to see why a distant galaxy appears to be conceiving stars at a tremendously fast rate. This galaxy, which has now been dubbed the "Baby Boom" galaxy, is giving birth to about 4,000 stars per year. In comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy turns out an average of just 10 stars per year. These telescopes weren't just playing the part of a Peeping Tom; astronomers want to find out more about this incredibly fertile galaxy.
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Back in 1006 A.D, observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East witnessed and recorded the arrival of light from what is now called SN 1006, a tremendous supernova explosion caused by the final death throes of a white dwarf star nearly 7,000 light-years away. One Egyptian astronomer recorded the object was 2 - 3 times as large as the disc of Venus and about one quarter the brightness of the moon. The supernova was probably the brightest star ever seen by humans, visible even during the day for weeks, and it remained visible to the naked eye for at least two and a half years before fading away. Remnants of this supernova are still visible to telescopes, and the Hubble Space Telescope captured this close-up a filament of the shock wave of the explosion, still reverberating through space, seen here against the grid of background stars. The full image of SN 1006 is pretty impressive, too…
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The Coma Cluster is one of the densest known clusters of galaxies, containing thousands of elliptical and spherical star systems. The entire cluster is huge, more than 20 million light-years in diameter. It's also very far away, over 300 million light years distant. But no telescope brings the Coma Cluster closer than the Hubble Space Telescope, and a new Hubble image has captured the magnificent starry population in one area of the Coma Cluster with the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
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Astronomers now know that essentially every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. When the black hole is actively feeding on material, the surrounding region can blaze brightly - this is a quasar, aka an active galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to image a set of exotic active galaxies, known as post-starburst quasars.
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Our understanding of the cosmos has been revolutionized by the Hubble Space Telescope. The breathtaking familiar photos, like the Pillars of Creation, pale in comparison to the astounding amount of science data returned to Earth. Hubble's getting old, though, serviced several times already, and due for another mission later this year. Let's relive the historic observatory's amazing life so far, and see what the future holds.

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Does your cell phone bill ever reach astronomical proportions? Maybe you're doing too much texting. One space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Nigel Bannister from the University of Leicester looked at the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble and compared it with the cost of sending a text. His calculations? “The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that."
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It's time for another beautiful image from the Hubble Space Telescope. And this time, there's an added bonus… video. The latest images released by Hubble are based on research of the Antennae Galaxies, known as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039. Astronomers used to think that they were 65 million light-years away, but the new research puts them much closer; probably 45 million light-years away.
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Astronomers looking at galaxies in the universe’s distant past were surprised to find some compact, very young galaxies that have masses similar to a mature, grown-up galaxy. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered nine small galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun. The galaxies, each only 5,000 light-years across, are a fraction of the size of today's adult galaxies but contain approximately the same number of stars. Each galaxy could fit inside the central hub of our Milky Way Galaxy.
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59 new images from the Hubble Space Telescope show some very unusual but incredibly spectacular colliding galaxies. Colliding or interacting galaxies are found throughout the Universe, and sometimes these collisions trigger bursts of star formation, or the mergers form new galaxies. The image above shows the aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion. Officially called Arp 148, it also has the nickname 'Mayall’s object.' It is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, approximately 500 million light-years away. These images are the largest collection from Hubble ever published simultaneously, and they celebrate the 18th anniversary of Hubble’s launch. And there’s more….
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