From Hubblecast, the unveiling of Hubble’s 23rd Anniversary image: a stunning new image of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies: the Horsehead Nebula. This image shows the nebula in a whole new light, capturing plumes of gas in the infrared and revealing a beautiful, delicate structure that is normally obscured by dust.

This year marks the 23rd year of observing for the Hubble Space Telescope. Alongside cutting-edge science, the orbiting observatory has produced countless stunning astronomical images. Some of the most striking and beautiful subjects of Hubble’s images have been nebulae — vast interstellar clouds of gas and dust.

This new Hubble image, captured and released to celebrate this milestone, shows part of the sky in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Rising like a giant seahorse from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33. The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows as it is illuminated by a nearby hot star [1].

The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of stronger stuff — thick clumps of material — that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead formation Continue reading Horsehead Sculpted in Dust →

What causes a Tornado to form? How can we foresee them? New technologies are giving people more and more time to prepare and seek shelter in a time of crisis, whether it be from information gathered on the ground or spectacular visual mapping from new satellites in space. Engineer and storm chaser Tim Samaras gives his unique perspective and insight on the situation.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and Hubblecast bring you a new and detailed look at the famous Ring Nebula. The Ring’s distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, Sun-like star reveal a new twist.

Hubble and several ground-based telescopes have combined to obtain the best view yet of the iconic nebula. The images show a more complex structure than astronomers once thought and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D model of the nebula.

The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 1 light-year across. Located in the constellation Lyra, the nebula is a popular target for amateur astronomers. Previous observations by several telescopes had detected the gaseous material in the ring’s central region. But the new view by Hubble’s sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 shows the nebula’s structure in more detail. The ring appears to wrap around a blue, football-shaped structure. Each end of the structure protrudes out of opposite sides of the ring.

The nebula is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. In the Hubble image, the blue structure is the glow of helium. Radiation Continue reading The Mighty Ring →

Revel in some of the highest resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Experience anew the detail in these inspiring images, snatched from distant galaxies, exploding stars, brilliant gas clouds, and black holes.

From ESO. Astronomers now know that planets around other stars are plentiful. But they do not fully understand how they form and there are many aspects of the formation of comets, planets and other rocky bodies that remain a mystery. However, new observations exploiting the power of the ALMA telescope array are now answering one of the biggest questions: how do tiny grains of dust in the disc around a young star grow bigger and bigger — to eventually become rubble, and even boulders well beyond a metre in size?

Computer models suggest that dust grains grow when they collide and stick together. However, when these bigger grains collide again at high speed they are often smashed to pieces and sent back to square one. Even when this does not happen, the models show that the larger grains would quickly move inwards because of friction between the dust and gas and fall onto their parent star, leaving no chance that they could grow even further.

Somehow the dust needs a safe haven where the particles can continue growing until they are big enough to survive on their own [1]. Such “dust traps” have been proposed, but there was no observational proof of Continue reading Dust Traps and Planet Factories →

From Hubblecast, a vivid new image of colliding galaxies known as Arp 142. When two galaxies stray too close to each other they begin to interact, causing spectacular changes in both objects. In some cases the two can merge — but in others, they are ripped apart.

Just below the center of this image is the blue, twisted form of galaxy NGC 2936, one of the two interacting galaxies that form Arp 142 in the constellation of Hydra. Nicknamed “the Penguin” or “the Porpoise” by amateur astronomers, NGC 2936 used to be a standard spiral galaxy before being torn apart by the gravity of its cosmic companion.

The remnants of its spiral structure can still be seen — the former galactic bulge now forms the “eye” of the penguin, around which it is still possible to see where the galaxy’s pinwheeling arms once were. These disrupted arms now shape the cosmic bird’s “body” as bright streaks of blue and red across the image. These streaks arch down towards NGC 2936’s nearby companion, the elliptical galaxy NGC 2937, visible here as a bright white oval. The pair show an uncanny resemblance to a penguin safeguarding its egg.

The effects of gravitational interaction between galaxies Continue reading No Gentle Galaxy Collision →

Astronomers working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile have discovered seven planets orbiting the star Gliese 667C.

Two exoplanets have been discovered in the star’s habitable zone, which has just the right range of distance where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface.

A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth’s, but substantially below the mass of the Solar System’s smaller gas giants Uranus and Neptune, which are both more or less 15 Earth masses.

The term super-Earth refers only to the mass of the planet, and does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile found out that 40 per cent of red dwarves are orbited by super-Earths. Red Dwarfs are by far the most common type of star in the Milky Way galaxy, so there might be tens of billions of such planets in our galaxy alone.

From NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. While Curiosity prepares to snap pictures at Point Lake on Mars, here’s a round up the rover’s 17 cameras, including why some shoot in color and others go for black-and-white.

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, has made it’s first major heliospheric discovery. Finding unprecedented temperature changes, we are gaining critical data about how heat travels from the sun’s core to its various destinations in our solar system.

IRIS is designed to provide significant new information to increase our understanding of energy transport into the corona and solar wind and provide an archetype for all stellar atmospheres. The unique instrument capabilities, coupled with state of the art 3-D modeling, will fill a large gap in our knowledge of this dynamic region of the solar atmosphere. The mission will extend the scientific output of existing heliophysics spacecraft that follow the effects of energy release processes from the sun to Earth.

IRIS will provide key insights into all these processes, and thereby advance our understanding of the solar drivers of space weather from the corona to the far heliosphere, by combining high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy for the entire chromosphere and adjacent regions. IRIS will resolve in space, time, and wavelength the dynamic geometry from the chromosphere to the low-temperature corona to shed much-needed light on the physics of this magnetic interface region.

Scientists are intensively tracking the workings of planet Earth with satellites that chart its winds, ocean currents, temperatures, plant growth, and more. They are constructing a new virtual Earth based on physical equations, satellite data, and computer codes that show the workings of our planet in whole new ways.

Our world, Earth, is changing before our eyes. Go back millions of years. Forests reached into polar regions, sea levels rose, and temperatures soared with high levels of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A long cooling period followed. But now CO2 is on the rise again. What will happen? How will we live in the New World that’s now emerging?

Scientists are intensively tracking the workings of planet Earth with satellites that chart its winds, ocean currents, temperatures, plant growth, and more. And with a new virtual Earth, shrunk down and converted into physical equations, satellite data, and computer codes they are able to show the workings of our planet in whole new ways..

This other Earth, a mirror of the one in which we live, is designed to follow the flow of heat through the complex, dynamic engine known as the climate… and to predict its future evolution. Continue reading Cosmic Journeys – HyperEarth →