Hubble finds a planet with a tail like a comet

Hubble Space telescope has discovered a planet which has a tail like a comet! HD 209458b planet is about 153 light years and was found in the year 2003.




Scientists have measured the gas coming out from the planet.

Scientists have used Hubble to find about the atmosphere of the planet as it crossed infront of its star.

Hubble Space Telescope turns 20

Our Hubble Space Telescope is turning 20 this Saturday on 24th April.

To mark the anniversary enjoy these incredibly beautiful images taken by Hubble.

Spiral Galaxy M81 is located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

Bubble Nebula also known as NGC 7635.

This is an image of the Butterfly Nebula, aka NGC 6302. It was created through the death of a bright, hot central star

This is the image of Mystic Mountain .The image shows a mountain of dust and gas rising in the Carina Nebula. The top of a three-light-year tall pillar of cool hydrogen is being worn away by the radiation of nearby stars, while stars within the pillar unleash jets of gas that stream from the peaks.



Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of a rare opportunity to record Saturn when its rings were edge-on, resulting in a unique movie featuring the nearly symmetrical light show at both of the giant planet's poles .

Happy Birthday to Hubble !

Hubble Space Telescope got Red Carpet treatment

Hubble Space Telescope was orbiting Earth and it missed its new film "Hubble 3D" at the movie's world premiere at Smithsoman National Air & Space Museum , Washington on 9.3.10.
The film's co-starring astronauts walked the red carpet to see the telescopes " life story " first time.
The movie has Hollywood movie stars and it featured the NASA astronaut crew of space shuttle servicing mission who in May 2009 repaired and upgraded the telescope and also filmed their work using an IMAX 3D camera.
Altman mission commander of STS-125, space walkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino , pilot Greg C. Johnson and mission specialist Megan Mc Arthur attended the premiere and they also shot the scenes inside the telescope using HD camera.
The movie changes our view of the Universe. The premiere of "Hubble 3D " was concluded with a cocktail party under a full -scale engineering model of the Hubble telescope.
"Hubble 3D" is open to public in IMAX and IMAX 3D theaters worldwide on 19th March which is narrated by Hollywood actor Leonardo Caprio.

A Christmas gift from Hubble Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope has produced a lot of images and hence the The Big Picture at The Boston Globe is doing an advent calender to countdown the days until Christmas.

Until Christmas every day you can see a new image by Hubble Space Telescope . The images are awesome.

Image of collison between two Milky- way like Galaxies

Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of collision between two Milky-Way like galaxies.

These two galaxies are known as NGC 2623 or Arp 243 are in the stages of emerging . The tail of NGC 2623 is richly populated with bright star clusters.

The galaxy NGC 2623 is an extensively studied galaxy and is bright in the infrared.

Picture of Cat's Eye Nebula

The Cat's eye nebula is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Draco.

A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in space. A nebula is of four types- planetary nebula , reflection nebula , emission nebula and absorption nebula.

Cat's nebula can be seen through Hubble's telescope and can even be seen through small telescopes.

Motion of stars in distant galaxy

Astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy, speeding around its host at twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way.

The speeding stars may help astronomers understand how such compact galaxies form so early in the Universe and then evolve into the galaxies we see in today's 13.7 billion year old Universe.

It will also help to see how these galaxies are formed with the help of Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3.

Crew returns from breathing new life into Hubble

Delayed two days by stormy Florida weather, the shuttle Atlantis glided to a California landing today, closing out a successful mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope with a picture-perfect Mojave Desert touchdown.

President Obama hails successful Hubble repair

President Barack Obama called the crew of the shuttle Atlantis late Wednesday and congratulated the astronauts on the successful overhaul of the Hubble Space Telescope. He also promised to name a new NASA administrator soon, although he provided no clues as to who might get the nod.

Astronauts test re-entry systems for Friday landing

The Atlantis astronauts tested the shuttle's re-entry systems early Thursday and began packing for landing Friday, weather permitting, to close out a successful mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope. The flight plan calls for a de-orbit rocket firing at 8:49:16 a.m. Friday, setting up a landing on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center at 10:00:31 a.m. A second landing opportunity is available one orbit later, at 11:39:18 a.m.

With no major technical problems in orbit, the only question mark is the weather, with forecasters predicting a broken cloud deck at 4,000 feet, crosswinds above 15 knots and a chance of thundershowers within 30 nautical miles of the runway, all violations of NASA's landing weather flight rules.

High winds and torrential rains rumbled through the area overnight as severe thunderstorms lashed Florida's Space Coast. There is a 50 percent chance of heavy rain, high winds and thundershowers all day Thursday and more of the same expected overnight and Friday.

But the astronauts have conserved power and now have saved enough hydrogen and oxygen to power the ship's electricity producing fuel cells through Monday. As a result, NASA is not staffing backup landing sites Friday. If the weather or some other issue blocks the two available landing opportunities, the crew will stay in orbit an extra day and try again Saturday.

Shuttle Atlantis blasting from NASA

When the space shuttle Atlantis blasts off on NASA's final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, the shuttle Endeavour and a four-man crew will be standing by for launch on a mission space agency managers hope will never be needed: an emergency rescue flight to bring the Atlantis astronauts back to Earth if heat shield damage or some other problem prevents a safe re-entry.

The first underwater sim for the final Hubble EVA

The history of Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope has cost U.S. taxpayers some $10 billion in the quarter century since the project was approved. But to astronomers around the world, the high-flying satellite is, in a word, priceless.

The solar-powered spacecraft has helped astronomers confirm the existence of super massive black holes, pin down the true age of the universe and spot the faint building blocks of the first galaxies as they collided, merged and grew just a billion years or so after the birth of the cosmos.

Its mind-bending photographs have charted the life cycles of distant suns in unprecedented detail, providing unmatched views of the vast stellar nurseries where stars are born to the supernova bangs and whimpers marking old age and death.

It has catalogued myriad infant solar systems in the process of forming planets and provided flyby-class views of the outer planets in Earth's own solar system, routinely capturing phenomena as common as dust storms on Mars to once-in-a-lifetime events like the 1994 crash of a comet into the atmosphere of Jupiter.

On Hubble's 19th birthday, a fountain of youth

To commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope's 19 years of historic, trailblazing science, the orbiting telescope has photographed a peculiar system of galaxies known as Arp 194. This interacting group contains several galaxies, along with a "cosmic fountain" of stars, gas, and dust that stretches over 100,000 light-years.

The northern (upper) component of Arp 194 appears as a haphazard collection of dusty spiral arms, bright blue star-forming regions, and at least two galaxy nuclei that appear to be connected and in the early stages of merging. A third, relatively normal, spiral galaxy appears off to the right. The southern (lower) component of the galaxy group contains a single large spiral galaxy with its own blue star-forming regions.

However, the most striking feature of this galaxy troupe is the impressive blue stream of material extending from the northern component. This "fountain" contains complexes of super star clusters, each one of which may contain dozens of individual young star clusters. The blue color is produced by the hot, massive stars which dominate the light in each cluster. Overall, the "fountain" contains many millions of stars.

Hubble witnesses flaring in jet from black hole

A flare-up in a jet of matter blasting from a monster black hole is giving astronomers an incredible light show.
The outburst is coming from a blob of matter, called HST-1, embedded in the jet, a powerful narrow beam of hot gas produced by a supermassive black hole residing in the core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. HST-1 is so bright that it is outshining even M87's brilliant core, whose monster black hole is one of the most massive yet discovered.

The glowing gas clump has taken astronomers on a rollercoaster ride of suspense. Astronomers watched HST-1 brighten steadily for several years, then fade, and then brighten again. They say it's hard to predict what will happen next.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been following the surprising activity for seven years, providing the most detailed ultraviolet-light view of the event. Other telescopes have been monitoring HST-1 in other wavelengths, including radio and X-rays. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was the first to report the brightening in 2000. HST-1 was first discovered and named by Hubble astronomers in 1999. The gas knot is 214 light-years from the galaxy's core.
The flare-up may provide insights into the variability of black hole jets in distant galaxies, which are difficult to study because they are too far away. M87 is located 54 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster, a region of the nearby universe with the highest density of galaxies.

Despite the many observations by Hubble and other telescopes, astronomers are not sure what is causing the brightening. One of the simplest explanations is that the jet is hitting a dust lane or gas cloud and then glows due to the collision. Another possibility is that the jet's magnetic field lines are squeezed together, unleashing a large amount of energy. This phenomenon is similar to how solar flares develop on the Sun and is even a mechanism for creating Earth's auroras.

3 galaxies involved in a game of tug- of -war

NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows three galaxies playing a game of gravitational tug -of- war that may result in the eventual demise of one of them.The galaxies are located 100 million light years away.