Bullseye! Researchers using Hubble found a massive galaxy rippling with nine star-filled rings after an "arrow," the blue dwarf galaxy to its center-left, plunged through its core 50 million years ago. A thin trail of gas still links the pair.
This panoramic view of the Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away, is the largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope observations. It took more than 10 years to collect data to make this vast and colorful portrait of the galaxy, built from more than 600 overlapping snapshots. This stunning mosaic captures the pinpoint glow of 200 million stars spread across 2.5 billion pixels.
We are joining the Carnegie Science in celebrating the 100th anniversary of Edwin Hubble鈥檚 discovery of galaxies existing beyond our Milky Way. He found a stellar 鈥渕ilepost marker鈥� embedded in Andromeda and calculated it is outside our galaxy.
Soon after the start of NASA鈥檚 James Webb Space Telescope鈥檚 science operations, astronomers noticed something unexpected in the data: red objects that appear small on the sky, located in the distant, young universe. Come to be known as 鈥渓ittle red dots鈥� (LRDs), this intriguing class of objects is not well understood at present, sparking new questions and prompting new theories about the processes that occurred in the early universe.
An unusual star that spins over seven times faster than our sun has been detected by Hubble. Known as a "blue lurker," it probably got a turbo-boost from the merger of two accompanying stars that fed material onto the star, increasing its rotation speed.
How are the elements like carbon produced and spread across space? Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified two stars responsible for generating carbon-rich dust a mere 5,000 light-years away in our own Milky Way galaxy. As the massive stars in Wolf-Rayet 140 swing past one another on their elongated orbits, their winds collide and produce carbon-rich dust. For a few months every eight years, the stars form a new shell of dust that expands outward 鈥� and may eventually go on to become part of stars that form elsewhere in our galaxy. Webb鈥檚 mid-infrared light observations show 17 uneven shells around these stars 鈥� but many more may have dissipated and thousands more will be created. These findings offer definitive clues about carbon鈥檚 beginnings that may help the astronomy community unwind how elements go on to form new stars and planets.
Hubble makes another exciting discovery about a quasar with newborn jets: It鈥檚 hosted by a spiral galaxy, throwing into question the popular idea that jets are triggered by messy galaxy mergers.
Using Webb, researchers have confirmed the presence of planet-forming disks in NGC 346, and discovered that these disks are long-lived. The finding is causing scientists to rethink current models of planet formation.
Like fireflies 鈥渄ancing鈥� on a warm summer night, 10 distinct star clusters appear in observations from NASA鈥檚 James Webb Space Telescope. They are held in a cocoon of diffuse light emitted by other stars scattered around them. This galaxy, known as Firefly Sparkle, was taking shape around 600 million years after the big bang.
For a decade, Hubble's OPAL program has kept an eye on our solar system's outer planets, making global studies of their cloud coloration, activity, and atmospheric motion to understand the underlying mechanics of their weather and climate systems.
Astronomers have used Hubble to see closer than ever into an energetic monster black hole powering 3C 273, the first quasar ever discovered. The new image details a lot of weird things: filaments, lobes, and a mysterious L-shaped structure, all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.
There鈥檚 somewhat of an inside joke in the astronomical community that researchers aren鈥檛 the best at naming things. For example, the first star observed by Webb is named HD 84406. Not so catchy. Neither is galaxy cluster MACS0416, a deep field imaged by Webb recently. There are exceptions to this, though. Think the Hourglass Nebula, the Cigar Galaxy, or the Cat鈥檚 Paw Nebula. All named for the objects on Earth that they resemble. The Sombrero Galaxy is aptly named for its likeness to the wide-brimmed hat. However, it appears the name is not always accurate, as NASA鈥檚 James Webb Space Telescope鈥檚 look shows. In the mid-infrared, the 'crown' of the 'hat' is no longer visible, causing the galaxy to take on a much different appearance.
Young star FU Orionis is pretty shocking! Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the sizzling star in ultraviolet light. At 16,000 kelvins, nearly three times our sun鈥檚 surface temperature, its disk is nearly twice as hot as prior models have calculated.
Hubble witnessed a dwarf galaxy crashing through the Milky Way galaxy's gaseous halo and living to tell the tale...though a bit worse for wear!
Combining the power of the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, astronomers revisited the legendary star Vega and found a smooth disk surrounding it鈥攁 surprise to astronomers who expected to see evidence of one or more large planets plowing through the disk, which is common around other young stars. But Vega is forcing astronomers to rethink the range and variety of planetary systems around stars.
This ghastly galactic 鈥渃ountenance鈥� recalls mythological human-hunters like the Algonquian wendigo 鈥� an emaciated figure with ashen flesh and glowing eyes that grows larger and larger as it feasts, and is never satiated.
The Hubble Space Telescope has provided a dramatic and colorful close-up look at R Aquarii, one of the most rambunctious stars in our galaxy, weaving a huge spiral pattern among the stars.
Uranus, the planet second most distant from our Sun, has been described as mysterious, strange, and fairly unknown to those of us here on Earth. However, in astronomy, these terms are pretty relative. Compared to the remote, dark stretches of the early universe or oddball exoplanets dozens of light-years from our solar system, researchers actually know a lot about Uranus.
Using Hubble, astronomers have discovered that Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) is not as stable as it might look. Hubble measurements of the GRS's size, shape, brightness, color, and vorticity showed it can change dimensions鈥攍ooking like a slightly skinnier or fatter red oval over 90 days.
Using NASA鈥檚 James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers observed Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, one of the most active and intriguing objects in the outer solar system. The high degree of detail captured by the telescope led to the discovery of new, previously unknown jets of gas, which is helping inform theories about how centaurs and planets are formed.
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