Uploads from NASA Goddard Photo and Video, tagged star

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Finds Dead Stars 'Polluted with Planet Debris'

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:22:00 -0700

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

This is an artist’s impression of a white dwarf (burned-out) star accreting rocky debris left behind by the star’s surviving planetary system. It was observed by Hubble in the Hyades star cluster. At lower right, an asteroid can be seen falling toward a Saturn-like disk of dust that is encircling the dead star. Infalling asteroids pollute the white dwarf’s atmosphere with silicon.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place-- the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs.

These dead stars are located 150 light-years from Earth in a relatively young star cluster, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus. The star cluster is only 625 million years old. The white dwarfs are being polluted by asteroid-like debris falling onto them.

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Hubble Sees the Remains of a Star Gone Supernova

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:33:35 -0700

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These delicate wisps of gas make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short. The thin, blood-red shells are actually the remnants from when an unstable progenitor star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago. There are several types of supernovae, but for SNR 0519 the star that exploded is known to have been a white dwarf star — a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life.

SNR 0519 is located over 150 000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish), a constellation that also contains most of our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because of this, this region of the sky is full of intriguing and beautiful deep sky objects.

The LMC orbits the Milky Way galaxy as a satellite and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. SNR 0519 is not alone in the LMC; the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also came across a similar bauble a few years ago in SNR B0509-67.5, a supernova of the same type as SNR 0519 with a strikingly similar appearance.

European Space Agency/NASA Hubble

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NASA's Fermi Proves Supernova Remnants Produce Cosmic Rays

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:27:10 -0800

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The W44 supernova remnant is nestled within and interacting with the molecular cloud that formed its parent star. Fermi's LAT detects GeV gamma rays (magenta) produced when the gas is bombarded by cosmic rays, primarily protons. Radio observations (yellow) from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array near Socorro, N.M., and infrared (red) data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal filamentary structures in the remnant's shell. Blue shows X-ray emission mapped by the Germany-led ROSAT mission.

To read more go to: 1.usa.gov/14V14qi

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Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration, NRAO/AUI, JPL-Caltech, ROSAT

Hubble Sees Hidden Treasure in Large Magellanic Cloud

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:03:44 -0800

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NASA image release January 23, 2013

Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. As the Milky Way’s gravity gently tugs on its neighbour’s gas clouds, they collapse to form new stars. In turn, these light up the gas clouds in a kaleidoscope of colours, visible in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

To read more go to: 1.usa.gov/10vcJIi

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Hubble Goes to the eXtreme to Assemble Farthest-Ever View of the Universe

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:35:16 -0700

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NASA image release September 25, 2012

Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe.

Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full moon.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. By collecting faint light over many hours of observation, it revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken at that time.

The new full-color XDF image is even more sensitive, and contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.

To read more go to:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/xdf.html

Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team

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Hubble Watches Star Clusters on a Collision Course

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:40:59 -0700

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Image release August 16, 2012

Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have caught two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging. The 30 Doradus Nebula is 170,000 light-years from Earth. What at first was thought to be only one cluster in the core of the massive star-forming region 30 Doradus has been found to be a composite of two clusters that differ in age by about one million years.

The entire 30 Doradus complex has been an active star-forming region for 25 million years, and it is currently unknown how much longer this region can continue creating new stars. Smaller systems that merge into larger ones could help to explain the origin of some of the largest known star clusters. The Hubble observations, made with the Wide Field Camera 3, were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

To read more about this image go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/cluster-collisi...

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI)

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Hubble Sees Red Giant Blow a Bubble

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 10:46:41 -0700

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Camelopardalis, or U Cam for short, is a star nearing the end of its life. As it begins to run low on fuel, it is becoming unstable. Every few thousand years, it coughs out a nearly spherical shell of gas as a layer of helium around its core begins to fuse. The gas ejected in the star’s latest eruption is clearly visible in this picture as a faint bubble of gas surrounding the star.

U Cam is an example of a carbon star. This is a rare type of star whose atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen. Due to its low surface gravity, typically as much as half of the total mass of a carbon star may be lost by way of powerful stellar winds. Located in the constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe), near the North Celestial Pole, U Cam itself is actually much smaller than it appears in Hubble’s picture. In fact, the star would easily fit within a single pixel at the center of the image. Its brightness, however, is enough to saturate the camera's receptors, making the star look much bigger than it really is.

The shell of gas, which is both much larger and much fainter than its parent star, is visible in intricate detail in Hubble’s portrait. While phenomena that occur at the ends of stars’ lives are often quite irregular and unstable, the shell of gas expelled from U Cam is almost perfectly spherical.

The image was produced with the High Resolution Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Image credit: ESA/NASA

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Hubble's Panoramic View of a Turbulent Star-Making Region

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:04:38 -0700

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NASA image release date April 17, 2012

This region resembles a coral reef, but the gas has been eroded by the hefty stars in R136, situated above it. Cloaked in gas at the top of this rugged, gaseous terrain are nascent stars that cannot be seen. Dense columns of gas, several light-years long, protrude from the undulating landscape. These gaseous columns are incubators for developing stars.

30 Doradus is the brightest, nearby star-forming region and home to the most massive stars in our cosmic neighborhood of about 25 galaxies. The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the stars' birth and evolution. 30 Doradus resides 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/30doradus.html

Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S. E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), N. Bastian (Excellence Cluster, Munich), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), E. Bressert (ESO), P. Crowther (University of Sheffield), A. de Koter (University of Amsterdam), C. Evans (UKATC/STFC, Edinburgh), A. Herrero (IAC, Tenerife), N. Langer (AifA, Bonn), I. Platais (JHU), and H. Sana (University of Amsterdam)

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Blowing Through Space [hd video]

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:03:58 -0700

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a video:

A week of images from one of two STEREO Heliospheric Imagers on its 'Behind' spacecraft reveals at least half a dozen coronal mass ejections (CME's) blowing out from the Sun and heading into space (Mar. 25 - April 2, 2012). This imager is a wide-angle visible-light imaging system for the detection of CME events in interplanetary space and, in particular, of events directed towards the Earth. In this movie the Sun is just to the left of the field of view and the Earth would be millions of miles to the right. Mercury is the bright object moving from right to left against the background of stars near the center of the images. The Sun has been busy popping off solar storms like these as it approaches the maximum of its 11 year activity cycle. The period of peak activity is predicted to occur in about a year.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/STEREO

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NASA's Hubble Spots a Relic from a Shredded Galaxy

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:54:28 -0800

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February 17, 2012: Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope may have found evidence for a cluster of young, blue stars encircling HLX-1, one of the first intermediate-mass black holes ever discovered. Astronomers believe the black hole may once have been at the core of a now-disintegrated dwarf galaxy. The discovery of the black hole and the possible star cluster has important implications for understanding the evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/shredded-relic....

Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Farrell (Sydney Institute for Astronomy, University of Sydney)

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Young Stars at Home in Ancient Cluster

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:13:42 -0800

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NASA image release February 8, 2012

Looking like a hoard of gems fit for an emperor's collection, this deep sky object called NGC 6752 is in fact far more worthy of admiration. It is a globular cluster, and at over 10 billion years old is one the most ancient collections of stars known. It has been blazing for well over twice as long as our solar system has existed.

NGC 6752 contains a high number of "blue straggler'' stars, some of which are visible in this image. These stars display characteristics of stars younger than their neighbors, despite models suggesting that most of the stars within globular clusters should have formed at approximately the same time. Their origin is therefore something of a mystery.

Studies of NGC 6752 may shed light on this situation. It appears that a very high number -- up to 38 percent -- of the stars within its core region are binary systems. Collisions between stars in this turbulent area could produce the blue stragglers that are so prevalent.

Lying 13,000 light-years distant, NGC 6752 is far beyond our reach, yet the clarity of Hubble's images brings it tantalizingly close.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

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Hubble Pinpoints Farthest Protocluster of Galaxies Ever Seen

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:16:08 -0800

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NASA image release January 10, 2012

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of construction — the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.

In a random sky survey made in near-infrared light, Hubble spied five tiny galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. They are among the brightest galaxies at that epoch and very young, existing just 600 million years after the universe's birth in the big bang.

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/far-protocluste...

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Trenti (University of Colorado, Boulder, and University of Cambridge, UK), L. Bradley (STScI), and the BoRG team

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Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:07:19 -0800

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The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched “wings” of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the “wings” of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an “hourglass” shape.

To read more about this image go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/snow-angel.html

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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Tycho's Star Shines in Gamma Rays

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:15:36 -0800

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NASA image relase December 13, 2011

Gamma-rays detected by Fermi's LAT show that the remnant of Tycho's supernova shines in the highest-energy form of light. This portrait of the shattered star includes gamma rays (magenta), X-rays (yellow, green, and blue), infrared (red) and optical data.

Credit: Gamma ray, NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration; X-ray, NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared, NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical, MPIA, Calar Alto, O. Krause et al. and DSS

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/tycho-star.html

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Fastest Rotating Star Found in Neighboring Galaxy

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:41:38 -0800

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NASA image release December 5, 2011

This is an artist's concept of the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our Sun does. Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an oblate shape and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star. The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

The team will use NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to make precise measurements of the star's proper motion across space.

To read more go to: hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/39/full/

Image Type: Artwork

Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

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Space Telescopes Reveal Secrets of Turbulent Black Hole

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:45:08 -0700

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

NASA image release September 29, 2011

This image of the distant active galaxy Markarian 509 was taken in April 2007 with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 2.

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/turbulent-black...

Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Kriss (STScI), and J. de Plaa (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research); Acknowledgment: B. Peterson (Ohio State University)

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Hubble Movies Provide Unprecedented View of Supersonic Jets from Young Stars

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:21:28 -0700

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AUGUST 31, 2011: A team of scientists has collected enough high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope images over a 14-year period to stitch together time-lapse movies of powerful jets ejected from three young stars.

The jets, a byproduct of gas accretion around newly forming stars, shoot off at supersonic speeds in opposite directions through space. These phenomena are providing clues about the final stages of a star’s birth, offering a peek at how our Sun came into existence 4.5 billion years ago. Hubble’s unprecedented sharpness allows astronomers to see changes in the jets over just a few years’ time. Most astronomical processes change over timescales that are much longer than a human lifetime.

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/supersonic-jets...

Object Name: HH 34 Bow Shock
Image Type: Astronomical

Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Hartigan (Rice University)..NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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Hubble Movies Provide Unprecedented View of Supersonic Jets from Young Stars [HD Video]

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:21:18 -0700

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a video:

AUGUST 31, 2011: A team of scientists has collected enough high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope images over a 14-year period to stitch together time-lapse movies of powerful jets ejected from three young stars.

The jets, a byproduct of gas accretion around newly forming stars, shoot off at supersonic speeds in opposite directions through space. These phenomena are providing clues about the final stages of a star’s birth, offering a peek at how our Sun came into existence 4.5 billion years ago. Hubble’s unprecedented sharpness allows astronomers to see changes in the jets over just a few years’ time. Most astronomical processes change over timescales that are much longer than a human lifetime.

Caption: A long jet of material has burst out of a dark cloud of gas and dust that hides the newly formed star. The blue, fan-shaped region on the left is the edge of a cavity illuminated by the fledgling star. A massive clump of jet material collides with upstream gas, creating the white bow-shaped shock wave on the right.

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/supersonic-jets...

Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Hartigan (Rice University), and G. Bacon (STScI)

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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Preview of a Forthcoming Supernova

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:35:54 -0800

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

NASA image release Feb. 24, 2012

At the turn of the 19th century, the binary star system Eta Carinae was faint and undistinguished. In the first decades of the century, it became brighter and brighter, until, by April 1843, it was the second brightest star in the sky, outshone only by Sirius (which is almost a thousand times closer to Earth). In the years that followed, it gradually dimmed again and by the 20th century was totally invisible to the naked eye.

The star has continued to vary in brightness ever since, and while it is once again visible to the naked eye on a dark night, it has never again come close to its peak of 1843.

NASA's Hubble Telescope captured an image of Eta Carinae. This image consists of ultraviolet and visible light images from the High Resolution Channel of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 30 arcseconds across.

The larger of the two stars in the Eta Carinae system is a huge and unstable star that is nearing the end of its life, and the event that the 19th century astronomers observed was a stellar near-death experience. Scientists call these outbursts supernova impostor events, because they appear similar to supernovae but stop just short of destroying their star.

Although 19th century astronomers did not have telescopes powerful enough to see the 1843 outburst in detail, its effects can be studied today. The huge clouds of matter thrown out a century and a half ago, known as the Homunculus Nebula, have been a regular target for Hubble since its launch in 1990. This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys High Resolution Channel, is the most detailed yet, and shows how the material from the star was not thrown out in a uniform manner, but forms a huge dumbbell shape.

Eta Carinae is not only interesting because of its past, but also because of its future. It is one of the closest stars to Earth that is likely to explode in a supernova in the relatively near future (though in astronomical timescales the "near future" could still be a million years away). When it does, expect an impressive view from Earth, far brighter still than its last outburst: SN 2006gy, the brightest supernova ever observed, came from a star of the same type, though from a galaxy over 200 million light-years away.

Credit: ESA/NASA

More information: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1208a/

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Astronomers Find Elusive Planets in Decade-Old Hubble Data

nobody@flickr.com (NASA Goddard Photo and Video) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:26:12 -0700

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

NASA image release Oct. 6, 2011

This is an image of the star HR 8799 taken by Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) in 1998. A mask within the camera (coronagraph) blocks most of the light from the star. In addition, software has been used to digitally subtract more starlight. Nevertheless, scattered light from HR 8799 dominates the image, obscuring the faint planets.

Object Name: HR 8799

Image Type: Astronomical

Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Soummer (STScI)

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/elusive-planets...

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