Archive
Ho-Ho-Hubble for the Holidays: See the Most Stunning Stuff Here
It’s that time of the year: time for releases of holiday-themed Hubble images. Sparkly lights, ornaments, wreaths, and — today — a stunning snow angel. You may have already seen it, and if you haven’t — you will.
But this is just the latest in a series of releases. Without further delay, here is a menu of magnificence from the Hubble imaging artists. And don’t forget to browse the offering of FREE holiday cards from Hubblesite.
A delicate sphere of gas, photographed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, floats serenely in the depths of space. The pristine shell, or bubble, is the result of gas that is being shocked by the expanding blast wave from a supernova. Called SNR 0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short), the bubble is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth. Ripples in the shell’s surface may be caused by either subtle variations in the density of the ambient interstellar gas, or possibly driven from the interior by pieces of the ejecta. The bubble-shaped shroud of gas is 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 11 million miles per hour (5,000 kilometers per second).
In the new Hubble image of the galaxy M74 we can also see a smattering of bright pink regions decorating the spiral arms. These are huge, relatively short-lived, clouds of hydrogen gas which glow due to the strong radiation from hot, young stars embedded within them; glowing pink regions of ionized hydrogen (hydrogen that has lost its electrons). These regions of star formation show an excess of light at ultraviolet wavelengths and astronomers call them HII regions.
The Big Picture Blog recently relocated from the Boston Globe to the Atlantic magazine. But it still releases a Hubble “advent calendar.” Brace yourself for some of the most stunning astronomical images you will see this year. Click the sparkly image below to go to the 2011 Big Picture Blog Advent Calendar.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
w3counter(39986);
Hubble Space Telescope: one in a million
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured its one-millionth scientific observation. To commemorate, here is more than 200 of the most spectacular Hubble images, set to music from the Planets album by the New York City band One Ring Zero. Many thanks to One Ring Zero co-leader Michael Hearst for extending permission to use the song Pluto in this video. And thanks to NASA fan Alex Grzybowski of Glenelg Country School for right-clicking more than 200 Hubble images off Hubblesite for this project.
Download the video (.m4v, 28 Mb)
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
</p> <div><a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”><img src=”https://www.w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”https://www.w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /></a></div> <p>
That Was the Week that Was, March 7-11, 2011. . . Coolest Goddard People, Science, & Media PLUS Best of the Blogpodcastotwittersphere
A big chunk of the Webb Telescope goes out for a spin: This week a web feature story came out about ongoing testing of the metal cage that will hold the various scientific instrument on the Webb Telescope – the heir to the Hubble Space Telescope now under construction here at Goddard and elsewhere in NASA.
Webb will undergo significant shaking when it is launched on the large Ariane V rocket. To be sure the telescope’s “chassis” is ready for this “bumpy road,” the ISIM is subjected to some extreme testing. During the testing process, the ISIM is spun and shaken while many measurements are taken. Afterwards, engineers compare the measurements with their models of the ISIM. If there are discrepancies, then the engineers track down why, and make corrections.
The centrifuge room is pretty noisy, and the equipment is massive — on the order of a half-million pounds. And so it starts out slow. But gradually it picks up speed. At very high speed, it’s way too dangerous to be in the room. (The engineers work in a separate control room during actual tests.) If even a small bit of hardware were to fly off the centrifuge, it could cause a serious injury. My friend Jay Friedlander (the cameraman) and I were very grateful to the engineers for letting us witness an actual spin-up of the centrifuge — an uncommon site at Goddard.
Here comes the sun on the Goddard Flickr channel: The Goddard Flickr channel was all aglow this week with images of the sun, courtesy of NASA’s solar observing fleet. A web feature by one of Goddard’s newest solar scribes, Karen Fox, announced the 400-year anniversary of the first scientific publication about sunspots. Goddard’s Flickr photomistress, Rebecca Roth, obliged with an entire set of spectacular sun imagery. Here is my favorite, a super-high-resolution image of a sunspot by the Hinode spacecraft. Go to the Flickr set to see the rest.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
w3counter(39986);
Hubble hits the Red Limit. Next up: Webb Telescope
Today, a team of scientists made this exciting announcement:
SANTA CRUZ, CA–Astronomers studying ultra-deep imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope have found what may be the most distant galaxy ever seen, about 13.2 billion light-years away. The study pushed the limits of Hubble’s capabilities, extending its reach back to about 480 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just 4 percent of its current age.
A story on Bad Astronomy explains the details, as does a NASA press release and one from the University of California, Santa Cruz. And the First Galaxies website provides even deeper scientific background in plain English.
As light from a distant galaxy speeds toward us, it gets stretched, or “redshifted,” by the expansion of space itself. Astronomers measure redshift with a quantity called “z.” The paper in Nature reports a redshift of z=10. 3. The first galaxies probably formed 200 to 300 million years post-Big Bang, which is more z’s than Hubble can deliver. To get to that redshift, Hubble would need instruments that can see even redder — more redshifted — light than it can now. So, in short, Hubble is at the “red limit” of what it can see.
I asked Jason Tumlinson, a galaxy researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute to explain:
“My opinion is that we’re very near the limits of what HST can do in terms of pushing back the redshift frontier, and in fact have been operating at HST’s limits for several years. Everything depends on the performance of the cameras, and the major upgrade provided by the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in 2009 has made a big difference.”
The upgraded WFC3 was installed on Hubble during the final servicing mission in May 2009.
I asked Amber Straughn, a Goddard astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory and a member of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team, to explain why Hubble has reached the “red limit” of its seeing ability:
“The short answer is, at z~10, we are AT the limit of HST’s ability to look back in time. The reason for this is simply due to HST’s wavelength coverage. The light from these very distant galaxies is very, very red — and HST’s (Wide Field Camera 3) filters cut off at around 1.7 microns. . . .That’s the ‘red limit’ of HST.”
See Dr. Straughn talk to a TV reporter about the Webb Telescope.
Another issue, Tumlinson says, is the amount of Hubble telescope time available. The light-sensing detectors on Hubble contribute a certain amount of electronic “noise” that can swamp the signal from whatever you happen to be observing. To overcome this, astronomers have to schedule enough “Hubble time” to make sure the signal from the astronomical target is sufficiently stronger than the background noise – sort of like the way you have to raise your voice to be heard in a noisy room.
Tumlinson explains:
“The detector itself adds noise to the measurement — called readout noise, generally — which is an important factor in setting the faintest observable source. Of course, HST users could go deeper and push further with longer observations so that they collect more source counts relative to this noise term, but only so much time is available. “
NASA and the scientific community saw Hubble’s red limit coming. So they invented the James Webb Space Telescope. With its huge collecting mirror — 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter — and ultrasensitive infrared detectors, Webb can see longer, redder wavelengths of light, and “redder” translates to “more distant.”
Tumlinson explains:
“Discovering galaxies at high redshift is one of the top reasons NASA is building JWST. Being much larger and optimized for this sort of work, Webb should make z ~ 10 detections routine, and could push the frontier to z = 12, 15, or even higher.”
Z=15 is around 275 million years after the Big Bang — the sweet spot for observing the first stars and galaxies forming. Stay tuned!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
</p> <div><a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”><img src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /></a></div> <p>
Goddard's gotchu! Milky J and the Jimmy Fallon posse come to town and talk NASA scientists into gnawing on ribs and rapping
Here’s a guest post by Rob Garner, a writer and member of the crack Goddard web team. —gogblog
Goddard hosted a special guest last month, and you just may have seen him on television last night talking about it!
The name “Bashir Salahuddin” may not ring any bells with you (nope, it’s not the doctor from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), but fans of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” will recognize him as “Milky J,” whose “Hubble Gotchu!” sketches have showcased the famous telescope’s magnificent images.
What’s that you say? You haven’t seen the clips? Then enjoy the sampling below!
http://widget.nbc.com/videos/nbcshort_at.swf?CXNID=1000004.10045NXC&widID=4727a250e66f9723&clipID=1229258&showID=243
After the videos aired Lynn Chandler gave the Jimmy Fallon crew a call. Lynn works here at Goddard as the public affairs officer for the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s successor to the Hubble.
When the full-size Webb model traveled to New York at the beginning of June, she suggested Bashir meet up there with NASA’s first civil servant Nobel Prize laureate Dr. John Mather to discuss Hubble and Webb, of which Dr. Mather happens to be the senior project scientist. The visit there went so well that Bashir (as Milky J) decided to take a trip to Goddard’s Greenbelt, Md., campus.
The video resulting from that trip in late July aired last night — but in case you missed it …
Brent Bos poses with Milky J's letters, now flavored with tangy rib sauce. (Image by Maggie Masetti)
Let it not be said that NASA folks lack a sense of humor! Milky J’s Hubble fanaticism may be mostly just for laughs, but Bashir, who also writes for “Late Night,” has a genuine interest in space science. “Hubble Gotchu!” carries that science to new audiences, which is one reason why we loved helping put this video together.
And putting it together took a mountain of effort, both from the Goddard family and from the “Late Night” team. On our end, weeks of preparations and permissions went into making sure Bashir could film in all the “cool” spots. (Lynn and Mike McClare, Goddard’s Hubble and Webb video producer extraordinaire, deserve some serious high-fives for getting that all taken care of.)
Some of the “Late Night” crew, headed by director Michael Blieden, took the train down from New York on July 21 to scope Goddard for places to shoot. Andy Freeberg, a Goddard producer who helped guide the team, said they were just blown away by all the stuff going on here.
Milky J poses in his homemade spacesuit. (Image by Maggie Masetti)
The morning of the 22nd came, and the rest of the crew arrived for a full day of shooting. The schedule was jam-packed, moving from the testing chambers to the NASA Communications center (Nascom), to the clean room, to the Goddard TV studio. Goddard never seems quite as big as it does when you’re lugging video equipment on a hot day!
The Jimmy Fallon crew was a pleasure to work with. Despite the fast-paced schedule Bashir, Michael and the rest of the team took the time to chat with the Goddard spectators who stopped by to see what was going on. Bashir is soft-spoken in comparison to his Milky J alter ego, and a true professional; he had all his dialogue memorized ahead of time.
Filming became a special treat for a school tour group that happened to meander by as the team shot in Nascom. They likely thought it strange that a telescope operator could be such a messy eater. Optical Physicist and “rib-eater” Brent Bos deserves special praise for that performance.
Brent had just completed media training the day before — and slathering on barbecue sauce before the big interview was definitely not one of the topics covered! Brent managed to keep the sauce confined to his face and fingers through multiple takes, a miraculous feat, as any rib fan knows. (The ribs appeared courtesy of Lynn Chandler’s kitchen.)
Milky J interviewed Paul Geithner, Webb’s observatory manager, at the end of the day. (Image by Andy Freeberg)
As Milky J would put it, “Whatever celestial images you need, Hubble gotchu!” When it comes to Hubble and James Webb, Goddard gotchu, too.
(Thanks to Webb blogger Maggie Masetti for filling in some of the details of the day!)
PS! If you want to learn more about superheated exoplanet HD 209458b, take a look at NASA’s Hubble website.
***ALSO make sure to check out Maggie Masetti’s blog post about the Hubble Gotchu Guy visit on NASA Blueshift. It has more great backstage photos.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
</p> <div><a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”><img src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /></a></div> <p>
See the new video about Hubble Space Telescope exoplanet science
“I don’t know — when I was growing up, there was no such thing as planets around other stars. If you were to talk about it at a scientific meeting, people would laugh at you….”
Oh, how times change. And so begins a new short documentary by Goddard video producer Ryan Fitzgibbons and videographer Jamal Smith. 20 Years of Hubble Science: Exoplanets highlights the Hubble Space Telescope’s contributions to the study of planets around other stars.
In the video, Goddard scientists Marc Kuchner, Aki Roberge, and Jennifer Wiseman discuss how Hubble’s coronagraph and resulting images have helped scientists find exoplanets, dusty disks around other stars, and infant solar systems. All three astronomers are members of our Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory.
The science is at the leading edge and the graphics are awesome — especially the animated timeline showing all exoplanet discoveries to date. Go to the Scientific Visualization Studio website to download and view this film at the highest possible resolution. It’s worth the download time.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
</p> <div><a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”><img src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /></a></div> <p>
NASA Space Ghost 