The Night Sky Guy

Hubble Spies a Cosmic Bauble

Hubble sees the ashes of a star gone supernova. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Claude Cornen)

The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped an amazing image of a supernova remnant-  dubbed SNR 0519-  located in one of the Milky Way’s small satellite galaxies  150,000 light years from Earth.

Wispy shells of blood-red colored gas filaments appears to float peacefully in space however it marks the site of a cataclysmic event that occurred 600 years ago.

The shell of material we see in this image was once part of a white dwarf- an Earth-sized elderly star that may have looked a lot like our own sun in its younger days.  This stellar progenitor was in a close binary star system where gas from its neighboring star was gravitationally pulled onto the surface of the white dwarf.  Over time this gas accumulated and eventually detonated in a thermonuclear explosion that resulted in the beautiful deep-sky object that we see today .

As the years go by this gaseous envelope will continue to expand and ultimately, after many millennia, dissipate into the surrounding interstellar medium.

SNR 0519 is found within the southern constellation Dorado (the dolphin fish) within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – the fourth largest galaxy in our local collection of islands of stars known as the Local Group.

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New Closeup Pic of Comet ISON

Hubble has taken its first close-up views of the much anticipated and potential ‘comet of the century’. On the night of April 10th, the space telescope snapped an image in visible light of Comet ISON while it was still at a whopping distance of 394 million miles from Earth (386 million miles from the Sun)- a bit closer than the orbit of Jupiter.

Check out the new image and read what Hubble has learned about this exciting, new comet at National Geographic News

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Wow! Horsehead Nebula Seen Like Never Before

In honor of its launch 23 years ago the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a breathtaking, never-before-seen view of one of the most photogenic cosmic vistas in the night sky.

Horsehead in all it's glory. click image to enlarge! Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Dubbed the Horsehead nebula because of its obvious resemblance to a steed or chess piece in profile,  this dark cloud of gas and dust sits 1,500 light years from Earth in the winter constellation Orion and has been a favorite target for generations of backyard stargazers.

Read the rest of the story at National Geographic News

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Newfound Supernova Breaks Distance Record

Astronomers announced this week that they have witnessed a titanic explosion of a star where the light from the blast has taken more than 10 billion years to reach Earth.  The faint, near-infrared speck of light from this ancient beacon, dubbed UDS10Wil, now pushes back the previous record-holder by 350 million light-years.  The new-found supernova, along with seven other stellar blasts more than nine billion light-years out, is part of a three-year Hubble survey of faraway supernovae which will offer new clues as to the nature of dark energy.

One of my expert sources I interviewed for this story put this amazing discovery in perfect context by explaining it this way…

“If we step back from the scientific impact, just as a human being the idea is profound.  This supernova exploded 10 billion years ago, 5 billion years before the Earth or Sun even existed.  Another star was here, died, and from its ashes the Sun and Earth were formed.  Life evolved, then humans, we developed telescopes, even space telescopes, and then used them to catch a few precious photons from this supernova that is older than anything we’ve ever known.  You think dinosaur bones are old?  The Grand Canyon?  They are babies compared to these photons!“

- Andrew Howell, Astrophysicist at University of California at Santa Barbara.

Read all the details about this exciting new cosmic discovery that may help unlock some of the deepest mysteries about the Universe at National Geographic News.

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Hubble Spies ‘Walking Dead’ Star

Astronomers have discovered a nearly dead star that appears to have come back to life, giving a rare glimpse at what may be in store for our own solar system’s future.

the reborn star known as Abell 30 located 5,500 light years away and is at the heart of a glowing planetary nebula – formed during the death throes of sun-like stars that cast into space their outer layers of atmosphere via pulsations and wind .

Could our Sun become a zombie? Read the rest of my National Geographic story.

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Video: Weekly Space News Interview

Check out some of the cool space news coming out this week I highlight on my weekly CTV News channel interview.

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Hubble Spies Star Cluster Smashup (Video)

The keen eye of Hubble space telescope has glimpsed the first moments of a head-on collision between two massive star clusters located 170,000 light years away from Earth, astronomers say.

The impending cosmic crash is occurring within a 25 million year old giant star factory known as the Tarantula nebula or 30 Doradus, buried inside the Large Magellanic Cloud – a small companion galaxy of the Milky Way.

Read the rest of my story about crashing star clusters on National Geographic News

Check out this amazing computer simulation showing the gravitational interaction of two young star clusters. The three and a half million years of the encounter have been compressed into less than a minute!

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Hubble Spies Most Distant Galaxies Ever Seen

In this NASA documentary take a look at some of the most distant galaxies Hubble has ever seen, and find out why, when we look at the most distant objects in the universe, we are also seeing the cosmos’ earliest objects.

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Happy 20th Hubble!

As the Hubble Space Telescope achieves the major milestone of two decades on orbit, NASA is celebrating Hubble’s journey of exploration with a stunning new picture.

Huuble image of small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Click image to enlarge

NASA is releasing a new Hubble photo (see above) of a small portion of one of the largest known star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Three light-year-tall towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but even more striking.

NASA’s best-recognized, longest-lived and most prolific space observatory was launched April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology. Over the years, Hubble has suffered broken equipment, a bleary-eyed primary mirror, and the cancellation of a planned shuttle servicing mission. But the ingenuity and dedication of Hubble scientists, engineers and NASA astronauts allowed the observatory to rebound and thrive. The telescope’s crisp vision continues to challenge scientists and the public with new discoveries and evocative images.

“Hubble is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and successful scientific projects in history,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Last year’s space shuttle servicing mission left the observatory operating at peak capacity, giving it a new beginning for scientific achievements that impact our society.”

Hubble fans worldwide are being invited to take an interactive journey with Hubble by visiting http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/Hubble20/ .  They can also visit http://www.hubblesite.org to share the ways the telescope has affected them.  Follow the “Messages to Hubble” link to send an e-mail, post a Facebook message, or send a cell phone text message.  Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope’s science data. For those who use Twitter, you can follow @HubbleTelescope or post tweets using the Twitter hashtag #hst20.

Here is a video zoom in on the photo’s location in the night sky. Very cool, check it out !

- adapted from NASA News announcement

Check out more detailed close-ups of this milestone image and more in-depth info on how it was taken on NASA’s webpage.

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Hubble Discovery interview

This afternoon I did a brief TV news interview about the Hubble Space Telescope’s recent find of the most distant galaxies ever seen – 13.1 billion light years away. Astronomers estimate that the scope spied about two dozen baby galaxies only 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Check out the full story and photos on the official Hubble website

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