Tag: Hubble
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Hubble Space Telescope goes into safe mode due to failed gyro; Plan B pending
The Hubble Space Telescope gets its final close-up after a shuttle servicing mission in 2009. (NASA Photo) The 28-year-old Hubble Space Telescope is temporarily out of service, due to the failure of one of its gyroscopic pointing devices, but scientists say they’re working on a Plan B. Today NASA confirmed reports that Hubble scientists such…
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Exploring the discovery of the Dwarf Planet “The Goblin”
The Carnegie Institution for Science and the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center has announced the discovery of dwarf planet 2015, the world with an extremely distant aphelion (farthest point in orbit) from the Sun, an object approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) in diameter. 2015 TG387 takes 40,000 years to orbit the Sun and has…
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Hubble Space Telescope boosts evidence for first exomoon seen circling alien planet
An artist’s impression shows the Jupiter-sized exoplanet Kepler-1625b transiting its parent star with the Neptune-sized candidate exomoon in tow. (Dan Durda Illustration) With a lot of help from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers now feel confident enough to publish their evidence for the first moon detected in orbit around a planet beyond our solar system.…
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That’s no starship … or asteroid: Hubble hints that interstellar object is a comet
News brief: Observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories indicate that the cigar-shaped interstellar object known as ‘Oumuamua got an unexpected boost in speed and a shift in its trajectory as it passed through the inner solar system last year. Scientists surmise that the source of the boost was an outflow of…
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Hubble keeps hope alive for water on potentially habitable TRAPPIST-1 planets
This artist’s impression shows how the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star may appear. The planet is in the habitable zone, so liquid water exists. (CFA Illustration / M. Weiss) Do some of the Earth-sized planets around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, have liquid water? Newly reported findings…
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Phobos photobombs Mars in Hubble view
This multiple-exposure photo shows 22 minutes’ worth of Phobos’ orbit around Mars. (NASA / ESA / STScI Photo / Z. Levay) Leave it to tiny Phobos to horn in on Mars’ glory in an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The view of the Red Planet and the larger of its two moons, released…
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Interview: Astronaut Mike Massimino looks back at Hubble – and looks ahead to space tourism
Astronaut Mike Massimino, who was on the final Space Shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, marvels at what Hubble has accomplished. (GeekWire Photo / Geof Wheelwright) NEW ORLEANS – It’s apparently not enough that Mike Massimino is a former NASA astronaut, a best-selling author and an engineering professor. He’s also raring to go back…
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May the gravitational force be with you: Hubble spies oodles of galaxies far away
A Hubble Space Telescope view shows the Abell 370 galaxy cluster. (NASA / ESA / HST Frontier Fields) Choose your movie meme: “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” or “Star Wars” for May the Fourth. Either way, the Hubble Space Telescope’s newly released picture of the Abell 370 galaxy cluster is just the ticket. This…
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Hubble team celebrates telescope’s 27th birthday with a double scoop of galaxies
This Hubble image, marking the 27th anniversary of the space telescope’s launch, features the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4302 and the tilted galaxy NGC 4298. (STScI / NASA / ESA Photo / M. Mutchler) It’s traditional for the team behind the Hubble Space Telescope to release a jaw-dropping picture to celebrate the anniversary of the…
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Hubble spots more signs of Europa’s watery plumes, lifting hopes for habitability
These composite images show a suspected plume of material erupting two years apart from the same location on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Both plumes, photographed in ultraviolet light by Hubble, were seen in silhouette as the moon passed in front of Jupiter. (NASA / ESA / STScI / USGS) Saturn’s moon Enceladus wasn’t the only…