Tag Archives: Hubble Space Telescope

Light echoes

Posted on February 10, 2008 | Comments Off on Light echoes

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A light echo, about six light years in diameter, from the first recorded stellar flash in the Milky Way.

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Hubble’s main camera dies

Posted on January 30, 2007 | Comments Off on Hubble’s main camera dies

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The Sombrero Galaxy in infrared/by Hubble Space Telescope, NASA.  An electrical failure on the Hubble has put its main camera which is responsible for pictures like these out of action until at least 2008 when the space shuttle is scheduled to make repairs on the orbiting telescope.

"The [Advanced Camera for Surveys] actually consists of three sub-cameras that detect and filter light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared. Astronomers can continue to use Hubble’s other instruments – which include the Field Planetary Camera-2 and the Near Infrared Camera Multi-Object Spectrograph – but the loss of its primary camera is being mourned by the scientific community."

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Dark matter mapped

Posted on January 8, 2007 | Comments Off on Dark matter mapped

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3D map by Hubble Space Telescope (in lower left corner) shows clumpy nature of cold, dark matter which is invisible but accounts for most of the Universe’s mass. Its gravitational attraction pulls normal matter–the stars in their galaxies–into the large-scale structures seen through telescopes.

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Today’s pretty picture

Posted on November 3, 2006 | Comments Off on Today’s pretty picture

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Hubble’s snapshot from back in February, when it discovered two new moons of Pluto, from Hubble’s 100 greatest hits./NASA 

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Today’s pretty picture — sor’ a thing.

Posted on October 19, 2006 | Comments Off on Today’s pretty picture — sor’ a thing.

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Congestion near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. More than 180,000 stars. And you thought your neighborhood was crowded. Sweeps field (upper left corner) refers to Hubble Space Telescope’s sweep of the area hunting for possible solar systems–looking for brief, periodic changes in brightness when a Jupiter-size planet passes in front of its parent star–candidates for which are within the green circles. /NASA

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