NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope is about to celebrate 30 years in space, and Science Channel will mark the anniversary in style.

The network has produced a two-hour special called "Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery," which will premiere next Sunday (April 19) at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

The documentary "will tell the remarkable story of how the Hubble telescope was created by the leading engineers and scientists of our time," Science Channel representatives wrote in a statement. "It will also include interviews with space's most notable names, including astronauts Michael Massimino, Kathryn Thornton, Story Musgrave, Steven Smith and John Grunsfeld."

Related: The most amazing Hubble Space Telescope discoveries

All of those NASA spaceflyers have first-hand experience with Hubble, which launched to Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990 with a flaw in its primary mirror. (The shuttle deployed Hubble a day later.)

Spacewalking astronauts fixed the mirror problem in December 1993 and repaired or upgraded the powerful scope on four subsequent servicing missions, in 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2009.

This hard work was a great investment, keeping Hubble going great guns far beyond its planned 15-year operational life.

The telescope has transformed astronomers' understanding of the cosmos in numerous ways during its long life (which isn't over yet). In the late 1990s, for example, Hubble observations showed that the universe's expansion is accelerating, a surprising find that led astrophysicists to postulate the existence of a mysterious repulsive force called dark energy.

And Hubble's contributions extend far beyond the scientific sphere: The telescope's spectacular photos give regular folks around the world frequent tastes of the wonder and beauty that pervade the cosmos.

"Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery" will show you many of those amazing images and give you a much better idea of how they came to be created, Science Channel representatives said.

"This behind-the-scenes special will also give viewers an intimate look like never before at Hubbles incredible journey from its earliest conception in 1923, to its five iconic [servicing] missions spanning from 1993 to 2009," they wrote in the statement. "It will also spotlight the groundbreaking insights that Hubble has revealed about the planet as well as the broader solar system and beyond."

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Follow this link:

'Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery' to premiere on Science Channel April 19 (exclusive video) - Space.com

Quasar tsunamis discovered by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope erupt in the most energetic outflows of material ever seen. This outpouring of energy wrecks havoc with galaxies in which these enigmatic objects reside, altering the evolution of these families of stars.

Quasars are energetic cores of galaxies, composed of supermassive black holes fed by vast quantities of gas, stars, and planets. These bodies are capable of emitting a thousand times as much energy as the entire galaxies which host the bodies.

These quasar winds push material away from the center of the galaxy, accelerating gas and dust at speeds approaching a few percent of the speed of light. The pressure pushes aside material which could otherwise collapse to form newstars, making stellar formation more difficult, reducing the number of new stars formed. This new study shows this process is more widespread than previously believed, altering star formation throughout entiregalaxies.

These outflows are crucial for the understanding of galaxies formation. They are pushing hundreds of solar masses of material each year. The amount of mechanical energy that these outflows carry is up to several hundreds of times higher than the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, Nahum Arav of Virginia Tech stated.

As the outflow blasts into interstellar material, it heats the medium to millions of degrees, setting thegalaxyalight in X-rays. Energy pours out through the galaxy, producing a fireworks show for anyone capable of seeing it.

Youll get lots of radiation first in X-rays and gamma rays, and afterwards it will percolate to visible and infrared light. Youd get a huge light show, like Christmas trees all over the galaxy, Arav explained.

I saw the whole universe laid out before me, a vast shining machine of indescribable beauty and complexity. Its design was too intricate for me to understand, and I knew I could never begin to grasp more than the smallest idea of its purpose. But I sensed that every part of it, from quark to quasar, was unique and in some mysterious way significant. R. J. Anderson

This study could explain several mysteries in astronomy and cosmology, including why the size of galaxies is related to the mass of thesupermassive black holesat their centers. It may also explain why so few massive galaxies are seen throughout the Cosmos.

Both theoreticians and observers have known for decades that there is some physical process that shuts off star formation in massive galaxies, but the nature of that process has been a mystery. Putting the observed outflows into our simulations solves these outstanding problems in galactic evolution, saidJeremiah Ostriker, a cosmologist at Columbia and Princeton universities not involved with this current study. Below is a 3D animation video ofa quasar by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Outflows from quasars were studied by astronomers using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) attached to theHubble Space Telescope, the only instrument capable of carrying out the needed observations in ultraviolet wavelengths.

A second outflow measured by researchers on this study increased its speed from 69 million kilometers (43 million miles) per hour to 74 million KPH (46 million MPH) over a period of three years. Models suggest that such outflows should have been common in the earlyUniverse. Researchers on this study believe this material will continue to accelerate for the foreseeable future.

Analysis of the data was published in the journalAstrophysical Journal Supplements.

This article was originally published onThe Cosmic Companionby James Maynard, an astronomy journalist, fan of coffee, sci-fi, movies, and creativity. Maynard has been writing about space since he was 10, but hes still not Carl Sagan. The Cosmic Companionsmailing list/podcast. You can read this original piecehere.

Read next: Scientists are working on new ways to recycle chemicals from electronic waste

Read our daily coverage on how the tech industry is responding to the coronavirus and subscribe to our weekly newsletter Coronavirus in Context.

For tips and tricks on working remotely, check out our Growth Quarters articles here or follow us on Twitter.

Read more here:

Hubble telescope discovers Galaxy-ripping quasar tsunamis in space - The Next Web

It came from beyond our solar system. But the sun wasnt content to let it leave in peace, or in one piece.

Comet 2I/Borisov, an Eiffel Tower-sized clod of dust and ice, plunged into our solar system last fall, exhaling vapor as it buzzed nearest to our sun around Christmas. This alien visitor must have formed around a distant and unknown star.

It slumbered as it crossed the frozen gulf of interstellar space. But now, suddenly, the sleeper is awake and kicking. To the simultaneous delight and frustration of the worlds astronomers, Borisov has sloughed off at least one fragment over the last few weeks.

The action began last month March 2020, of all times when the Hubble telescope spotted at least one chunk of the comet breaking off like a calving iceberg. That clump has since fizzed away into nothingness.

These fireworks offer astronomers a unique glimpse at the exposed guts of this interstellar object, just the second humanity has ever spotted. The first visitor from another star system, 2017s 1I/Oumuamua, behaved like an inert hunk of rock. This one has now cracked open its gooey center and we can see whats inside, said Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Astronomers had hoped, even predicted, that Borisov might crack up this spring while heading back out of the solar system to once again sojourn among the stars. But the first signs it was stirring came in early March, right as the coronavirus pandemic ramped up. Thats when ground-based astronomers in Poland spotted the comet suddenly brighten, even though it shouldve been dimming as it got farther from the sun.

Several competing teams of scientists had already booked coveted slots to study the comet over the next few months with Hubble. Spurred by the news out of Poland, they rushed to move up their own observations, hoping to catch the comet acting up.

The clincher came on March 30, when a group led by David Jewitt at the University of California, Los Angeles, downloaded a fresh image taken by Hubble. Instead of just a circular blob that would show the comets nucleus, they saw an elongated shape, suggesting a smaller fragment of the nucleus had split off and was slowly drifting away from the main object. Its like a little lug nut dropped off your car, Dr. Jewitt said.

Another team, led by Bryce Bolin at Caltech, said theyve spotted an earlier clump breaking off in Hubble images, too, possibly corresponding to a piece that could have caused Borisovs sudden brightening in early March. Im hoping that this object is going to be producing more fragments, Dr. Bolin said, but not completely, catastrophically break up into a million pieces in a cloud of dust.

In any normal month, huge mountaintop telescopes in Chile and Hawaii would have already begun swiveling toward the comet, putting the interstellar visitor under the astronomy worlds equivalent of 24-hour surveillance. Those telescopes would let astronomers track Borisovs brightness from night to night and scan for chemical elements now spewing from its insides.

Of course, the last month wasnt normal. Most observatories are now shuttered to protect employees from the pandemic.

The classic phrase is that comets are like cats, Dr. Bannister said. They dont do what you expect. Or what you want.

Even with Hubble alone, watching a fragment split off and drift from Borisov should help astronomers understand the size of the comets original nucleus and how tightly it was bound together, and then compare those properties with bodies formed in our own solar system.

Other research will focus on why Borisov put on a show and why now. One possible explanation for the comets breakup is that after months of sunlight on the surface, buried pockets of volatile ice had warmed enough to suddenly explode.

Another hypothesis holds that gas sprayed off the comet like the wayward nozzle of a fire extinguisher, spinning Borisov in space. Once the comet was rotating fast enough, it centrifuged itself into more than one piece that could escape the original nucleus meager gravitational pull. Dr. Jewitt, seeking to prove this model, is hoping future observations will clock the speed of the spin.

Hubble images taken on April 3 show that the chunk Dr. Jewitt spotted seems to have already faded away, said Quanzhi Ye, an astronomer at the University of Maryland.

More fragments might fall off, Dr. Ye said. If I have to say anything, Id guess that its not done yet.

Borisovs timing has offered astronomers everything from consternation to a welcome distraction. Theres something comforting, in a way, that celestial events still continue to happen even as our lives on Earth have been upended, Dr. Bannister said.

More here:

It Came From Outside Our Solar System and Now Its Breaking Up - The New York Times

President Trump likes to remind us that he is, first and foremost, a businessman. With that singular mindset, the President on Monday signed the executive order titledEncouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources, thus paving the way for the commercialization of space.

This executive order infers that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty allows for the use of space resources on the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies. Specifically, the order states that Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity and the United States does not view space as a global commons. Conversely, this order negates the 1979 Moon Treaty, which was never signed by the US. The treaty, in part, states that non-scientific use of space resources must be governed by international regulations.

By removing a decades-old presumptive legal barrier to entry, the US is hoping to spur economic development in this new frontier. As such, the executive order further states, American industry and the industries of like-minded countries will benefit from the establishment of stable international practices by which private citizens, companies and the economy will benefit from expanding the economic sphere of human activity beyond the Earth.

Perhaps as another first step on this new manifest destiny, NASAs Artemis program is scheduled toland astronauts on the moon in 2024.

Join our writing teamand develop your writing skills, as you see your articles featured onApple News,Google News, and allaround the world.Subscribe to our newsletter,What Just Happened, where we dive deep into the hottest topics from the week!

+Astronaut urine could be used to build bases on the moon+Galaxy-ripping quasar winds discovered by Hubble telescope

+COVID-19: The confusion around wearing face masks explained+Netflix is streaming The Matrix with a strong green tint

Read more:

Trump signs executive order to allow for mining of the moon and beyond - News Landed

Antidotes to Fear of Death

Sometimes as an antidoteTo fear of death,I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,I suck them from the quenching darkTil they are all, all inside me,Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myselfInto a universe still young,Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,The light of all the not yet starsDrifting like a bright mist,And all of us, and everythingAlready thereBut unconstrained by form.

And sometime its enoughTo lie down here on earthBeside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fieldsOf our discarded skulls,Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,Thinking: whatever left these husksFlew off on bright wings.

In 1986, Rebecca Elson (1960-1999) was a young Canadian astronomer who had begun a post-doctoral research fellowship examining Hubble telescope data at Princeton. In the essay From Stones to Stars, which concludes her posthumously published and single poetry collection A Responsibility to Awe, Elson contrasted the discomforts of working in such a male-dominated environment with her pleasure in the openness and congeniality of Princetons poetry community. But she went on to add a significant qualification, that the discussions there were also a reminder that, although I loved the unlimited licence to invent, I also loved the sense of exploring not an inner, but an outer world, that was really there, in some objective sense. This weeks poem seems to accommodate this dilemma, by working on a borderline between inventive poetic figures and more objective description, while never fully letting go of the former.

The opening lines are simple and striking. The speaker doesnt merely lie on her back to look up at the night sky, as any non-astronomer might do, but, childlike, she eats the stars. She goes on to tell us how she eats them: she sucks them, and finds the taste pepper hot and sharp. This is purposefully visceral and immediate, and a summons to the child star-lover in herself, a tuning-in to the old excitement before academia took over.

She continues the nutrition metaphor with the word stir in the third stanza, but a change of approach is heralded as were invited to follow her into the early universe: No outer space, just space. And now poetic diction is reduced, the whole imaginative process more restrained. The biblical creation narrative is recalled, when the earth was without form, and void yet the description, especially that of the not yet stars, feels logical and objective.

The alternative to stargazing and imagining, proposed in the fifth stanza, is To lie down here on earth / Beside our long ancestral bones Because of the placing of the conjunction in the first line And sometimes its enough the activity is subtly emphasised. Its at least as important as looking up at the stars to be aware of the horizontal neighbourhood, that of our long ancestral bones. The pun on long is beautifully judged here.

Elson doesnt refute biological science. Dead matter is transformed, but kept interestingly visible in the reference to cobble fields / Of our discarded skulls. Its an imaginative truce with fact, followed by speculation, and recourse to the soul-as-butterfly myth. Inevitably, the bright wings connect us to the bright mist in stanza four, as if a new creation might transpire from death.

Antidotes to Fear of Death is undated, and may have been written before the poet was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the disease from which she died at the age of 39. Its the kind of intense engagement with death that an imaginative young writer might make, regardless of personal circumstance. As an act of generosity, like so much of Elsons work, it includes readers by its imaginative accessibility and universal theme. Although antidote is a strong word, the poem has some power to challenge the individuals fear of extinction with a wider, less egocentric focus on space and time. It lies just outside religious consolation, and just outside scientific detachment. Imagination is all we have to suggest alternative universes, a quality required for survival, for poetry, and for the hypotheses of science.

A Responsibility to Awe was first published in 2001, and was reissued in 2018 as a Carcanet Classic. To read Elsons brave and gentle work during the current pandemic crisis is to take a fresh breath, and to see a little farther.

Read the rest here:

Poem of the week: Antidotes to Fear of Death by Rebecca Elson - The Guardian

A GIGANTIC space contraption is gearing up to scan alien atmospheres and peer back to the dawn of time.

The James Webb Space Telescope is due to launch next year and will be the most powerful telescope ever built.

Put together by Nasa and aerospace company Northrop Grumman, the $10billion (7.6billion) machine has been plagued by delays and setbacks.

However, it appears it's finally on track to head into space in 2021, giving scientists the chance to "look into the past", according to its creators.

"Over the last few years, we were working in two halves," Northrop Grumman's Scott Willoughby told reporters last month, according to Fast Company.

"Until the summer of last year, they were in a very long engagement, and they got married," he joked.

3

"We put the two halves together to create an observatory. Were celebrating that success."

The project has taken 24 years to complete with the help of thousands of scientists and engineers.

These experts come from 24 countries across three space agencies Nasa, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency.

Orbiting nearly 1million miles from Earth and measuring four storeys high, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will scan light from stars and galaxies.

It can peer 13.7billion light-years (that's about eight with 22 zeroes afterwards in miles) through space because it's orbiting extremely far from Earth.

For most space telescopes, Earth's thick atmosphere obscures readings but the JWST won't have that problem.

One of the probe's goals is to find new planets outside of the Solar System and scan their atmospheres for signs of aliens.

3

Specifically, it will look for oxygen on alien worlds, one of the key ingredients for life as we know it.

The JWST will also "look back in time" by scanning light given off by extremely distant galaxies and stars.

This ability to "time travel" is based on the fact that even light has a speed limit.

The further you peer into space, the more time has passed since the light you are looking at set off on its journey towards you.

So if a star explodes 6billion light-years away, the light from the event will take 6billion years to reach Earth effectively allowing us to see through time.

Professor Alistair Glasse, of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, said: "Light takes a finite team to reach us because it doesn't reach our eyes instantly.

3

"The further away an object is, the longer that light has been travelling before we detect it.

"With the telescope we can look as far away as the edge of the visible universe.

"The age of the universe is about 13.5billion years and we can say light has been travelling that long before it reaches us."

JWST is three times larger than its predecessor the Hubble telescope and 100 times more powerful thanks to its vast gold-plated mirror.

The massive primary mirror, stretching 21ft across, is made up of 18 hexagons each the size of a coffee table and weighing 46 lbs.

The beryllium components are coated with a fine film of vaporised gold to bounce infrared light into the sensor equipment.

Unmatched infrared sensitivity will help astronomers understand how galaxies assemble over billions of years.

A-MARS-ING!Mars has alien LIFE lurking at its icy poles, astronomers believe

FLU GOTTA BE KIDDING MECoronavirus conspiracies including claims it was 'made by CIA'

EXIT STRATEGYScientists rank safest spots to flee to in deadly apocalyptic outbreak

HORROR-SCOPEYou've been reading the wrong horoscope for years because the stars have moved

HOLY HOAX'Rare' collection of Dead Sea Scrolls deemed 'most valuable in world' is FAKE

TECH-CELLENTUK to create 800m rival to secret US agency famed for robots and stealth jets

In other news, a Nasa photo last week revealed a mysterious hole in Mars that according to scientists may house alien life.

A supersonic 990mph Nasa X-planeas quiet as the "thump of a car door"is nearly ready.

And, Nasa recently revealeda surreal photo of Earthtaken from 4billion miles away.

What do you think the James Webb Telescope will find? Let us know in the comments!

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

Here is the original post:

Mind-blowing Nasa James Webb Space telescope will look 13.5billion years BACK in time - The Sun

Report to the Nation delegates snapped some selfies from the roof terrace at 101 Constitution, capturing a spectacular view of the U.S. Capitol. They soon learned they have the mining industry to thank for those photos and for practically everything they use.

More than 70 mined elements make up the components in smartphones. James Scribner, regulatory affairs specialist at the National Mining Association, pointed out other household items made because of mining.

The association occupies the fifth floor at 101 Constitution and welcomed the delegation to take portraits from the terrace. You can see them here, along with more photos from this years Report to the Nation trip.

The Report to the Nation is the annual recap of the great things that happened in Scouting last year; 13 Scouts were selected from around the country to present the report to Congress and other high-profile dignitaries around Washington, D.C. They also get to tour places, including the National Mining Associations headquarters.

Delegates questioned Scribner what major mining activity is done in their home state coal in Mississippi, gold in California and what types of higher education leads to careers in the mining industry. The association represents about 300 companies that specialize in coal, uranium, gypsum and more.

Mining in America is going to be very strong in the mineral area, Scribner says. Smartphones use a tremendous amount of rare earth minerals. Mining will always be part of our society.

Later in the day, the Scouts also learned about the latest developments in space at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The 10,000 employees and contractors at the research laboratory work on weather and ground-mapping satellites, but one of their big projects should launch next year.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be more powerful than the Hubble telescope, capable of capturing longer light wavelengths in hopes to see inside dust clouds where stars are born.

The Scouts also got to check out the high-tech equipment used at the flight center, led by NASA optical physicist and Assistant Scoutmaster Ray Ohl.

Related

Read this article:

From the rooftop to underground: Report to the Nation delegates learn about mining - Scouting Magazine

ESAs Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Plan is designed to give us new understanding and new views of the Universe. Credit: NASA/ESA/ESO/W. Freudling (ST-ECF)

How can you see something thats invisible? Well, with Euclid! This future ESA telescope will map the structure of the Universe and teach us more about invisible dark matter and dark energy. Scientific coordinator of Euclid and Leiden astronomer Henk Hoekstra explains how this works.

Why do we assume that dark matter exists, if we have never seen it or even measured it? We are orbiting the center of our galaxy at 220 kilometers per second, says Hoeksta. A bizarre speed, which fortunately we dont notice. Still, something strange is going on. Based on the number of stars in our Milky Way, the stars at the edge of the Milky Way should have a much lower speed, but they move as fast as the Sun. Yet these stars are not being slung into the Universe. Something is holding them together.

Basically, there can only be one explanation: there is matter that you cannot see, but that exerts extra gravity. In other words, dark matter. Hoekstra: Or the theory of gravity is wrong. But everything indicates that dark matter exists, only we still dont know what it is. What we do know is that it does not absorb light or interact with it. So that literally makes it invisible. If this is not strange enough: since 1998 we know that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. To explain this an even more mysterious ingredient is needed: dark energy, a term that simply encompasses all ideas that astronomers and physicists are currently studying.

In this 5-minute TED-Ed movie, James Gillies explains what dark matter en dark energy are.

We have some knowledge-gaps and these cannot be filled with existing observations. So the only way forward is to take better measurements. And thats where Euclid comes in, the satellite that the European Space Agency will launch in 2022. At a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, Euclid will map a third of the sky. So we can answer questions such as: How is the structure in the Universe formed under the influence of gravity? How is all matter distributed in the Universe? And how does that change over time? Hoekstra: An answer to the last question enables us to test models for dark energy directly.

Hoekstra is one of the four cosmology coordinators and leader of the project weak lensing. We are going to investigate how dark matter distorts space, he says.

This artists impression depicts ESAs Euclid spacecraft.Euclid is a pioneering mission to observe billions of faint galaxies and investigate the origin of the Universes accelerating expansion, as well as the mysterious nature of dark energy, dark matter and gravity. Credit: ESA

But how does this work? Hoekstra continues: Mass distorts space and time around it. You can measure that effect, even if you cant see the dark matter. He uses an enlightening analogy to explain this. Compare it to a tank of water containing a coin. If you tap that container, the water ripples and deforms the coin. Take several pictures of the coin and youll see that the coin looks different every time.

Suppose youve got a lot of coins and you know theyre originally round, then you can figure out how much water there is in that tank. With dark matter its exactly the same, says the cosmologist. Dark matter causes galaxies in the background to slightly deform. We can measure that distortion with Euclid by averaging the shapes of as many galaxies as possible.

The more dark matter there is somewhere, the more the underlying galaxies are distorted. In this way, you can determine the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. But first, a lot of sharp pictures are needed. The more galaxies we measure, the more reliable the results. So we are talking about big data, not only because of the amount of data but also because of its complexity. The number of pictures that the Hubble telescope collected over the past 25 years is what we will collect in a few days.

Not only is the amount of data large, so is the number of astronomers participating in Euclid. Its the largest astronomy team in the world, with about 1500 scientists, engineers, and technicians. However, the number of astronomers benefiting from Euclid will be much greater: the data will eventually be published publicly and can be used for various purposes, such as discovering the most distant quasars and identifying massive stars in nearby galaxies. In the beginning, the data will only be available for Euclid participants, after that we will have so-called data releases. In order to give people an idea of the first results, we will also have some quick releases. And those will be phenomenal, a beaming Hoekstra predicts.

Originally posted here:

Visualizing Dark Matter With the Biggest Astronomy Collaboration Ever - SciTechDaily

An enhanced image of galaxy clusters. Image via NASA/ Shutterstock.

By Jon Willis, University of Victoria

A galaxy cluster can be likened to a great city of galaxies, a galactic conurbation where each galaxy represents an individual, twinkling structure. Just as an archaeologist might seek evidence of the oldest cities on Earth, astronomers have long sought to discover the oldest galaxy clusters in the universe each the cosmic equivalent of an ancient civilization like Jericho or Ur.

I have been fortunate to lead a team of astronomers in discovering just such an example of an old galaxy cluster. How old? The light from the galaxy cluster, named XLSSC 122 has taken 10.4 billion years to travel across the universe to us.

A composite image of the galaxy cluster XLSSC 122 using images from the Hubble Space Telescope and European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope. The white contours reveal strong X-ray emission captured by the European Space Agencys X-ray Multi-Mirror satellite. Image via Jon Willis.

A youthful universe

Astronomers believe that the universe itself is 13.7 billion years old, so a little maths tells us that we are observing XLSSC 122 when the universe was a mere 3.3 billion years old. Imagine our surprise then, when each new view of this galaxy cluster revealed a physical structure seemingly every bit as mature and developed as galaxy clusters in our present-day universe a situation rather like looking at a photo from your youth in which you appear much older than you were.

XLSSC 122 is a remarkably precocious presence in a youthful universe, a clue perhaps that the universe at least the densest parts of it can form stars, accumulate into galaxies and eventually be drawn into galaxy clusters with surprising rapidity. Given that computer simulations of the assembly of galaxy clusters indicate more gradual growth, the discovery of XLSSC 122 suggests that our current ideas of how structure forms in the universe may be incomplete.

Discovering galaxy clusters

When I first saw it, XLSSC 122 appeared as an unassuming collection of photons on an X-ray image of the sky taken by the European Space Agencys X-ray Multi-Mirror space observatory. Though viewed at great distance, we knew we were potentially observing a hot halo of gas at 10 million Kelvin (9.9 million Celsius or 18 million Fahrenheit) confined within the gravitational field of a massive cluster of galaxies.

However, visible light images taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope revealed no galaxies associated with the X-ray source. This was an interesting clue that we may have discovered a distant galaxy cluster where the expansion of the universe had shifted the visible light emitted by the cluster galaxies into the infrared.

From this realization, we proceeded to obtain an image of our candidate cluster using the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope. This image, taken with an infrared camera, revealed the telltale presence of faint red objects distant galaxies; but exactly how distant remained a mystery.

Hubble Space Telescope brings ultimate clarity

Having compiled a strong case that XLSSC 122 was a distant galaxy cluster, perhaps the most distant, we were awarded observing time with the Hubble Space Telescope. Given that only one out of every 10 Hubble proposals is successful, this represented an achievement in itself.

Although the Hubble telescope is nearly 30 years old, it remains a preeminent astronomical facility. Our images of XLSSC 122 appeared sharp and clear compared to the fuzzy images obtained from ground-based observatories. Although I have been a professional astronomer for 20 years, seeing the Hubble images of our cluster represented a near-unique discovery moment. It was immediately clear from the galaxy colors and spectra that XLSSC 122 was supremely distant: it lay at a redshift of two, meaning that the light from XLSSC 122 had taken 10.4 billion years to reach Earth.

Simulating galaxies

How does a cluster such as XLSSC 122 fit into our wider picture of how the universe is structured? Computer simulations allow astronomers to recreate the uneven distribution of matter in the early universe and then to follow the force of gravity as it draws the more dense regions into massive clusters while less dense regions become ever more sparse.

One can identify clusters in these simulations that have the same properties as XLSSC 122. As a simulation is similar to a movie of the universe, we can fast forward to the present. When we did this for XLSSC 122 we realized that it would become one of the most massive clusters in the universe comparable to the great cluster in Coma, our closest collection of galaxies. The same simulations indicate that XLSSC 122 might only have existed as a cluster of galaxies for perhaps a billion years before the moment we observed it.

Herein lies the mystery. Our study of the starlight from the galaxies that make up XLSSC 122 tells us they are more than 1 billion years old, perhaps as much as 3 billion years old. Moreover, they all appeared to start forming stars at almost the same time. But as all of this happened long before these galaxies ever clumped together to form XLSSC 122, we are left with the question as to what caused them to start forming stars in such a synchronized manner in the early universe?

Fortunately, we have a pretty good idea of where to look next. NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope in March 2021, and we are already planning ahead to target XLSSC 122. The Webb telescope will collect approximately six times more light than Hubble and will analyze that light with a number of sensitive instruments. Our aim is to use high-resolution infrared spectroscopy to greatly improve our knowledge of the stellar ages of the galaxies that make up XLSSC 122 and pin down the early life story of this remarkable cluster of galaxies.

Jon Willis, Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: A team of astronomers have discovered a galaxy cluster so old its light has taken 10.4 billion years to travel across the universe to us.

See the original post:

New clues in the search for the universes oldest galaxies - EarthSky

The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra (left) with the S20 and S20 Plus.

Samsung finally took the wraps off its latest flagship phones, the Galaxy S20, S20 Plus and the S20 Ultra. The Ultra is the hero of the bunch, with boosted specs and features that are not found on the others. Its cameras, in particular, contain some of the biggest upgrades and it's not being subtle about it -- the Ultra's square camera bump is absolutely immense. And, weird though it might look, it does have some cool tricks up its sleeve.

Much like its predecessor, there are three main cameras on the Galaxy S20 Ultra, a standard zoom lens, an ultra wide-angle lens, and a telephoto zoom lens. It's that last zoom lens that has been seriously beefed up here. It sits at the bottom of the camera module next to the text "space zoom."

When you look closely, the lens looks weird because it has new optics that give it a huge amount of zoom. With those optics and its 48-megapixel resolution, it can zoom in up to 100x. That's an absolutely astonishing level of zoom that, as far as I'm concerned, makes this phone the lovechild of a Galaxy S10 and the Hubble telescope.

I was able to zoom in on a bottle all the way across the room and could just about read the label -- pretty impressive considering that with my naked eye, I couldn't even see there was a bottle in the first place. But don't expect pin-sharp clarity; while I could somewhat make out the bottle's logo, there was a huge amount of image noise and other artifacts. This meant the image wouldn't end up printed and framed on a gallery wall. At 30x zoom, the quality looked a lot better.

Note that I was handling an early sample unit though and I was testing the zoom in a dim corner of our demo area. I'm keen to see how the zoom performs once Samsung's optimized it a bit more and I'm using it outdoors in daylight.

The 100x zoom is a feature reserved only for the S20 Ultra. If you don't feel the need to get up close on distant details then the regular S20 or S20 Plus may be your better options.

The main camera sensor has an astonishing 108-megapixel resolution, but it's not just for needlessly-detailed images. It can combine nine pixels into one single pixel that, according to Samsung, captures a lot more light. The result is a 12-megapixel image that even in dark conditions should come out well-exposed.

It's important to note that we haven't been able to put this to the test yet. Night-time shooting skills have been a focus of various recent phones, and handsets like the iPhone 11 and Pixel 4take amazing shots in really dark scenarios. With these new Galaxy specs, it's going to be interesting to see how Samsung's new technology can compete.

If you're not into this pixel combining feature, you can always go into Settings and shoot at the full 108 megapixels if you want bigger, more detailed images. Having extra resolution gives you more scope for cropping into the image later on, although exactly how well these high-resolution images can look from a tiny phone camera sensor remains to be seen until we put this thing through its paces.

Single Capture is a new mode that shoots a 10-seconds video and then presents you with a whole variety of photos and smaller video clips, all shot with different zoom levels and some with different effects like black and white already applied.

The idea is that you shoot a little scene in front of you -- say, someone blowing out candles on a cake -- and instead of having to decide in advance to just take one image, Single Capture takes a whole bunch of different shots for you to choose from all at one go.

You can then select the shots you want to save as they are, or use the software to automatically combine them into a little highlight reel you can instantly share with your friends or family.

I wouldn't say this is a killer feature, but it's pretty fun and I can see it appealing to people with young families who want to quickly share the fun things their kids have been doing without having to fuss around with the different camera settings.

Video skills have been a particular focus on the new phone. Just when we were all getting to grips with our phones shooting 4K, Samsung ups the numbers to a whopping 8K.

Why so many Ks? You can of course just shoot in the maximum resolution for bragging rights if you want. Though the display on the phone itself isn't sharp enough to show the video off, you can upload it to YouTube, which supports 8K, and you can play it back on 8K TVs, if you happen to have spent the small fortune that they cost.

The other benefit is that you can take crop into your footage or take 33-megapixel still images from your video footage. The downside is that those 8K videos will quickly take up space on your phone. A 20-second 8K video came in at almost 200MB while a 20-second clip in full HD taken on the Samsung Galaxy Fold was less than a quarter of the size at only 42MB. If you're planning to go this max res route, it's best to go for the higher 512GB storage option.

Not just for still photos anymore, Samsung added a pro mode for video that gives you manual control over settings like ISO, shutter speed, focus and white balance. It does have a niche appeal, but if you want to create more cinematic-looking footage for your YouTube channel, you'll get some use out of this mode. But bear in mind you can't use the max 8K resolution in pro mode.

Samsung also boosted video stabilization with improved hardware and software. It seemed to do a decent job during my brief time with it, but it's another feature I'm really looking forward to putting to the test in our full in-depth review.

In addition to all these rear camera features, the Galaxy S20 Ultra has a 40-megapixel front-facing camera (tucked into a little cut-out hole on the front), a whopping 6.9-inch display, up to 16GB of RAM and 5G connectivity for superfast data speeds. This, of course, will come in handy for uploading those massive 8K video files.

Read the original here:

Galaxy S20 Ultra: Our 5 favorite camera features, and one is Space Zoom - CNET

Friday, Feb. 14, 2020

Intermountain Catholic

The soul is so beautiful, so splendid, that words cannot describe it, St. Teresa of Avila tells us in The Interior Castle. This guide for spiritual development was written in 1577 at the behest of her superiors. Thinking her audience was only her sisters in the Discalced Carmelite order, and hoping to solve their difficulties with prayer, St. Teresa composed what today is considered a classic on spiritual life.

Our intellects will never be able to comprehend the great beauty and capabilities of a soul, but still we benefit from reflecting upon the gifts our souls possess, St. Teresa writes.

She describes the soul as a castle created from a single diamond, comprised of many rooms, each more beautiful than the last. Yet, despite this magnificence, many people live only in the courtyard of their soul, either unwilling or incapable of venturing farther inside, she says.

To me these people are like the blind salamander referenced by Father Paul Gabor, S.J., the astrophysicist and vice director for the Vatican Observatory Research Group who gave the Aquinas Lecture last week. As part of his lecture, he showed a slide of an olm, an aquatic creature that lives in caves in Bosnia-Herzegovina and moves very little one specimen that scientists had under observation didnt move at all for seven years even though it was still alive. Olms can live up to 100 years underwater in complete darkness and may eat only once a decade.

With the best of care, my body may survive a century. On the other hand, I have treated my immortal soul very much as though it were an olm, leaving it shrouded in darkness and feeding it only incidental morsels that floated past in the course of my everyday life.

People tend to do little to preserve the beauty of the soul, St. Teresa observed, and so it was with me until recently, when I became emboldened to seek the wonders of the soul just as astronomers explore the wonders of the universe.

During his lecture, Fr. Gabor showed an animation from PBS of what it might look like to go past the heavenly bodies in the night sky, out into the Milky Way galaxy with its 200 billion stars, and beyond it to the Andromeda galaxy and farther still into the Virgo supercluster, seeing stellar nurseries, stellar remnants and other wonders.

Stare at a small patch of sky with the Hubble telescope for a month and youll see an absolutely fabulous image of galaxies, he said, but because of the limitations of the camera not all of the 10,000 galaxies will be visible.

Stare at your soul long enough and, even given the limitations of your spiritual perception, what will be revealed?

St. Teresa says to know God we must first know ourselves, and self-knowledge is acquired by examining the soul. Such self-inquiry might reveal, for example, that our soul is undergoing a crisis equivalent to that of Betelgeuse, the star in the constellation Orion that now shines at less than half of its usual intensity. Scientists speculate that it may supernova.

Averting such a catastrophe of the soul certainly would be beneficial, but there is more to prayer than self-scrutiny. We shall advance more by contemplating the Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves, St. Teresa says. With sufficient prayer and grace, we can venture farther into the castle, where the treasures and joys are impossible to depict.

We may not have the vocabulary to describe the wonders of the soul, but God himself wills that we come to understand him as well as our limited minds are able, just as over the centuries we have, through science, expanded our knowledge of the mysteries of the universe, as Fr. Gabor explained.

The truths expounded by the 16th-century saint and the modern astrophysicist are the same. Both speak of theology at its most basic: faith seeking understanding, as St. Anselm wrote. The wonders of the universe are no more or less marvelous than the wonders of the soul, but to understand either we must pursue knowledge of the Almighty, who teaches us of himself to us through science as well as revelation.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic. She can be reached at marie@icatholic.org.

Read more:

On St. Teresa, Olms and Betelgeuse - Intermountain Catholic

A galaxy cluster can be likened to a great city of galaxies, a galactic conurbation where each galaxy represents an individual, twinkling structure. Just as an archaeologist might seek evidence of the oldest cities on Earth, astronomers have long sought to discover the oldest galaxy clusters in the universe each the cosmic equivalent of an ancient civilization like Jericho or Ur.

I have been fortunate to lead a team of astronomers in discovering just such an example of an old galaxy cluster. How old? The light from the galaxy cluster, named XLSSC 122 has taken 10.4 billion years to travel across the universe to us.

A youthful universe

Astronomers believe that the universe itself is 13.7 billion years old, so a little maths tells us that we are observing XLSSC 122 when the universe was a mere 3.3 billion years old. Imagine our surprise then, when each new view of this galaxy cluster revealed a physical structure seemingly every bit as mature and developed as galaxy clusters in our present-day universe a situation rather like looking at a photo from your youth in which you appear much older than you were.

XLSSC 122 is a remarkably precocious presence in a youthful universe, a clue perhaps that the universe at least the densest parts of it can form stars, accumulate into galaxies and eventually be drawn into galaxy clusters with surprising rapidity. Given that computer simulations of the assembly of galaxy clusters indicate more gradual growth, the discovery of XLSSC 122 suggests that our current ideas of how structure forms in the universe may be incomplete.

Discovering galaxy clusters

When I first saw it, XLSSC 122 appeared as an unassuming collection of photons on an X-ray image of the sky taken by the European Space Agencys X-ray Multi-Mirror space observatory. Though viewed at great distance, we knew we were potentially observing a hot halo of gas at 10 million Kelvin confined within the gravitational field of a massive cluster of galaxies.

However, visible light images taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope revealed no galaxies associated with the X-ray source. This was an interesting clue that we may have discovered a distant galaxy cluster where the expansion of the universe had shifted the visible light emitted by the cluster galaxies into the infrared.

From this realization, we proceeded to obtain an image of our candidate cluster using the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope. This image, taken with an infrared camera, revealed the telltale presence of faint red objects distant galaxies; but exactly how distant remained a mystery.

Hubble Space Telescope brings ultimate clarity

Having compiled a strong case that XLSSC 122 was a distant galaxy cluster, perhaps the most distant, we were awarded observing time with the Hubble Space Telescope. Given that only one out of every 10 Hubble proposals is successful, this represented an achievement in itself.

Although the Hubble telescope is nearly 30 years old, it remains a pre-eminent astronomical facility. Our images of XLSSC 122 appeared sharp and clear compared to the fuzzy images obtained from ground-based observatories. Although I have been a professional astronomer for 20 years, seeing the Hubble images of our cluster represented a near-unique discovery moment. It was immediately clear from the galaxy colours and spectra that XLSSC 122 was supremely distant: it lay at a redshift of two, meaning that the light from XLSSC 122 had taken 10.4 billion years to reach Earth.

Simulating galaxies

How does a cluster such as XLSSC 122 fit into our wider picture of how the universe is structured? Computer simulations allow astronomers to recreate the uneven distribution of matter in the early universe and then to follow the force of gravity as it draws the more dense regions into massive clusters while less dense regions become ever more sparse.

One can identify clusters in these simulations that have the same properties as XLSSC 122. As a simulation is similar to a movie of the universe, we can fast forward to the present. When we did this for XLSSC 122 we realized that it would become one of the most massive clusters in the universe comparable to the great cluster in Coma, our closest collection of galaxies. The same simulations indicate that XLSSC 122 might only have existed as a cluster of galaxies for perhaps a billion years before the moment we observed it.

Herein lies the mystery. Our study of the starlight from the galaxies that make up XLSSC 122 tells us they are more than one billion years old, perhaps as much as three billion years old. Moreover, they all appeared to start forming stars at almost the same time. But as all of this happened long before these galaxies ever clumped together to form XLSSC 122, we are left with the question as to what caused them to start forming stars in such a synchronized manner in the early universe?

Fortunately, we have a pretty good idea of where to look next. NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope in March 2021, and we are already planning ahead to target XLSSC 122. The Webb telescope will collect approximately six times more light than Hubble and will analyze that light with a number of sensitive instruments. Our aim is to use high-resolution infrared spectroscopy to greatly improve our knowledge of the stellar ages of the galaxies that make up XLSSC 122 and pin down the early life story of this remarkable cluster of galaxies.

Jon Willis, Associate professor, Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.

Read more from the original source:

New clues in the search for the oldest galaxies in the universe - Down To Earth Magazine

Valentines Day is just two days away. For many, the holiday comes as a joyous celebration of romantic love. For others, a time to appreciate self-love. For a large number of visitors to and residents of the greater Ketchum area, Friday night will be a time to celebrate a different kind of lovea love of art.

Between 5 and 8 p.m. on Friday, the Sun Valley Gallery Association will host its premiere Gallery Walk of 2020. The first iteration of the organizations primary offering will see, as usual, numerous galleries around town open their doors, modestly portion out complimentary wine and welcome art-lovers to view their wares at leisure.

The attached map exhibits a fairly comprehensive catalogue of the participating galleries. Keep reading to learn about the offerings of a select few featured galleries in Ketchum.

Learn more about Gallery Walk, the Sun Valley Gallery Association and its members at svgalleries.org.

Sun Valley Museum of Art transcends standards

Walden (Surface/depth) by Spencer Finch, rope, cloth, twine and watercolors, at Sun Valley Museum of Art

There may be a new name, a new logo and a slight reshuffling of future objectives at the former Sun Valley Center for the Arts, but little else has changed at the valleys premier arts nonprofit, including the current exhibition.

Part of a Big Idea project of the same name that launched last month, The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit zeroes in on the philosophies and writings of 19th-century American transcendentalists, such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.

Aggregating the works of six contemporary artists, Bottomlessness of a Pond seeks to illuminate the enduring legacy of transcendentalist thinking on American art and philosophy, and consider the lessons one might learn by studying these luminaries and their ideas.

Visitors to the museum will enjoy a widely diverse exhibition of artworks, both in terms of creative style and media.

The Big Idea project displays sculptures, paintings, photography, collages, film and more. Some artists take a deep dive into Thoreaus famed Walden Pond; others consider poetry of contemporaneous authors who flirted with transcendentalism before rejecting it. One aims its lens at the potential to pervert such values, as Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) did.

All these different artists and works displayed alongside each other inspire critical thought and conversation elaborated upon in the museums ongoing Big Idea programming through March 11.

The Sun Valley Museum of Art is located at 191 Fifth St. E. in Ketchum. Visit svmoa.org to learn about what has changed and what has remained the same at the former Center.

Gail Severn Gallery sets its sights due west

Over the course of a year, an art lover can find a little bit of just about everything hanging on the walls at Gail Severn Gallery. Traditional landscapes, nightmarish sculptures, postmodern abstractionsit all gets its turn at Gail Severn, sometimes simultaneously.

That is not to imply that the curators at this popular Ketchum arts hub lack focus, but rather that their definition of quality holds no stylistic biases. Simply put, good is good, no matter the medium, the artist or the genre.

Last year saw a delightfully diverse array of works on display at Gail Severn. From polar bears with octopus hats to a wall of snouts to recycled books to vibrantly eye-catching, shapeless blasts of color, the gallery hosted pretty much everything.

The first Gallery Walk of 2020 will see a solo exhibition by Michael Gregory. His series True West consists of photorealistic paintings depicting iconic Western American scenes.

With horizon lines often placed below the halfway point on the canvas, these images use the vastness of the sky to imply the enormity of the landscape in a manner evocative of John Fords influential cinematography.

In other works, mountains tower high, dwarfing ramshackle farmsteads. All this serves as an important reminder of humanitys place in the grand scheme of nature.

Remarkably, considering how strikingly realistic his paintings are, Gregory generally works from memory and imagination, not from photographs. The casual onlooker, certainly one only glancing or catching a glimpse, could easily mistake any of his paintings for photographs.

Gregorys works will remain on display through March 10. On Saturday, Feb. 15, at 10 a.m.the morning after Gallery WalkGail Severn will host an artist chat event with Gregory for anyone hoping to speak with the artist about his works and process.

Gail Severn Galley is located at 400 First Ave. N. in Ketchum. Visit gailseverngalley.com to learn more.

Gilman Contemporary journeys from the celestial to the intimately human

Ventura by John Westmark, mixed media and vintage sewing patterns on canvas, at Gilman Contemporary

A typical Gallery Walk features the old and the new of art, plus everything in between. A handy cross-section of the past and present, with glimpses toward the future, descends upon Ketchum for three hours on Friday night every so often throughout the year.

As far as the cutting-edge present and misty future are concerned, few galleries can match the clear-eyed view provided by Gilman Contemporary Gallery.

True to the second word in its name, Gilman keeps up to date with all the innovations, trends and ideas sweeping the current art world.

Kicking off 2020 with Gilman is British photographer Ellie Davies. England is, perhaps, not commonly considered a heavily forested area of the world, but Davies work dives headlong into the woods. She captures dark, misty, uncanny and almost magical visions of British forests that strike the beholder as scenes from a haunting fairy tale or ghost story.

Gilman will exhibit Davies Stars series, in which the artist merges photographs of woodlands with images from the Hubble Telescope. The result is a strangely ethereal series of photos, capturing a place halfway between earth and space.

In considerable aesthetic contrast to Davies works are those by American artist John Westmark.

Combining a wide array of materials, Westmark creates layered, textured mixed-media paintings embodying the strength and struggle inherent to feminist philosophy. The gallery will exhibit a collection of striking representations of powerful female figures, composed of vintage sewing patterns on canvas.

Gilman Contemporary Gallery is located out toward the eastern edge of town, at 661 Sun Valley Road, Ketchum. Visit gilmancontemporary.com to learn more about the space, its owner, artists and creative philosophies.

Kneeland Gallery likes to keep things fairly local

Gathering Storm by Steven Lee Adams, oil on canvas, at Kneeland Gallery.

Wandering around town during a typical Gallery Walk, one is likely to encounter pieces of art from all over the world and depicting all manner of subjects. While some galleries look far afield, others know that its difficult to find anything more beautiful than the natural landscape of the American West.

The Kneeland Gallery is one such establishment. Specializing in American impressionism and plein air, Kneeland often displays works that capture the beauty of the environment and wildlife.

During this Gallery Walk, Kneeland will exhibit works of Hailey native Caleb Meyer. From cityscapes and intimate cafes to sweeping landscapes, Meyer approaches all subject matters with the same deftness and aplomb.

Another artist, Silas Thompson, is among the youngest Kneeland has featured. Like Meyer, Thompsons love of the Western landscape knows no boundaries.

Thompsons images showcase his unique flair for the colors and personalities of the iconic natural landmarks that pepper the Western states. His innovative selections of subject and perspectives evoke a nostalgic sense of reminiscence and wonder.

Kneeland will also welcome back recurring client Steven Adams, whose haunting images focus on the more typically unseen minutia of life. Rather than capturing the sublimity of a towering mountain or the vast expanse of a mighty river, Adams directs the viewers attention to inherent memories embodied by a broken fence or the potential of a half-dug ditch.

These artists will run concurrently with works of Utah artist Shanna Kunz and Idahoan Carl Rowe, the Idaho Conservation Leagues 2019 artist-in-residence.

The Kneeland Gallery is at 271 First Ave. N. in Ketchum. To learn more about the gallery, its artists and its displays, visit kneelandgallery.com.

Frederic Boloix Fine Arts is a hotspot for international art

Owned and operated by multilingual renaissance man Frederic Boloix, the namesake gallery has cemented its position in Ketchum as a premier spot for fine artscontemporary and from throughout the past.

Boloix himself has had a presence in Sun Valley for 25 years, following years as a gallery director in San Francisco and, before that, more than a decade as a professional classical musician in Vienna and Munich.

His artistically rich and varied background has a heavy influence on the kinds of art that go on display at the gallery. From still-working postmodern innovators to 20th-century masters like Picasso and Matisse, the Frederic Boloix Fine Arts gallery works only with the best.

For this Gallery Walk, Boloix will feature a group exhibition of works by artists from Germany, Austria, Italy and Cuba.

Boloix likes to display classics alongside new pieces, but the work of contemporary Austrian artist Martin Herbst bridges the gaps between them. He explores paintings on various shapes, including convex mirrors.

In Renaissance Mirror, for instance, Herbst reimagines a Raphael masterpiece on a convex mirror, literally offering new perspectives on an iconic painting.

Lovers of fine art and rare pieces should make Boloix a priority stop along Fridays Gallery Walk. These eye-catching pieces are just a few from a vast collection of works on display.

Frederic Boloix Fine Arts is at 351 Leadville Ave. N. in Ketchum. To learn more about the gallery, its art and artists, visit boloix.com.

The above-listed galleries are but a smattering of all those opening their doors and taking part in Fridays Gallery Walk. Those hoping to squeeze in a little arts appreciation this Valentines Day can drop in at any time from 5-8 p.m., enjoy a small glass of something and a polite nibble of something else, and bask in some of Ketchums myriad visual artistic offerings.

Visit svgalleries.org for information on future Gallery Walks and to learn more about the Sun Valley Gallery Association and its nine members.

See the original post:

First Gallery Walk of 2020 is Friday | Arts | mtexpress.com - Idaho Mountain Express and Guide

On this episode of Digital Trends Live, hosts Greg Nibler and Adrien Warner dive into the biggest-trending topics in tech, including the removal of the ToTok app from Apple and Google app stores, Apples interest in satellites, Googles acquisition of Typhoon Studios, a Switch knockoff, Starliner nails the landing, a hot dog-cooking robot, and more.

Jarred Kessler

Nibler also speaks with Jarred Kessler, founder and chief executive officer of EasyKnock, a company that allows homeowners to sell their homes while staying in their house as renters until they find another place to live.

We then take a closer look at the Sigma FP camera, the worlds smallest full-frame digital camera thats perfect for YouTubers.

We also look back at some of the biggest achievements from the last decade of space exploration from the Hubble telescope, to the measuring of gravitational waves, to the completion of the International Space Station.

Finally, Nibler sits down with DT Senior Editor Drew Prindle to look at some awesome tech you cant buy yet, from a self-balancing e-scooter, to solar cell headphones, to a 3D-printable camera.

See the article here:

Digital Trends Live: Removing ToTok, Apple wants satellites, and more - Digital Trends

The Hubble Space Telescope is photographed at the moment of release from space shuttle Discovery on ... [+] April 25, 1990 as part of STS-31, the Space Shuttle's mission to deploy the observatory.

Mans greatest scientific tool? The Hubble Space Telescope has been the science icon of our times. Launched in 1990, for almost 30 years (or at least since a space shuttle mission fixed its flawed mirror in 1993) its been beaming back stupendous images of nebula, globular clusters, distant galaxies and much more from Earth orbit.

The Hubble Space Telescopea joint project of NASA and the European Space Agencyhas arguably been at its best since 2009, when its fifth and final servicing mission by astronauts saw it being fitted with its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Able to probe the Universe in ultraviolet light, that camera alone has been responsible for some of the telescopes best work, which we present here.

HST wont last forever. Due to be surpassed shortly by the Webb Space Telescope, HST is expected to carry on until the mid 2020s until the radiation levels get too much for its sensors.

So here they are, the Hubble Space Telescopes best work of its final full decade.

This image captures the chaotic activity atop a pillar of gas and dust, three light-years tall, ... [+] which is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around the Earth.

In celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, ... [+] astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble's eye to an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewels across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light.

This new Hubble image, captured and released to celebrate the telescopes 23rd year in orbit, 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.This image shows the region in infrared light, which has longer wavelengths than visible light and can pierce through the dusty material that usually obscures the nebulas inner regions. The result is a rather ethereal and fragile-looking structure, made of delicate folds of gas very different to the nebulas appearance in visible light.

This close-up, visible-light view by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals new details of the Ring ... [+] Nebula. a well-known planetary nebula 2,000 light years distant, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star. The tiny white dot in the center of the nebula is the star's hot core, called a white dwarf. The object is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. The Hubble observations reveal that the nebula's shape is more complicated than astronomers thought. The blue gas in the nebula's center is actually a football-shaped structure that pierces the red doughnut-shaped material. Hubble also uncovers the detailed structure of the dark, irregular knots of dense gas embedded along the inner rim of the ring. The knots look like spokes in a bicycle. The Hubble images have allowed the research team to match up the knots with the spikes of light around the bright, main ring, which are a shadow effect. The Hubble observations were taken Sept. 19, 2011, by the Wide Field Camera 3.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014 image is a composite of separate exposures taken in 2002 to 2012 ... [+] with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and its new-in-2009 Wide Field Camera 3. It shows a small section of space in the southern-hemisphere constellation Fornax.

The largest NASA Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled, this sweeping bird's-eye view of a ... [+] portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic next-door neighbor. Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, the Hubble telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy's pancake-shaped disk. It's like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And, there are lots of stars in this sweeping view over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk. This ambitious photographic cartography of the Andromeda galaxy represents a new benchmark for precision studies of large spiral galaxies that dominate the universe's population of over 100 billion galaxies. This is the first data that reveal populations of stars in context to their home galaxy.

The Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation' redux taken this time in near-infrared light, which ... [+] transforms the pillars into eerie, wispy silhouettes, which are seen against a background of myriad stars. The near-infrared light can penetrate much of the gas and dust, revealing stars behind the nebula as well as hidden away inside the pillars.

The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resemble a glittering fireworks display in the ... [+] 25th anniversary NASA Hubble Space Telescope image to commemorate a quarter century of exploring the solar system and beyond since its launch on April 24, 1990.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a globular cluster known as NGC 104 or, more ... [+] commonly, 47 Tucanae, since it is part of the constellation of Tucana (The Toucan) in the southern sky. After Omega Centauri it is the brightest globular cluster in the night sky, hosting tens of thousands of stars.

This image displays the galaxies NGC 4302 seen edge-on and NGC 4298, both located 55 million ... [+] light-years away. They were observed by Hubble to celebrate its 27th year in orbit. The galaxy NGC 4298 is seen almost face-on, allowing us to see its spiral arms and the blue patches of ongoing star formation and young stars. In the edge-on disc of NGC 4302 huge swathes of dust are responsible for the mottled brown patterns, but a burst of blue to the left side of the galaxy indicates a region of extremely vigorous star formation. The image is a mosaic of four separate captures from Hubble, taken between 2 and 22 January 2017, that have been stitched together to give this amazing field of view.

The Crab Nebula, the result of a bright supernova explosion seen by Chinese and other astronomers in ... [+] the year 1054, is 6,500 light-years from Earth. At its center is a super-dense neutron star, rotating once every 33 milliseconds, shooting out rotating lighthouse-like beams of radio waves and light a pulsar (the bright dot at image center). The nebula's intricate shape is caused by a complex interplay of the pulsar, a fast-moving wind of particles coming from the pulsar, and material originally ejected by the supernova explosion and by the star itself before the explosion. This image combines data from five different telescopes: the VLA (radio) in red; Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) in yellow; Hubble Space Telescope (visible) in green; XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue; and Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-ray) in purple.

This stunning image from Hubble shows the majestic galaxy NGC 1015, found nestled within the ... [+] constellation of Cetus (The Whale) 118 million light-years from Earth. In this image, we see NGC 1015 face-on, with its beautifully symmetrical swirling arms and bright central bulge creating a scene akin to a sparkling Catherine wheel firework.NGC 1015 has a bright, fairly large centre and smooth, tightly wound spiral arms and a central bar of gas and stars. This shape leads NGC 1015 to be classified as a barred spiral galaxy just like our home, the Milky Way. Bars are found in around two-thirds of all spiral galaxies, and the arms of this galaxy swirl outwards from a pale yellow ring encircling the bar itself. Scientists believe that any hungry black holes lurking at the centre of barred spirals funnel gas and energy from the outer arms into the core via these glowing bars, feeding the black hole, fueling star birth at the centre and building up the galaxys central bulge.

This colorful image, taken by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, celebrates the Earth-orbiting ... [+] observatorys 28th anniversary of viewing the heavens, giving us a window seat to the universes extraordinary tapestry of stellar birth and destruction. At the center of the photo, a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust. This mayhem is all happening at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 4,000 light-years away and visible in binoculars simply as a smudge of light with a bright core.

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the giant, petulant star Eta Carinae is yielding new surprises. ... [+] Now, using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to probe the nebula in ultraviolet light, astronomers have uncovered the glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas (shown in blue) in places they had not seen it before. The luminous magnesium resides in the space between the dusty bipolar bubbles and the outer shock-heated nitrogen-rich filaments (shown in red).

This image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on Nov. 16, 2019 captures comet 2I/Borisov ... [+] streaking though our solar system and on its way back to interstellar space. It is only the second interstellar object known to have passed through the solar system. Comet 2I/Borisov appears in front of a distant background spiral galaxy (2MASX J10500165-0152029).

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

Read the original here:

The Best Images From The Hubble Space Telescopes Final Full Decade As Our Iconic Eye On The Sky - Forbes

In 2005, Fox debuted a new name for its Sunday night programming block: Animation Domination, a two-hour run of American Dad!, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and King of the Hill. The four shows mostly stood out from one another: Family Guy and American Dad! shared styles and creative teams, but they were more frenetic than The Simpsons, more into referential comedy, more surrealist, and more hollow; King of the Hill was on the other side of the spectrum, warmer and quieter and more sly.

This Sunday, after abandoning the brand five years ago, Fox will revive the Animation Domination block, including OG shows The Simpsons and Family Guy, Sunday night mainstay Bobs Burgers, as well as a new series from Emily Spivey called Bless the Harts. Its a fast-moving, very funny show about a working-class family trying to make ends meet, featuring the voices of Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Jillian Bell, and Ike Barinholtz. The pilot episode is extraordinarily promising, but its also suggestive of what the Animation Domination block has been, and what it could be in the future.

Shows came and went through Animation Domination over the years, including The Cleveland Show, Axe Cop, and Golan the Insatiable, but no addition stuck as well as Bobs Burgers, the sweet, smart, endlessly generous comedy about a family who owns and operates a burger shop. In spite of the differences among the Domination shows, the longevity of Bobs Burgers points to what most of the block has had in common: Theyre typically shows about middle-class and working-class American families, telling stories about everyday problems like money, marital tension, job insecurity, and local communities.

Bless the Harts fits into that tradition nicely. The first episode is about a battle between Jenny (Wiig) and her mother, Betty (Rudoloph), over the family finances. Their water is about to be shut off, and as Jenny rifles through the large stack of bills trying to decide which one to pay (the answer is: none of them), she stumbles across a bill for a storage locker she didnt know they had. It turns out, Bettys been renting a large storage locker for years so she can house her massive collection of not-quite-Beanie Babies Bless the Harts calls them Hug n Bugs which Betty assumes will boom in value and save the family from ruin.

Jokes about the Beanie Baby bubble are not new, just as a family does some wacky stuff to pay the bills is not new. But Bless the Harts takes a well-worn thread and weaves hilarious gold out of it, first by making the Hug n Bugs into a mashup of 90s memorabilia that turns each Hug n Bug line into a cornucopia of goofy, nostalgia-skewering references (Nelson Mandela Super Soaker Hug n Bug! Sir Mix-a-Lot Hubble Telescope! Tamagotchi OJ Trial!). Then, where other shows would mine these faux Beanie Babies are actually worthless for a reveal, Bless the Harts is more interested in what happens next, spinning the episodes premise into an escalating series of miscommunications that concludes, improbably, in a glorious, symbolic (and literal) bonfire. At the same time, a B-plot about the relationship between Jennys daughter, Violet (Bell), and Jennys live-in boyfriend, Wayne (Barinholtz), demonstrates the fundamental compassion of the show. Itd be easy to imagine that relationship as contentious or dismissive, but Harts turns Wayne and Violet into a pairing you root for.

All together, Bless the Harts is a very nice way to round out the revived Animation Domination block, with the new show ably taking up a position once held by King of the Hill. The difference and the reason Bless the Harts makes such a promising addition is that in previous years, Foxs Sunday night animated lineup might just as well have been called Male Domination. Its shows, all 14 of them from 2005 to 2014, had male creators (save for Napoleon Dynamite co-creator Jerusha Hess) and male lead characters. Marge Simpson and Linda Belcher are powerful characters, but men have been the main anchor for most of these series, either as single men with a group of friends or as father figures coping with their family members.

Bless the Harts looks different, and its creators do too. Like more than one great live-action TV show before it Im thinking specifically of Gilmore Girls and Jane the Virgin the triad of a grandmother, mother, and daughter are a compelling foundation for Bless the Harts family structure. Even in the pilot episode, you feel how interesting and rich the story can be when several generations live in the same house. The burden of supporting the family largely falls on Jenny, but Betty has financial responsibility too, and the economic and social pressures are distributed more evenly between the three protagonists than they would be in a traditional dad-brings-home-the-bacon structure. Each character has more autonomy and more power.

The effort to include shows made by women and starring women isnt contained to just a single show, either: In 2020, Fox will add two other animated series with female creators to the Animation Domination block, Duncanville (created by Amy Poehler, Mike Scully, and Julie Scully) and The Great North (created by Wendy Molyneux, Lizzie Molyneux, and Loren Bouchard). Its not enough, of course, but its a heartening step in the right direction. It also suggests how much this TV genre not just animation, but shows about working- and middle-class families still has to say when different voices get a chance to tell their stories. With its fast, absurd, dry sense of humor, hopefully Bless the Harts will have a chance to stick around for a long time.

View original post here:

Bless the Harts Shakes Up Animation Domination - Vulture

Now heres a picture you wont see very often: nine astronauts on the International Space Station at the same time!

Usually, the crew size is three or six, depending on the sequence of flights to and from the orbiting outpost. But due to rather unusual circumstances for about a week it will be pretty crowded on the ISS until three astronauts leave again. Normally it would be the three who have been in space the longest, and two of them are indeed going home next week. However, Christina Kochs residency has been extended another six months into February 2020, which will push her into first place for the longest duration spaceflight for a female astronaut.

In her place, a very special visitor will return to Earth.

Hazzaa Ali Almansoori is the first-ever astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. He has diligently completed all the required training for a short duration spaceflight and will enjoy a special guest status on the ISS. But like any guest there he will have to pull his weight and hes prepared to work hard for the privilege. He is officially classified as a Spaceflight Participant, which sounds a lot better than space tourist, and is also far more accurate since he will be working during his time in space.

Nine people will use up 50% more resources on the ISS for eight days. But its not just food and water its also air. The ISS was always meant for about half a dozen people, and all its capabilities are geared towards that number. From air to accommodations, from water use to water recycling, it works best for six people. But that doesnt mean it wont be able to handle nine astronauts for a week!

Having extra people is actually coming in very handy right now: a cargo transport from Japan will arrive on Saturday, and all the good stuff will have to be unpacked and stowed. Along with food and water and other supplies, the spacecraft will also carry parts to repair a cosmic ray detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, and brand new batteries to replace the aging ones on the space station. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was not designed to be repaired in orbit, so it will take about half a dozen spacewalks to get back to business. Like the Hubble Telescope repairs, these will be very complex and the astronauts working on them had to receive special training, as its not as easy as pulling out a filter for your AC and snapping a new one in place.

The stations batteries are rechargeable of course, and they have to be, as all the stations electricity is generated by solar panels, and the electricity has to be stored somewhere to keep the place running when it swings around the night side of the Earth. But like all rechargeable batteries, they dont last forever and eventually, they will suffer from battery fatigue, when they simply cant hold a full charge anymore. Lives depend on these batteries so they must be regularly replaced well before their performance declines. The new batteries will be the Lithium-Ion kind, which pack a far greater punch than the ones currently in place, so fewer of them are needed for the same task. Its a win-win situation!

Almost a dozen spacewalks are planned before the end of the year. Doing repairs outside the station isnt as easy as ambling out to your garden shed. Every spacewalk is a dangerous undertaking that requires extensive training and many hours of preparation as well as other crew members waiting in the airlock, ready to go outside and assist in an emergency.

If all goes as planned well also have the first commercial crew capsules arriving, and possibly even the first commercial crewed spaceflights. And we really need those now, as Russia has only two flights to the ISS scheduled for next year. To maintain a proper crew rotation, we need far more crewed missions than that, so keep your fingers crossed that both the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Boeing Starliner test flights go well and regularly scheduled commercial flights can commence. Besides, its been far too long since the U.S. has launched astronauts into space from American soil!

Beate Czogalla is the Professor of Theater Design in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a Solar System Ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at our_space2@yahoo.com

Read more:

OUR SPACE: It's getting crowded on the ISS - The Union-Recorder

The following lectures are scheduled this week in the community. All events are free and open to the public:

12:30 p.m. Tuesday. The Innovation Paradox: Developing County Capabilities and the Unrealized Promise of Technological Catch-Up, William Maloney, chief economist for equitable growth, finance and institutions at The World Bank Group. C103 Hesburgh Center, University of Notre Dame.

4 p.m. Wednesday. Morsifications and Mutations, Sergey Fomin, University of Michigan. 229 Hayes-Healy Hall, University of Notre Dame.

7 p.m. Wednesday. Why Public Wages, Barrett Ward, CEO of ABLE. Jordan Auditorium, Mondoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame.

3 p.m. Friday. Fairness, Sanction, and Condemnation, Pamela Hieronymi, professor of philosophy at the University of California Los Angeles. 104 Bond Hall, University of Notre Dame.

10:30 a.m. Saturday. Dorothy Day, Servant of God, The Eucharist Orders us to the Poor, John C. Cavadini, director, McGrath Institute for Church Life; professor of theology. Andrews Auditorium, lower level of Geddes Hall adjacent to Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame.

11:30 a.m. Saturday. The New Science of Compassion as the Hubble Telescope for the Health Professions: How the Science of Compassion is Uncovering What is Essential for Medical Training and Clinical Practice, Dominic O. Vachon. Jordan Hall of Science, Auditorium 105, University of Notre Dame.

12:30 p.m. Saturday. Optics and Natural Magic in the Renaissance, Robert Goulding, director, John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. Snite Museums Annenberg Auditorium, University of Notre Dame.

Read more here:

At the podium: Free public lectures this week - South Bend Tribune

+

Webb often gets called the replacement for Hubble, but we prefer to call it a successor. After all, Webb is the scientific successor to Hubble; its science goals were motivated by results from Hubble. Hubble's science pushed us to look to longer wavelengths to "go beyond" what Hubble has already done. In particular, more distant objects are more highly redshifted, and their light is pushed from the UV and optical into the near-infrared. Thus observations of these distant objects (like the first galaxies formed in the Universe, for example) requires an infrared telescope.

This is the other reason that Webb is not a replacement for Hubble is that its capabilities are not identical. Webb will primarily look at the Universe in the infrared, while Hubble studies it primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths (though it has some infrared capability). Webb also has a much bigger mirror than Hubble. This larger light collecting area means that Webb can peer farther back into time than Hubble is capable of doing. Hubble is in a very close orbit around the earth, while Webb will be 1.5 million kilometers (km) away at the second Lagrange(L2) point.

Read on to explore some of the details of what these differences mean.

+

Webb will observe primarily in the infrared and will have four science instruments to capture images and spectra of astronomical objects. These instruments will provide wavelength coverage from 0.6 to 28 micrometers (or "microns"; 1 micron is 1.0 x 10-6 meters). The infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum goes from about 0.75 microns to a few hundredmicrons. This means that Webb's instruments will work primarily in theinfrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability inthe visible range (in particular in the red and up to the yellow part of the visible spectrum).

The instruments on Hubble can observe a small portion of the infrared spectrum from 0.8 to 2.5 microns, but its primary capabilities are in the ultra-violet and visible parts of the spectrum from 0.1 to 0.8 microns.

+

Why are infrared observations important to astronomy? Stars and planets that are just forming lie hidden behind cocoons of dust that absorb visible light. (The same is true for the very center of our galaxy.) However, infrared light emitted by these regions can penetrate this dusty shroud and reveal what is inside.

At left are infrared and visible light images from the Hubble Space Telescope of the Monkey Head Nebula, a star-froming region. A jet of material from a newly forming star is visible in one of the pillars, just above and left of centre in the right-hand image. Several galaxies are seen in the infrared view, much more distant than the columns of dust and gas.

[top]

+

The Earth is 150 million km from the Sun and the moon orbits the earth at a distance of approximately 384,500 km.The Hubble Space Telescope orbits around the Earth at an altitude of ~570 km above it. Webb will not actually orbit the Earth - instead it will sit at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million km away!

Because Hubble is in Earth orbit, it was able to be launched into space by the space shuttle. Webb will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket and because it won't be in Earth orbit, it is not designed to be serviced by the space shuttle.

+

At the L2 point Webb's solar shield will block the light from the Sun, Earth, and Moon. This will help Webb stay cool, which is very important for an infrared telescope.

As the Earth orbits the Sun, Webb will orbit with it - but stay fixed in the same spot with relation to the Earth and the Sun, as shown in the diagram to the left. Actually, satellites orbit around the L2 point, as you can see in the diagram - they don't stay completely motionless at a fixed spot.

+

Because of the time it takes light to travel, the further away an object is, the further back in time we are looking.

This illustration compares various telescopes and how far back they are able to see. Essentially, Hubble can see the equivalent of "toddler galaxies" and Webb Telescope will be able see "baby galaxies".One reason Webb will be able to see the first galaxies is because it is an infrared telescope. The universe (and thus the galaxies in it) is expanding. When we talk about the most distant objects, Einsteins General Relatively actually comes into play. It tells us that the expansion of the universe means it is the space between objects that actually stretches, causing objects (galaxies) to move away from each other. Furthermore, any light in that space will also stretch, shifting that light's wavelength to longer wavelengths. This can make distant objects very dim (or invisible) at visible wavelengths of light, because that light reaches us as infrared light. Infrared telescopes, like Webb, are ideal for observing these early galaxies.

[top]

+

The Herschel Space Observatory was an infrared telescope built by the European Space Agency - it too orbited the L2 point (where Webb will be).

The primary difference between Webb and Herschel is wavelength range: Webb goes from 0.6 to 28.5 microns; Herschel went from 60 to 500 microns. Webb is also larger, with a 6.5 meter mirror vs. Herschel's 3.5 meters.

The wavelength ranges were chosen by different science: Herschel looked for the extremes, the most actively star-forming galaxies, which emit most of their energy in the far-IR. Webb will find the first galaxies to form in the early universe, for which it needs extreme sensitivity in the near-IR.

At right is an infrared image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) taken by Herschel (orange) with an X-ray image from XMM-Newton superposed over it (blue).

[top]

Continued here:

Webb vs Hubble Telescope - Webb/NASA

NASA, ESA, P. Oesch (University of Geneva), and M. Montes (University of New South Wales)

I honestly almost can't believe this is real and it makes me feel so infinitely small.

Look at this. Just look at it. Take your time with it.

This image of the cosmos comescourtesy of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, using ultraviolet vision to capture one of the most expansive images of galaxies yet. Combining ultraviolet light with infrared and visible-light data from the Space Telescope has allowed astronomers to build this incredible map of the universe's evolutionary history.

NASA calls it, "one of the largest panoramic views of the fire and fury of star birth in the distant universe." Because light from distant galaxies takes so long to reach us, we are able to see through time. This image lets astronomers look back and track stars being born over the last 11 billion years and features some 15,000 galaxies -- and stars are forming in about 80 percent of them.

This isn't the first time Hubble has provided us with a look back in time either, with the Hubble Ultra Violet Ultra Deep Field's release in 2014. The image above shows an area 14 times larger than its 2014 counterpart.

Space, hey.

Batteries Not Included: The CNET team reminds us why tech is cool.

Culture: Your hub for everything from film and television to music, comics, toys and sports.

Excerpt from:

NASA's Hubble Telescope captures 15,000 galaxies in one ...