Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

NASA's most beloved space telescope is nearly back to normal.

Three of the Hubble Space Telescope's four science instruments are now back to work as the team behind the observatory continues to investigate and assess a glitch that sent all four instruments into safe mode on Oct. 25.

Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) has now joined the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in resuming observations, according to a statement released Monday (Nov. 29). The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) is now the only Hubble instrument that remains in safe mode.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

The observatory's science instruments went into safe mode after issues arose with a type of message that governs the instruments' internal clocks. The "loss of a specific synchronization message," as the situation is formally known, first occurred on Oct. 23, but resetting the instruments got them back to work quickly.

But not for long. Two days later, "the science instruments again issued error codes indicating multiple losses of synchronization messages" and went into safe mode, according to a NASA statement.

Hubble personnel worked to troubleshoot the issue using a retired instrument that remains aboard the observatory, then began applying fixes to each of Hubbles science instruments in turn. In tandem, the team is also working on software changes that would prevent science instruments from shutting down in a similar situation of multiple losses of synchronization messages.

The Hubble Space Telescope, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), entered Earth orbit in April 1990 after launching aboard space shuttle Discovery. During the observatory's first two decades, astronauts were able to visit Hubble aboard space shuttles to replace instruments and conduct other upgrades and repairs.

But for the past 10 years, Hubble has been on its own: NASA retired the fleet of space shuttles in 2011, so astronauts can no longer visit the observatory. In that time, the Hubble Space Telescope has weathered its share of glitches, including most recently a computer issue that knocked the observatory out of service for a month this summer.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Hubble telescope restores 3rd instrument in slow return to operations - Space.com

Howard Hochhalter| The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature

Did you everthink about the factthat astronomy is a sciencethatdeals with what was rather than what is?

Seriously.Lets sayan astronomer trains a telescope tonight atthe Andromeda Galaxy, the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5millionlight-years away,andalight-year is how far light travels in one year (5.87 trillion miles), sothe lightfromthe Andromeda Galaxy that our astronomer seestonightleft that galaxy 2.5 million years ago, about the time early hominids started using stone tools.

Even an astronomical event that happens in the present, such as a meteor shower, is a trip to the past.

Take theGeminidmeteor shower, which reaches its peak the nights of Dec. 13 and 14.

Most meteor showers occur when theEarth plows through debris left by a comet. When those cometary bits and pieces, usually the size of a grain of rice, hit the atmosphere,they burnup and create what some people call falling or shooting stars. The parent of OctobersOrionid meteor shower, for example, is the famous comet Halley.

The parent of the Geminids, however, is an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon. As it approaches the sunin its 1.7-year orbit aroundit, chunks of the asteroid break off to become the meteors of the Geminids as they rip through Earths atmosphere at 79,000 mph.

Producing up to 150 meteors per hour, including the occasional fireball, the Geminids were first recorded in 1833so meteors you see during this monthsshower might be from 3200 Phaethons first appearance in our part of the solar system, 188 years ago, or they might be from the asteroids most recent visit, in 2020. In any case, youre looking into the past.

Meteor showers are named for the constellation from which they seem to radiate (its called the radiant), and, for the Geminids, thats Gemini, which rises a little after 9 p.m. Nov. 13.

A waxing gibbous moon, 75% illuminated, will wash out meteors for much of the night, but it will set at2:25a.m. Dec. 14, while Gemini is still high in the sky, which means youll have good viewing until civil twilight at 6:47 a.m.

Our final iteminvolvesa tripwayback into the pastalmost to the beginning of time.

On Dec.18, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency,will blast offaboard an Ariane 5 rocketfrom the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, on a mission that will look more than 13 billion years into the past and allow us to see light created just after the big bang.

For anyone interested in astronomy, this is a very exciting mission, one that is expected to surpass even theaccomplishmentsof the Hubble Space Telescope, which are many.

For more than 30 years, weve marveled at the mesmerizingly beautiful imagesHubblehas sent back to Earthand at the advances in our understanding of the universe the telescope has provided.Hubblehas made more than 1.9 millionobservations, and its data havebeen the source of more than 18,000 scientific papers, which, themselves have been cited inalmost 1 million otherpapers.

The worlds most brilliant astronomers do miracles with this observatory, said David Leckrone, former Hubble senior project scientist. And it just keeps going on and on and on, and my jaw keeps dropping lower and lower with each new discovery.

And, according to NASA scientist Michelle Thaller, Theres not a single astronomer in the world whose life hasnt been touched by Hubble.

So, whysuch high expectations forthe Webb Space Telescope?

Lets compare thetwo telescopes.

Size: When it comes to reflecting telescopes, the bigger the mirror, themore lightit gathers(in other words, the more it cansee).Hubblesmirror is 7 feet, 10 inches. Webbs mirror is 21 feet, 4 inches.

What Webb and Hubble see: While both telescopes operate in the visible spectrum (that is, they can photograph objectsvisible to humans),Webb will be able to see farther into the infraredportionof the spectrumthan Hubble does. This is important because light from the most distant galaxies (those formed soon after the big bang) reaches Earth as infrared light, and the more infrared light a telescope can detect, the more distant galaxies it will see.

Location: We send telescopes to space so they dont have to deal with manmade light pollution and the blurring effects of Earths atmosphere.Hubble orbits the Earth, atanaltitude of 340 miles. Webb willnot orbit the Earth; rather it will be at a fixed location called the second Lagrange point, or L2, 1 million miles from Earth.

ALagrange pointthere are five of themis aplacein space where the gravitational forces of two large bodies, such as the Earth and sun, cancel each other out, and an object, such as a telescope, can be parked there to make observations. Picture the Earth in its orbit around the sun; now, draw a straight line from the center of the sun through the center of the Earth, extendingto a point1 million miles past Earth. Thatis L2.

So, the Hubble telescope orbits the Earth, passing between the Earth and sun and between the Earth and moon,its observations affected by light from the sun, Earth and moon,buttheWebb telescope will always be on the oppositeside of the Earth from the sun, pointing its giant mirror out into the depths of space.Further, apolymershieldthe size of a tennis court will block all light from the sun, Earth, and moon, insuring a constantly dark sky for the telescope to peer into.

It will take roughly 30 days for Webb to reach its orbit at L2, then, after six months of checkouts and calibrations, its science mission will begin.

We can only wonder what its first images will be.

Astronomy by the Bay:TheBishopwill provide telescopesso you can observethe waxing gibbous moon andthe planets Venus, Saturn and Jupiter, which will be lined up like a string of pearls along the ecliptic in the western sky.And, yes, were still lookinginto the past:Venus, the closest of our three planets,is almost 60 million miles from Earth right now; thats more than five light minutes away, so the light youll see when you look at Venus left the planet five minutes before you see it. The event is freebut registration is required.(Dec. 14, 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., The Bay Park, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota)

How to Use Your Telescope: Need some help figuring out how to use your telescope? Meet us out at Robinson Preserve and we will help you figure it all out! Dont forget to bring your telescope with you! The session is free but group size is limited and registration is required. (Dec. 18, 4:30-5:30 p.m., Robinson Preserve, 10299 9th Ave. NW, Bradenton)

Stelliferous, featuring the Star of Kings:This star has been a popular topic at planetarium shows since the 1940s,aspeople explore astronomical explanations for the star described in the nativity story. Was it a comet, a supernova or something else entirely? JoinmeinThe Planetarium,where welltake a journeyback in timeto what was really happening in the skies some 2,000 years ago. Cost is $8for members of theDiscoverySociety, $10for all others. (Dec. 22,7 p.m., The Bishop, 201 10th St. West, Bradenton;Dec. 23: Star of Kings will replace our regularly scheduled liveStar TalkinThe Planetarium. 12:15 p.m. Included in the price ofMuseumadmission.)

For further program details and registration, visit BishopScience.org/events.

Howard Hochhalter isdirectorofThe PlanetariumatThe Bishop Museum of Science and Nature. Each month, he hostsStelliferous, a live discussion at the Museum of whats happening in our night skies and in the world of astronomy. VisitThe Bishoponline atBishopScience.orgto register or to learn about other events and activities at the Museum.

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Stelliferous: Geminid meteor shower, and the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

771: Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman.

1456: An earthquake strikes Naples, killing 35,000.

1492: Christopher Columbus discovers Hispaniola (Haiti).

1496: Jews are expelled from Portugal by order of King Manuel I.

1717: English pirate Blackbeard ransacks the merchant sloop Margaret and keeps her captain, Henry Bostock prisoner for eight hours. Bostock later provides the first description of Blackbeards appearance.

1791: Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies aged 35.

1792: George Washington is re-elected as president of the USA.

1804: Thomas Jefferson is re-elected as president of the USA.

1830: Hector Berliozs Symphonique Fantastique premieres in Paris. On the same day, poet Christina Rossetti is born in London.

1832: Andrew Jackson is re-elected as president of the USA.

1837: Hector Berliozs Requiem premieres.

1848: President James K. Polk triggers the Gold Rush of 1849 by confirming the discovery of gold in California.

1870: French author Alexandre Dumas dies aged 68.

1872: The Mary Celeste is discovered mysteriously abandoned by her crew in the Atlantic Ocean.

1890: The entire version of Hector Berliozs epic opera Les Troyens premieres in Karlsruhe, 21 years after the composers death.

1901: Walt Disney is born in Chicago.

1914: The Italian parliament proclaims the countrys neutrality.

1917: Austro-German Forces launch an offensive against the Italians on the western end of their line, around Asiago.

1925: Hans Luther is forced to resign as Chancellor and head of the German Weimar government.

1926: French impressionist painter Claude Monet dies from lung cancer aged 86.

1932: Albert Einstein is granted a visa to enter America.

1933: Prohibition ends in the US when the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment.

1936: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan become constituent republics of the Soviet Union.

1941: A Soviet anti-offensive in Moscow drives out the Nazi army.

1945: Flight 19 the Lost Squadron of five torpedo bombers and 14 airmen is lost east of Florida in the Bermuda Triangle.

1947: Joe Louis beats Jersey Joe Walcott Walcott in 15 rounds for the heavyweight boxing title.

1949: Ezzard Charles beats Jersey Joe Walcott Walcott for the heavyweight boxing title

1950: Chinese forces fighting for their Korean comrades enter the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and push UN troops back. On the same day, Ezzard Charles KOs Nick Barone in Round 11 for the heavyweight boxing title.

1955: The Montgomery Improvement Association formed by Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Edgar Nixon to support the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama.

1957: New York becomes the first US city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market. On the same day, President Sukarno of Indonesia expels all Dutch people.

1958: Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the UK by the Queen when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh. On the same day, the Preston bypass, the UKs first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. It is now part of the M6 and M55.

1960: Ghana drops diplomatic relations with Belgium.

1963: Singles chart:

1965: The Beatles play in their home town for the last time when they appeared at The Liverpool Empire.

1974: The final episode of Monty Pythons Flying Circus airs on BBC TV.

1977: President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt breaks all relations with Arab hardliners Syria, Libya, Algeria and South Yemen.

1979: Ireland premier Jack Lynch resigns.

1987: Fat Larry James, drummer, singer and leader of Fat Larrys Band dies of a heart attack aged 38.

1988: A Federal Grand Jury indicts televangelist Jim Bakker for fraud after he paid hush money to cover up an alleged rape.

1989: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defeats Sir Anthony Meyer in the first challenge to her leadership of the Conservative Party. On the same day, the French TGV train reaches a world record speed of 482.4kph.

1991: Administrators are called in to try to salvage the Maxwell business empire, which is at least 1bn in debt.

1993: Astronauts begin to repair the Hubble telescope in space. On the same day, guitarist and songwriter Doug Hopkins of the Gin Blossoms dies of self-inflicted gunshot wounds age 32 a day after sneaking out of rehab in Phoenix, Arizona.

1995: Sri Lankan troops drive Tamil Tiger guerrillas out of their heartland capital of Jaffna. Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) reveal that in the weeks before his death, Robert Maxwell had removed 350m from its pension fund without authority.

2003: Coldplay singer Chris Martin marries actress Gwyneth Paltrow in California.

2005: The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the UK.

2006: Lyrics handwritten by Sir Paul McCartney to an early version of Maxwells Silver Hammer sold for $192,000 (97,000) at an auction in New York. On the same day, Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrows the government in Fiji. Also, Audrey Hepburns Givenchy little black dress from the film Breakfast at Tiffanys is auctioned for charity for a record 467,200 at Christies in London.

2007: A gunman opens fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska mall, killing eight people before taking his own life.

2008: Human remains previously found in 1991 are finally identified by Russian and American scientists as those of Tsar Nicholas II. On the same day, O J Simpson is sentenced to 33 years in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery.

2010: Album chart:

2012: Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck dies aged 91.

2013: Nelson Mandela dies aged 95.

2016: Malta becomes the first country in Europe to outlaw conversion therapy.

2017: Russia is banned from the next Winter Olympics in South Korea over state-sponsored doping.

2018: A letter by Albert Einstein from 1954 on the concept of religion sells for $2.9 million at Christies in New York.

2019: National strike in France as more than 800,000 people in 100 cities protest against proposed pension reform.

BIRTHDAYS: Jeroen Krabb, actor, 77; Jos (Josep Maria) Carreras, tenor, 75; Kim Simmonds, guitarist (Savoy Brown), 74; Morgan Brittany (Suzanne Cupito) actress, 70; Eddie the Eagle Edwards, ski jumper, 58; Margaret Cho, comedian, 53; Sajid Javid, politician, 52; Ronnie OSullivan, snooker champion, 46; Paula Patton, actress, 46; Frankie Muniz, actor, 36; Anthony Martial, footballer, 26.

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It happened today - this day in history - December 5 - Yellow Advertiser

A new release from the Hubble telescope's vast archive shares an incredible space "snowman" filled with glowing gas.

The image shows the Snowman Nebula, which is a cloud of gas and dust in deep space. The Hubble Space Telescope's sharp eyes picked up the object from a distance of 6,000 light-years away, and rendered the image in a time exposure since the glow of the gas is very faint.

"Emission nebulas are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby massive stars that they glow with their own light," NASA said in a statement about the new image.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

"The radiation from these massive stars strips electrons from the nebula's hydrogen atoms in a process called ionization," the statement continues. "As the energized electrons revert from their higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, they emit energy in the form of light, causing the nebula's gas to glow."

The famed telescope picked up this new image during a survey of massive- and intermediate-size "protostars," or newly forming stars. Hubble used its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument "to look for hydrogen ionized by ultraviolet light from the protostars, jets from the stars, and other features," NASA officials wrote.

Hubble isn't quite working at its best. In late October, a synchronization error with its internal communications forced all five of its science instruments offline.

The team recovered the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on Nov. 7, and the same Wide Field Camera 3 responsible for this image on Nov. 21. WFC3 is the most heavily used of Hubble's instruments.

The observatory's other three instruments remain in a protective "safe mode" as ground engineers continue to carefully troubleshoot issues on the 31-year-old observatory. The Hubble team will next address an instrument called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which can observe far-ultraviolet light.

Although astronauts on five different missions visited Hubble to repair and upgrade the observatory, no additional visits are planned; servicing missions relied on NASA's space shuttle program, which ended in 2011.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Hubble telescope sees a space 'snowman' thousands of light-years away - Space.com

Astronomers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have discovered two galaxies that were previously hidden behinddense space dust. Dubbed REBELS-12-2 and REBELS-29-2, the galaxies are located 29 billion light-years away and their existence came to light as the ALMA radio telescopes in Chile's Atacama Desert pierced through the thick cosmic dust. Reportedly, it was because of this shroud of dust that both the galaxies escaped the eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The team of astronomers that spotted the two galaxies suggest that nearly 20% of galaxies in our universe are still hidden due to the heavy presence of dust in space. According to Pascal Oesch, associate professor of the Niels Bohr Institute, the astronomers already knew about the existence of these two galaxies through the Hubble Telescope. Detailing about the discovery, Oesch said as per Daily Mail.

We noticed that two of them had a neighbour that we didn't expect to be there at all. As both of these neighboring galaxies are surrounded by dust, some of their light is blocked, making them invisible to Hubble.

Thanks to the ALMA telescope, it was able to locate the two galaxies when Hubble failed to do so. The team says that the light from the two galaxies reached earth after travelling for nearly 13 billion years, and this light was captured by ALMA. The telescope, which is capable of trapping radio waves emerging from the deepest areas of the universe, creates high-resolution images by combining the light received by 66 of its antennas.

Oesch further says that one in every five galaxies in the universe are obscured from our view and the experts are counting on the James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled for launch next month, to unveil these hidden galaxies. Daily Mail reported him further saying, The next step is to identify the galaxies we overlooked, because there are far more than we thought. Thats where the James Webb Telescope will be a huge step forward. He added that the Webb Telescope will be able to uncover the hidden galaxies without much effort as it is much more sensitive in detecting longer wavelengths than any other telescope ever made.

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Two new galaxies discovered 29 billion light-years away out of 20% dust-hidden ones - Republic World

Typically these storms appear in the mid-latitudes and drift to the planets equator, where they weaken and then disintegrate. In 2018, Hubble spotted a massive dark spot drifting southward toward the equatorial killing zone, in Neptunes northern hemisphere.

Two years later, however, to the astonishment of astronomers and computer simulations, the storm had reversed course and was heading back north. Moreover, the reversal had coincided with the appearance of a new, slightly smaller storm called Dark Spot Jr. to the south perhaps a piece of the larger vortex that had split off, taking away energy and momentum as in some cosmic billiards game.

It was really exciting to see this one act like its supposed to act and then all of a sudden it just stops and swings back, said Michael Wong, a research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, in a news release from NASA last year. That was surprising.

In the most recent Neptune portrait, the large dark spot is still there in the north. But Junior has vanished, and the entire north pole region is dark. The Neptune weather forecasters still dont know why.

Savor these cosmic postcards while you can. The Hubble Space Telescope has been up there for more than 30 years, long past its planned service life, and it has been having more frequent troubles lately. Three times this year, the telescope endured extended shutdowns because of software problems.

But there is potentially good news coming with the scheduled launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December. The Webb telescope is almost three times bigger than Hubble. It is designed to see infrared or heat radiation rather than visible wavelengths, and thus can see through the clouds and hazes of these planets and map the heat below, shedding light, so to speak, on how these planets work. For a while anyway, if all goes well and things have not always gone well astronomers could have two complementary ways of understanding what is going on out there.

And thats the weather report from the outer planets. Its windy out there, and dont forget to wear your strongest sunblock on Uranus.

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The Hubble Telescope Checks In With the Most Distant Planets - The New York Times

Hubble Telescope, photographed from the Shuttle Discovery/NASA/Flickr Johnson

The Hubble Space Observatory has repeatedly justified its investment. For more than 30 years, the telescope has served science by helping humanity explore space. But the device is getting old and starts to work worse and worse.

Immediately after launch, the Hubble was found to be malfunctioning. But they managed to fix them thanks to the shuttle flights, thanks to which it was later even possible to modernize the space observatory. Shuttles no longer fly, so operators on Earth are doing the repairs. Fortunately, so far there have not been critical accidents that people on Earth could not cope with. Soon Hubble's successor, the next-generation James Webb telescope, will go into space, so the question arises: how much longer Hubble will operate.

Photos of the Hubble telescope taken during the STS-103 mission/Photo NASA Flickr Johnson

James Webb has not yet been launched and it will take more than a month before it is fully operational But even after that, Hubble will not be abandoned experts are likely planning to completely exhaust the giant resource of the legendary spacecraft.

NASA reports that the scientific mission of the space observatory has been extended until June 30, 2026. An additional $ 215 million is planned for this. The continuation of the mission takes place against the backdrop of problems with the Hubble equipment. But given the continued funding, it can be concluded that the problems are not critical and must be quickly resolved in order for the telescope to continue working.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space on April 24, 1990 thanks to the Discovery shuttle.

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How long will the Hubble Space Telescope work? - The Times Hub

The Hubble Telescope, which launched more than 30 years ago in 1990, just imaged a curious massive bubble in a nebula 170,000 light years away from Earth. The bubble sits in nebula N44, a seriously elaborate 1,000 light year wide nebula filled with stars of all ages and size, clouds of hydrogen gas, and at the center, this massive bubble.

The superbubble, as NASA calls it, is 250 light years wide, and scientists are not quite sure exactly why it exists. The dark expanse dotted with stars inside this nebula is a bit of a mystery, although at least one theory for this gaping center exists. One posits that massive stars inside the bubble produce stellar winds that may have blown surrounding gas away, creating the blob. Not everything about this theory quite makes sense, though, because the wind velocities measured within the bubble dont seem strong enough to do this.

Another, more compelling theory states that the bubble was likely created in multiple chain reaction star forming events, as the stars within it have massive age gaps compared to those on the rim of the bubble. The nebula glows from the cooling of the ionized gas that fills it, dropping from a high energy state to a low energy state. Regardless of its origins, the bubble is as entrancing as ever.

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Hubble imaged a 'superbubble' floating in space - Popular Science

A new supernova captured by the Hubble Space Telescope may act as a decoder for other star explosions.

Given that the telescope caught the star so early in its "cataclysmic demise," as NASA called it, astronomers say the research may eventually help them formulate an early warning system for other stars that might be about to explode.

Scientists are dubbing the event, known as SN 2020fqv, as the "Rosetta Stone of supernovas." That's a reference to the Rosetta Stone, which has the same text written in three different scripts, allowing historians to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. (The stone was inscribed in ancient Greek, which was well-known to scholars, as well as two forms of Egyptian script, which were then poorly understood.)

The actual stone, dating from about 2,200 years ago, was found by accident in 1799 by soldiers in Napoleon's army campaigning in Egypt; you can see it today in the British Museum in London. Investigators for the Hubble discovery admitted the term "Rosetta Stone" is used often as a metaphor for deciphering information, but noted the term is an apt description for the importance of this new cosmic work.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

"This is the first time we've been able to verify the mass with these three different methods for one supernova, and all of them are consistent," lead author Samaporn Tinyanont, a graduate student in astronomy at California Institute of Technology, said in a NASA statement.

"Now we can push forward using these different methods and combining them, because there are a lot of other supernovaswhere we have masses from one method but not another."

SN 2020fqv was found amid the Butterfly galaxies, a pair of spiral galaxies located roughly 60 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The supernova was first discovered in April 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego, California.

Coincidentally, the supernova was also in the view of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), whose primary mission is to search for relatively nearby planets outside of our solar system. Soon, Hubble and several ground-based telescopes joined the multinational observatory star party.

Hubble's sharp eyes allowed the observatory to look at the material close by the star, known as circumstellar material, only a few hours after the explosion occurred. Because the material clung onto the star until the last year of its life, astronomers say studying this stuff allows further research into what the star was doing before it died.

"We rarely get to examine this very close-in circumstellar material since it is only visible for a very short time, and we usually don't start observing a supernova until at least a few days after the explosion," Tinyanont said. "For this supernova, we were able to make ultra-rapid observations with Hubble, giving unprecedented coverage of the region right next to the star that exploded."

Helpfully, Hubble also has an archive of observations of this star dating to the 1990s. Astronomers probed the image series and added TESS observations of the system every 30 minutes in the days before the explosion, as well as during the explosion itself and for a few more weeks (before, we assume, the standard schedule of TESS shifted the telescope to gaze at another spot in the sky.)

Scientists then calculated the mass of the exploding star using three different methods: comparing observations with theoretical models, using information from a 1997 archival image of Hubble (this was to rule out higher-mass stars in the model), and measuring the amount of oxygen in the supernova, which is a proxy for mass. All three methods produced consistent results, with an estimate of 14 to 15 times the mass of our own sun.

One of the more famous unstable stars is Betelgeuse, a red supergiant that is late in its life and put up some antics in the last year or so. Co-author Ryan Foley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said he doesn't believe Betelgeuse itself is about to explode, but added that SN 2020fqv will help in building our database of stars to watch.

"This could be a warning system," Foley said of the explosion behavior Hubble and other observatories noted. "So if you see a star start to shake around a bit, start acting up, then maybe we should pay more attention and really try to understand what's going on there before it explodes. As we find more and more of these supernovaewith this sort of excellent data set, we'll be able to understand better what's happening in the last few years of a star's life."

A paper based on the research was published Thursday (Oct. 21) in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Hubble telescope spots doomed star that is the 'Rosetta stone' of supernovas - Space.com

The Hubble Space Telescope caught a pair of "squabbling" galaxies in action, according to the European Space Agency.

The pair of objects is known as Arp 86 and includes two galaxies roughly 220 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. They are known individually as NGC 7753 and the much smaller companion NGC 7752.

"The diminutive companion galaxy almost appears attached to NGC 7753, and it is this peculiarity that has earned the designation 'Arp 86' signifying that the galaxy pair appears in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies compiled by the astronomer Halton Arp in 1966," ESA officials wrote in a statement about the new research.

"The gravitational dance between the two galaxies will eventually result in NGC 7752 being tossed out into intergalactic space or entirely engulfed by its much larger neighbor," the added.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

The Hubble Space Telescope observations were meant to shed light on how cold gas in the area contributes to the formation of young stars observed in the image. The observatory examined star clusters, gas clouds and dust clouds in several environments in the neighborhood, including other galaxies outside of Arp 86, ESA stated.

The space telescope's work was combined with measurements from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a set of telescopes in the Chilean Andes optimized to peer through galactic dust in young systems. Between ALMA and Hubble, the research team is seeking more information about how stars are formed.

The research will also assist with future work by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to launch late in 2021 to explore the origins of the universe. One of Webb's research projects will be to look at dusty galaxies (such as Arp 86) to learn more about star evolution, ESA stated.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Hubble telescope spots a pair of 'squabbling' galaxies locked in cosmic dance - Space.com