NASA to announce Hubble Space Telescope discovery next week

Officials with the Hubble Space Telescope program have some new science to share on Wednesday (March 30).

A NASA statement promises "one for the record books" and an "exciting new observation" from the nearly 32-year-old telescope. It's tricky to guess what that discovery might be, given that the Hubble Space Telescope's work stretches from exoplanets to galaxies to measuring the expansion of the universe. (That last bit garnered the multiobservatory team a Nobel Prize.)

https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-observations-announcement-coming

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Hubble: 'Single star' detected at record-breaking distance
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60931100
They've nicknamed it "Earendel" and it's the most distant, single star yet imaged by a telescope.

The light from this object has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us.

It's at the sort of distance that telescopes normally would only be able to resolve galaxies containing millions of stars.

But the Hubble space observatory has picked out Earendel individually by exploiting a natural phenomenon that's akin to using a zoom lens.

It's called gravitational lensing and it works like this: If there is a great cluster of galaxies in the line of sight, the gravitational pull from this mass of matter will bend and magnify the light of more distant objects behind.

Usually, this is just other galaxies, but in this specific case Earendel was in a sweetspot in the lens effect.

They've nicknamed it "Earendel" and it's the most distant, single star yet imaged by a telescope.

The light from this object has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us.

It's at the sort of distance that telescopes normally would only be able to resolve galaxies containing millions of stars.

But the Hubble space observatory has picked out Earendel individually by exploiting a natural phenomenon that's akin to using a zoom lens.

It's called gravitational lensing and it works like this: If there is a great cluster of galaxies in the line of sight, the gravitational pull from this mass of matter will bend and magnify the light of more distant objects behind.

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HST - Hubble Space Telescope.

Well it ain't dead yet, but it does have a new rival as comparison shots reveal.

Hubble Telescope Captures What Might Be Prettiest Spiral Galaxy Ever.


Meanwhile NASA Traces Supernova Remains Back to the Middle Ages with Hubble, the Spitzer and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory being used.


Cheers.

There maybe a bit more life left in it yet.

SpaceX, NASA Study Raising Hubble Telescope to Higher Orbit.

NASA said Thursday that it’s working with SpaceX to study using the company’s Dragon spacecraft to boost the space agency’s Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit. NASA and SpaceX signed a Space Act Agreement to look into such a flight.

The deal signed by NASA and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. called for collaborating on a feasibility study of such a mission, though NASA has yet to commit to such a flight. NASA said that SpaceX is funding its own participation in the study.

“We obviously have a lot of experience,” from previous SpaceX missions docking with the International Space Station,” Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer operations and integration at SpaceX, said at a NASA press conference. “We want to use that as our foundation.”

Launched in 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was designed to be periodically upgraded and boosted in space by astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle. However, Hubble has not been visited by astronauts since the final Shuttle servicing mission in 2009, and the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011.

Without periodic boosts, Hubble’s orbit would eventually decay and the telescope would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Eventually NASA will need to come up with a plan for how to safely guide the telescope back to Earth. But pushing the telescope into a higher orbit could potentially “extend its observational lifetime,” according to Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science....

Cheers.

NASA Hubble Spots Protective Shield Defending 2 Small Galaxies.

Just a space train stop from the Milky Way, two little galaxies have a fortified barricade protecting them from falling to pieces, astronomers said Wednesday in the journal Nature.

These starry realms are staunchly locked in orbit around each other, yet during their journey across the universe, they seem to be unraveling like balls of yarn. They perpetually leave stringy remnants of gas behind -- you know, material integral to their galactic job: star making.

But there's something weird going on.

Despite losing pieces of themselves for millenia, both these galaxies -- the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds -- are yet to be dismantled. And, yup, they're still making stars.

"A lot of people were struggling to explain how these streams of material could be there," Dhanesh Krishnarao, assistant professor at Colorado College, said in a statement. "If this gas was removed from these galaxies, how are they still forming stars?"

The answer? A galactic shield, of course.

By tapping into data collected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the now-retired Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, Krishnarao and fellow scientists realized the Magellanic cloud system is surrounded by a sort of thin hot bubble of supercharged gas. A shield, if you will.

This cocoon, or corona as the scientists call it, prevents these galaxies from spitting out too much of their gas supply even though the Milky Way's immense gravitational pull tugs on the galaxies and space-borne phenomena try to invade them.

In turn, this sort of defense system is the reason our universe continues to be blessed with these galaxies' starry twinkles...

Cheers.

It's still delivering.

NASA's Hubble Captures Breathtaking Image of Intergalactic Bridge.


Cheers.

More new pics from Hubble.

NASA Hubble Telescope Delivers Dazzling New View of Star-Studded Carina Nebula.

Cheers.

Even old pics can reveal new things.

Astronomers discover weird crisscrossing jets lurking in 14-year-old Hubble photo.


Cheers.