Category Archives: hubble space telescope

astronomy, chinese space missions, hubble space telescope, international year of astronomy, near-earth asteroids

Public Tells HST Where to Look

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and other News

Arp 274 is HSTs next imaging candidate, as chosen by public vote.
Arp 274 is HST's next imaging candidate, as chosen by public vote.

Well, our long  international wait is over. The public has spoken. Hubble Space Telescope will be looking at a pair of close-knit galaxies called Arp 274 because that’s what 50 percent of public voters on the YouDecide Hubble Site said they wanted.

I think everybody was intrigued by the idea of a gravitationally twisted set of galaxies. They are pretty cool looking, so HST’s image (which will be taken in during the International Year of Astronomy’s 100 Hours of Astronomy event April 2-5) should be pretty spectacular. Come back in a month or so for a picture that will knock your socks off!

Interacting galaxies are really quite fascinating. Not only do they swap stars and gas clouds (and maybe even central black holes), but they also play a role in spurring huge starburst knots, places where massive young stars are birthed by the hundreds. Then, in a few million or so years, those same massive young stars (that live fast because they’re so massive) star to die off in supernova explosions, lighting up the surrounding regions again.

Something Doesn’t Crash into Earth

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(Click on the player to get a larger view.)

Asteroid Whizzes Past earth (if you don’t see a player here)

Earlier today a small near-Earth asteroid called 2009 DD45 whizzed past our planet at a distance of about 72,000 kilometers (only twice the distance of most of our geostationary comsats). The rock was only about 35 meters across and was never on a collision course. But, amateur astronomers were able to capture images and movies of it, like the one shown above from Dave Herald of Canberra,  Australia (as seen on Spaceweather.com).

But Something Did Crash into the Moon

An artists concept of the final moment of Chang-es mission life. Courtesy Xinhua. (Click to embiggen.)
An artist's concept of the final moment of Chang-e's mission life. Courtesy Xinhua. (Click to embiggen.)

The Chinese State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry announced that its first lunar probe, called Chang’e, bit the lunar dust on March 1. This capped off a 16-month mission that included surface mapping and taking data for three-dimensional imagery of the Moon’s surface.

The Chinese have two more missions in the series planned and they hope to land a rover vehicle around the year 2012. The impact was part of the first phase end stage  and will help the Chinese plan their landing sequence for the second phase.

China is the latest country of several to join in on lunar exploration. The U.S. has a mission headed back to the Moon in May, and the Japanese have been exploring there lately, too.

galaxies, hubble space telescope

Stranger in a Strange Land

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A Rare Spiral in a Massive Cluster

NGC 4921 against a backdrop of more distant galaxies. Taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
NGC 4921 against a backdrop of more distant galaxies. Taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (Click to reframulate.)

Wow, this is one of those pretty pictures in astronomy that just draw you in. The more you look, the more you see. Obviously there’s a huge galaxy staring us in the face, looking as delicate as a jellyfish. But, the longer you look at the picture, the more galaxies you see. It’s astronomy’s version of the gift that keeps on giving.

The galaxy that takes up most of the field of view in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 4921. It lies about 320 million light-years away from Earth and is part of a giant conglomeration called the Coma Galaxy Cluster. As it turns out, NGC 4921 is a bit of a stranger in its own land. First, it’s spiral-shaped in a cluster where spirals are pretty rare, and second, it looks ghostly and pale and not quite like a “normal” spiral .

The Coma Cluster’s galaxies have been interacting for a long time, and as a result, many of the members have had their shapes sort of “smoothed out” into quiet ellipticals (meaning they are sort of oval-shaped, without spiral arms and without a lot of star formation that you see in active spirals). That makes spiral galaxies something of a rarity in the cluster.

If you look at NGC 4921 for a while you can see that there are kinda, sorta spiral arms in this galaxy, but they don’t seem as well-defined as those that make up our own Milky Way.  Those spiral arms are where new stars are being formed in the galaxy, but the star birth activity seems to have been dampened out, perhaps by past interactions. You can see a few bright blue young massive stars in the image, but otherwise there’s just a lot of dust swirling around — and, here’s the coolest part — peeking through that dust are galaxies of all shapes and sizes even farther away than this galaxy!  That’s something you don’t always get to see.

Spend some time with this picture — explore the large version when you click on the image. It will amaze and surprise you!