Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

Kay Stratman was trained in traditional Asian brush painting, a watercolor method that uses distinctive brush strokes to create delicate yet vibrant color washes.

But, over the years, her technique has morphed into something distinctly her own.

Her latest exhibit, Natural Abstractions, on display at the Art Association Gallery at the Center for the Arts from Friday to July 29, takes inspiration from nature and turns it into abstract, colorful, vibrant paintings.

Broadly speaking her work is made up of colorful landscapes and scenes of wildlife. The exhibit draws its inspiration from nature as well even though the final, abstracted result could be interpreted in an infinite number of ways.

For me, theyre not completely abstract but for others they might be, she said. Its fun for people to see something completely different from what I intended.

Her painting method combines the control and precision of her training with the spontaneity and fluidity of the natural subjects she likes to paint.

The subject matter of her paintings includes hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, exploding nebulae in the night sky or even a walk through the woods among the elms. One of her paintings in the exhibit, Nova, is based on photographs from NASAs Hubble telescope.

Everythings an exaggeration of nature, she said.

Her technique involves layering stained rice paper infused with molten beeswax, also known as the encaustic method, in order to create depth and visual interest in her paintings. At the opening reception Stratman will demonstrate the fusion technique she used to create her art blowtorch and all and will raffle a small piece.

I used the watercolor on the rice paper in a very abstract way, she said. I would stain the paper to make all these colors run together and add interesting textures.

Stratman has worked on this body of work for years and accumulated about 30 pieces. The exhibit will occupy two floors at the Center.

Seen in person, Stratmans work has an added dimension to it.

One thing that photographs dont show you is the surface texture, which has all sorts of ripples and wrinkles in it, she said.

While the aqua blues and greens of nature dominate, one piece from the exhibit uses muted tones of gray, pink and purple.

While the inspiration usually comes first and the execution second, sometimes the process will be reversed shell notice that shes created colored papers that look like something she didnt intend them to, like fall foliage.

I layer four or five pieces of paper on my painting boards and then Ill splash and paint puddles of color on them, she said.

In that process some layers end up saturated with color and others less so. Stratman then peels them apart and decides which ones she feels work best for her artistic vision.

But Stratman hasnt completely abandoned the form she was trained in, and the exhibit includes references to Asian brush painting. If you look at the colorful abstractions long enough, youll notice elements like bamboo amidst the Western landscapes.

Stratman will give an artists talk July 20 at 6 p.m., coinciding with the townwide Gallery Art Walk.

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Torch meets beeswax in Stratman abstracts - Jackson Hole News&Guide

Tony Abbott spent a lot of time reflecting on issues of national importance last week, contemplating very publicly what he should have done differently when he was prime minister. His conclusions bear little resemblance to the broader publics views of his failings a lack of focus on jobs and education, a budget that undermined every single election promise his party made and the knighting of Prince Phillip.

No, if he had his time again he would have invested in more coalmines and nuclear-powered submarines. While the real prime ministers adversaries in his own party like to paint him as out of touch, Tony Abbotts pronouncements are those of a politician who couldnt read the public mood with the assistance of the Hubble space telescope.

Abbotts determination to remain in parliament, in the news and in the public eye cant only be because he wants to be a wrecker. He must believe even if he only whispers it to himself in the dark that he is relatively young, fit and capable of leading his party again. But todays Essential Report results show that not only does a good-sized chunk of the electorate want him out of parliament but his policy agenda is out of sync with the national conversation.

On the question of same-sex marriage, the trend towards growing support continues with 63% in favour and just a quarter against, representing the highest level of support for the issue in over a year. If you break these numbers down according to generations, the argument that marriage equality is inevitable is reinforced; 74% of 18-24-year-olds support same-sex marriage, compared with 48% of over 65-year-olds. The longer Abbott stays in parliament, the greater distance on this issue between him and the electorate. One area where his position matches the broader position of voters is whether this issue should be solved by a national vote or by parliament alone; 59% still favour a national vote.

But as I have said and written many times, the issues of same-sex marriage is rarely discussed in the qualitative work I have conducted on Australian attitudes; it is most often raised as an example of how our politicians seem incapable of dealing with issues that other countries seem capable of dealing with easily.

What does get raised constantly in all kinds of households, in all kinds of communities across the land, is the question of housing affordability. Abbott did very little on this when he was prime minister. His most recent policy ideas in this area have been to cut immigration and let people raid their superannuation. This reflects his lack of understanding that an issue as complex and acute as the availability and cost of housing requires a suite of policies, not just the few that align with his political agenda.

As the Essential Report numbers show, the community understand a range of measures are needed to deal with this escalating problem including tax incentives for downsizers, a ban on interest-only loans for property investors and, yes, reform of negative gearing.

His suggestion about superannuation is in fact the most polarising measure, receiving 44% support and 30% opposition. In my qualitative work on housing affordability, Ive found very strong views against this idea of using super to buy a home. Even among younger people desperate to get into the housing market, the idea of pillaging their super seems a short-term solution, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Let me end on a positive note for our former PM: the group of voters who are most supportive of him remaining in parliament in some capacity are independents, who dont vote Green, Labor or Liberal. Perhaps they think he is raising the issues that matter to them. Or perhaps it is because he is behaving as if he isnt a member of a party at all, except the one he is throwing for himself.

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Abbott couldn't read the public mood with the help of the Hubble telescope - The Guardian

A Hubble Space Telescope image of MACS21291 (the red blob outlined in the white rectangle).

Toft et al.

The astronomical understanding of how massive galaxies form and evolve is being revisited after the recent discovery of a pancake-shaped disc galaxy that stopped forming stars just a few billion years after the Big Bang.

This dead galaxy so-called for its lack of star formation was discovered by Sune Toft from the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark and his colleagues using gravitational lensing and NASAs Hubble telescope. Ancient disc galaxies are normally too far away to examine in detail, but gravitational lensing offered the researchers a magnified view of this one.

When Toft and team examined the galaxy, known as MACS 2129-1, they initially expected to see a chaotic ball of stars that had formed from the merging of different galaxies.

Surprisingly, however, they found evidence in the photographs taken by the Hubble Telescope that the galaxys stars were born in a flattened disc formation.

Their findings, published in the journal Nature, appear to conflict with observations that elliptical galaxies are generally comprised of older stars and spiral galaxies are usually the domain of younger ones.

Toft and his team suggest that the current rotation of MACS 2129-1 indicates that it must have begun life as a flattened disc and only later changed its shape to become more elliptical.

Toft hypothesises that such a metamorphosis could be caused by a series of mergers with other galaxies from a variety of angles, which would eventually randomise the orbits of stars into what can be seen today.

As Toft points out, this research is invaluable because it is forcing astronomers to re-evaluate their theories of how galaxies burn out early on and evolve over time.

Perhaps we have been blind to the fact that early dead galaxies could in fact be discs, simply because we havent been able to resolve them, he says.

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Fast-spinning dead galaxy changes ideas about galactic formation - Cosmos

Planetary nebula IC 418 looks like a glowing orange and purple jewel in this Hubble image from 2000.

Space is bejeweled with the stunning IC 418, a planetary nebula with purple and orange coloring enveloping a bright white core. The nebula lies close to 2,000 light-years from Earth on the way to the Lepus constellation.

Planetary nebulas like IC 418 are thelast stage of evolution for a star like our sun; it was once ared giant before it ejected its outer layers into space several thousand years ago. Since its eruption, the nebula has expanded to about 0.1 light-year in diameter, representitives from Space Telescope Science Institute in Marylandsaid in a statement.

The hot, white core visible in the image is the stellar remnant of the red giant, and its ultraviolet radiation creates the fluorescence in the nebula around it. The ejecta will continue to spread into the cosmos over the next several thousand years. The star will cool and fade over billions of years as a white dwarf.

This isthe fate of Earth's own sunin some 5 billion years from now.

The camera filters used to isolate light from different chemical elements are represented by the added colors. Red, at the outer edge of the nebula, shows ionized nitrogen emission this is the coolest gas in the nebula. Green shows hydrogen gas emission. Blue, at the center closest to the star, reveals ionized oxygen emissions this is the hottest gas in the nebula. TheHubble Space Telescope revealed the designs and textures within the nebula for the first time, and experts are still searching for their origin.

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Colorful Nebula Forms a Cosmic 'Spirograph' in Hubble Telescope ... - Space.com

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made an new discovery: it found a giant galaxy located 10 billion light-years from Earth. The disk-shaped galaxy, named MACS2129-1, is categorized as a "dead" galaxy since it no longer creates stars scientists believe star formation stopped for the fast-spinning galaxy a few billion years after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

The new galaxy is compact. For reference, it is three times heavier than the Milk Way but only half the size, according to study leader Sune Toft, an astrophysicist at Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. It also rotates a lot faster than the Milky Way.

This artist's concept shows what the young, dead, disk galaxy MACS2129-1, on the right, would look like when compared with the Milky Way galaxy, on the left.

"We were able to establish that the stars in MACS2129-1 rotate in circles around the center of the galaxy at a speed of over 500 km per second, more than twice as fast as stars rotate in the Milky Way, Toft, who published his findings in the June 22 issue of the journal Nature, said in a statement.

What makes this finding so surprising is that it shatters what scientists had previously believed. Until now, it was accepted that there are two types of galaxies: disk-shaped spiral ones and elliptical-shaped ones. The Milky Way is one of the former, which includes active galaxies that are still making new stars, while the latter are dead galaxies.

Galaxy MACS2129-1 is shown in the top box. The middle box is a blown-up view of the gravitationally lensed galaxy. In the bottom box is a reconstructed image of what the galaxy would look like if the galaxy cluster were not present.

With MACS2129-1, things are different since it is a dead, disk-shaped galaxy. This discovery is essential in understanding how galaxies form and evolve.

"This new insight may force us to rethink the whole cosmological context of how galaxies burn out early on and evolve into local elliptical-shaped galaxies," Toft said in a statement to NASA. "Perhaps we have been blind to the fact that early 'dead' galaxies could in fact be disks, simply because we haven't been able to resolve them."

As for what's next, Toft and his team hope to use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope a large infrared telescope slated to launch into space in October 2018 from French Guiana to learn more.

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The Hubble Telescope just took pictures of a galaxy twice as massive as the Milky Way - Mic

Astronomers have detected a first-of-its kind compact yet massive, fast-spinning, disk-shaped galaxy that stopped making stars only a few billion years after the Big Bang. Finding such a galaxy early in the history of the universe challenges the current understanding of how massive galaxies form and evolve, the researchers said. The finding, published in the journal Nature, was possible with the capability of NASAs Hubble space telescope.

When Hubble photographed the galaxy, astronomers expected to see a chaotic ball of stars formed through galaxies merging together. Instead, they saw evidence that the stars were born in a pancake-shaped disk. This was the first direct observational evidence that at least some of the earliest so-called dead galaxies where star formation stopped somehow evolve from a Milky Way-shaped disk into the giant elliptical galaxies we see today.

This new insight may force us to rethink the whole cosmological context of how galaxies burn out early on and evolve into local elliptical-shaped galaxies, said study leader Sune Toft from University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Perhaps we have been blind to the fact that early dead galaxies could in fact be disks, simply because we havent been able to resolve them, Toft said. ALSO READ:NASAs Kepler space telescope discovers 10 near-Earth size, habitable planet candidates

The remote galaxy was three times as massive as the Milky Way but only half the size. Rotational velocity measurements made with the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope (VLT) showed that the disk galaxy was spinning more than twice as fast as the Milky Way. Using archival data from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH), Toft and his team were able to determine the stellar mass, star-formation rate, and the ages of the stars. ALSO READ:NASAs Hubble telescope shows close-up image of Jupiter, Great Red Spot

Why this galaxy stopped forming stars was still unknown. It might be the result of an active galactic nucleus, where energy was gushing from a supermassive black hole. This energy inhibits star formation by heating the gas or expelling it from the galaxy. Or it might be the result of the cold gas streaming onto the galaxy being rapidly compressed and heated up, preventing it from cooling down into star-forming clouds in the galaxys centre. But how do these young, massive, compact disks evolve into the elliptical galaxies we see in the present-day universe? ALSO READ:Here are five interesting facts about NASAs Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter

Probably through mergers, Toft said.

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NASA's Hubble space telescope detects disk-shaped galaxy - BGR India

NASAs Hubble Telescope has captured some of the universes brightest infrared galaxies on camera, thanks to some closer galaxies that act like magnifying glasses.

These luminous galaxies are up to 10,000 times brighter than our Milky Way galaxy, and we are able to see them because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Galaxies or clusters of galaxies with large gravitational fields create a lense that magnifies what is behind them.

Gravitational lensing magnifies them so that you can see small details that otherwise are unimaginable, said said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in a NASA article. We can see features as small as about 100 light-years or less across.

Gravitational lenses also come with their problems. Like looking at something magnified through water, researchers must first understand how gravitational lensing is distorting the image.

The bright and distant galaxies are also incredibly industrious star factories, churning out 5,000 to 10,000 times the number of stars as the Milky Way. What is strange is that theyre doing it with the same amount of gas as the Milky Way. NASA researchers have a few theories as how this can be, but so far no answers.

Weve known for two decades that some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe are very dusty and massive, and theyre undergoing bursts of star formation, Lowenthal said. But theyve been very hard to study because the dust makes them practically impossible to observe in visible light. Theyre also very rare: they dont appear in any of Hubbles deep-field surveys. They are in random parts of the sky that nobodys looked at before in detail. Thats why finding that they are gravitationally lensed is so important.

As of June 6, Lowenthals team was halfway through its Hubble survey of 22 galaxies.

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NASA Gets Images of Ultra Bright, Distant Galaxies Thanks to Other ... - The Epoch Times

Aaron Dickens

Jun 14th 2017 4:28PM

The Hubble telescope captures the brightest galaxies ever seen in the universe.

Times Square isn't the only place you can catch the glitz and glam. NASA's famous Hubble Telescope got a front row seat using what's called "gravitational lensing."

Thousands of galaxies act like lenses that magnify light, making them appear super bright.

RELATED: Best photos from NASA's Hubble telescope

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The many sides of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. Located 10,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a once massive star that died in a violent supernova explosion 325 years ago. Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Spitzer Space Telescope.

(Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen, NGC 6543, nicknamed the ?Cat's Eye Nebula.? Hubble reveals surprisingly intricate structures including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas and unusual Lock-induced knots of gas. Estimated to be 1,000 years old, the nebula is a visual ?fossil record? of the dynamics and late evolution of a dying star. A preliminary interpretation suggests that the star might be a double-star system. The suspected companion star also might be responsible for a pair of high-speed jets of gas that lie at right angles to this equatorial ring.

(Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed the pillar on Feb. 1-2, 2010.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout)

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002. The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a pulse of light, somewhat similar to setting off a flashbulb in a darkened room. The dust may have been ejected during a previous explosion, similar to the 2002 event.

(Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

By pushing NASAs Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major.

(Photo via NASA)

This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a peculiar galaxy known as NGC 1487, lying about 30 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Eridanus.

Rather than viewing it as a celestial object, it is actually better to think of this as an event. Here, we are witnessing two or more galaxies in the act of merging together to form a single new galaxy. Each galaxy has lost almost all traces of its original appearance, as stars and gas have been thrown by gravity in an elaborate cosmic whirl.

Unless one is very much bigger than the other, galaxies are always disrupted by the violence of the merging process. As a result, it is very difficult to determine precisely what the original galaxies looked like and, indeed, how many of them there were. In this case, it is possible that we are seeing the merger of several dwarf galaxies that were previously clumped together in a small group.

Although older yellow and red stars can be seen in the outer regions of the new galaxy, its appearance is dominated by large areas of bright blue stars, illuminating the patches of gas that gave them life. This burst of star formation may well have been triggered by the merger.

(Photo viaESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt, Caption viaEuropean Space Agency)

These blue-white stars are burning their hydrogen fuel so ferociously they will explode as supernovae in just a few million years. The combination of outflowing stellar winds and, ultimately, supernova blast waves will carve out cavities in nearby clouds of gas and dust. These fireworks will kick-start the beginning of a new generation of stars in an ongoing cycle of star birth and death.

(Photo viaNASA, ESA, and J. Maz Apellniz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain), Acknowledgment: N. Smith (University of Arizona))

Most galaxies possess a majestic spiral or elliptical structure. About a quarter of galaxies, though, defy such conventional, rounded aesthetics, instead sporting a messy, indefinable shape. Known as irregular galaxies, this group includes NGC 5408, the galaxy that has been snapped here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The galaxy resembles a giant maelstrom of glowing gas, rippled with dark dust that swirls inwards towards the nucleus. Messier 96 is a very asymmetric galaxy; its dust and gas are unevenly spread throughout its weak spiral arms, and its core is not exactly at the galactic center. Its arms are also asymmetrical, thought to have been influenced by the gravitational pull of other galaxies within the same group as Messier 96.

(Photo:ESA/Hubble & NASA and the LEGUS)

It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such. However, it is in fact a new galaxy in the process of forming. Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure.

Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe

The farthest and one of the very earliest galaxies ever seen in the universe appears as a faint red blob in this ultra-deepfield exposure taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This is the deepest infrared image taken of the universe. Based on the object's color, astronomers believe it is 13.2 billion light-years away.

(Photo Credit:NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz and Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team)

(Photo:ESA/Hubble & NASA)

The Veil Nebula, left behind by the explosion of a massive star thousands of years ago, is one of the largest and most spectacular supernova remnants in the sky. This is only a small section of it.

(Photo credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage)

A ribbon of gas, a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago, floats in our galaxy. The supernova that created it was probably the brightest star ever seen by humans.

(Photo credit: NASA, ESA & the Hubble Heritage team)

This image from Hubbles Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 showcases NGC 1501, a complex planetary nebula located in the large but faint constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, NGC 1501 is a planetary nebula that is just under 5,000 light-years away from us. Astronomers have modeled the three-dimensional structure of the nebula, finding it to be a cloud shaped as an irregular ellipsoid filled with bumpy and bubbly regions. It has a bright central star that can be seen easily in this image, shining brightly from within the nebulas cloud. This bright pearl embedded within its glowing shell inspired the nebulas popular nickname: the Oyster Nebula.

(Photo: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Marc Canale)

At first glance, Jupiter looks like it has a mild case of the measles. Five spots one colored white, one blue, and three black are scattered across the upper half of the planet. Closer inspection by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals that these spots are actually a rare alignment of three of Jupiter's largest moons Io, Ganymede, and Callisto across the planet's face. In this image, the telltale signatures of this alignment are the shadows [the three black circles] cast by the moons. Io's shadow is located just above center and to the left; Ganymede's on the planet's left edge; and Callisto's near the right edge. Only two of the moons, however, are visible in this image. Io is the white circle in the center of the image, and Ganymede is the blue circle at upper right. Callisto is out of the image and to the right.

(Photo: NASA, ESA andE. Karkoschka)

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the region around a star known as R Sculptoris, a red giant located 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sculptor.Recent observationshave shown that the material surrounding R Sculptoris actually forms a spiral structure a phenomenon probably caused by a hidden companion star orbiting the star. Systems with multiple stars often lead to unusual or unexpected morphologies, as seen, for example, in the wide range of strikingplanetary nebulae that Hubble has imaged.

(Photo: ESA/Hubble & NASA)

This image shows the center of the globular cluster Messier 22, also known as M22, as observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are spherical collections of densely packed stars, relics of the early years of the Universe, with ages of typically 12 to 13 billion years. This is very old considering that the Universe is only 13.8 billion years old.

(Photo: ESA/Hubble & NASA)

In a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud, young stars are spewing radiation thats eating away at the cloud of gas and dust that gave birth to them not too long ago. This Hubble image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows that scene.

The cluster of blue stars, called NGC 602, formed when a large part of the gas cloud collapsed under gravity and became very dense. The fierce radiation now being produced by these hot, young stars is sculpting the inner rim of the gaseous nebula. Parts of the nebula resist this erosion better than others, leaving tall pillars that point toward the source of the radiation the stars.

(Photo:NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) - ESA/Hubble Collaboration )

The giant nebula NGC 3603 is a prominent star-forming region in the Carina spiral arm of our galaxy, about 20,000 light-years away. Discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1834, it is the largest nebula seen in visible light in the Milky Way. Within its core is nestled a stellar jewel box of thousands of sparkling young stars, one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy.

(Photo:NASA, ESA, R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), F. Paresce (National Institute for Astrophysics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Universities Space Research Association/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun. As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is formed, analogous to the bow wave of a boat moving through water or a plane traveling at supersonic speed. The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of center is LL Ori's cosmic bow shock, measuring about half a light-year across. The slower gas is flowing away from the Orion Nebula's hot central star cluster, the Trapezium, located off the upper left corner of the picture. In three dimensions, LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge. The beautiful picture is part of a large mosaic view of the complex stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a myriad of fluid shapes associated with star formation.

(NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team/ABACAPRESS.COM)

An undated handout picture by NASA/ESA shows around 5,500 galaxies seen through the Hubble telescope. The time exposure titled 'Hubble extreme Deep Field' (XDF reveals galaxies up to 13.2 billion light-years from earth.

(Photo: NASA/ESA/G. Illingworth/D. Magee/P. Oesch/R. Bouwens/HUDF09 Team)

Sun Seasons: Our sun is constantly changing. It goes through cycles of activity - swinging between times of relative calm and times when frequent explosions on its surface can fling light, particles and energy out into space. This activity cycle peaks approximately every 11 years. New research shows evidence of a shorter time cycle as well, with activity waxing and waning over the course of about 330 days. Understanding when to expect such bursts of solar activity is crucial to successfully forecast the sun's eruptions, which can drive solar storms at Earth. These space weather events can interfere with satellite electronics, GPS navigation, and radio communications. The quasi-annual variations in space weather seem to be driven by changes in bands of strong magnetic field that are present in each solar hemisphere.

(NASA)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image. Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble the wider view. The towering pillars about are 5 light-years tall. The new image was taken with Hubble's versatile and sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3. The pillars are bathed in blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) #nasagoddard #space #Hubble #hd

Star V838 Monocerotis's (V838 Mon) light echo, which is about six light years in diameter, is seen from the Hubble Space Telescope in this February 2004 handout photo released by NASA on December 4, 2011. Light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of Monoceros the unicorn. It became the brightest star in the Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002 when its outer surface greatly expanded suddenly.

(REUTERS/ NASA, ESA, H. E. Bond (STScI)/Handout)

This false-color composite image shows the Cartwheel galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope.

(Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

In this composite image provided by NASA, ESA, globular star cluster Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) in the Centaurus constellation and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, is pictured July 15, 2009 in Space. Today, September 9, 2009, NASA released the first images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope since its repair in the spring.

(Photo by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team via Getty Images)

What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

(Photo by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team/MCT/MCT via Getty Images)

The galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, is pictured in this undated handout Hubble Telescope image surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther. The photo unveils the effect of space warping due to gravity. The huge mass of the cluster distorts and magnifies the light from galaxies that lie far behind it due to an effect called gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein a century ago.

(NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)/Handout via REUTERS)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this photo, released on March 1, 2007, of Jupiter with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on February 17, 2007, using the planetary camera detector. Jupiter's trademark belts and zones of high- and low-pressure regions appear in crisp detail. Circular convection cells can be seen at high northern and southern latitudes.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

The sky is seen at night just before the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, in this NASA photo illustration released May 31, 2012. About 3.75 billion years from now, Andromeda's disk will fill the field of view and its gravity will begin to create tidal distortions in the Milky Way. The view is inspired by dynamical computer modeling of the future collision between the two galaxies. The two galaxies collide about 4 billion years from now and merge to form a single galaxy about 6 billion years from now.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel)

The central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra.

(Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The photo, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years (1690 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The turbulent gases in this photo of Gaseous Nebula in the Milky Way Galaxy shows roughly 1.9.arcminutes (3.1 light-years or 0.95 parsecs) across. The image is being released to commemorate the 13th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990.

(NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU)

UNSPECIFIED - 1992: Composite image, taken by Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field & Planetary Camera, of hypersonic shock wave (lower right) of material (clouds of dust) moving through Orion Nebula, surrounding (relatively) newborn stars.

(C.R. O'Dell/Rice UniversityNASA/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

The Hubble Space telescope's soon-to-be decommissioned Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 photographed this image of planetary nebula K 4-55 as its final image, released by NASA May 10, 2009. This Hubble image was taken by WFPC2 on May 4, 2009. The colors represent the makeup of the various emission clouds in the nebula: red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen. K 4-55 is nearly 4,600 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, in this undated image, has released on April 24, 2007, one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras, a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of a star's birth and death is taking place.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout)

An image of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet in seen this image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope February 24, 2009 and released by NASA March 17, 2009. In this view, the giant orange moon Titan casts a large shadow onto Saturn's north polar hood. Below Titan, near the ring plane and to the left, is the moon Mimas, casting a much smaller shadow onto Saturn's equatorial cloud tops. Farther to the left, and off Saturn's disk, are the bright moons Dione and the fainter Enceladus.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

Planetary nebula NGC 2818 in the southern constellation of Pyxis (The Compass). Glowing layers and shell of gas were created when a star shed its outer layers into space after running out of nuclear fuel.

(Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Hubble image of Arp 148 is the staggering aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion. The collision between the two parent galaxies produced a shockwave effect that first drew matter into the center and then caused it to propagate outwards in a ring. The elongated companion perpendicular to the ring suggests that Arp 148 is a unique snapshot of an ongoing collision. Infrared observations reveal a strong obscuration region that appears as a dark dust lane across the nucleus in optical light. Arp 148 is nicknamed "Mayall's object" and is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, approximately 500 million light-years away. This interacting pair of galaxies is included in Arp's catalog of peculiar galaxies as number 148. This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on April 24, 2008.

(REUTERS/NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team)

Thousands of sparkling young stars nestled within the giant nebula NGC 3603. This stellar 'jewel box' is one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 3603 is a prominent star-forming region in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, about 20,000 light-years away. This image shows a young star cluster surrounded by a vast region of dust and gas. The image reveals stages in the life cycle of stars. The nebula was first discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1834. The image spans roughly 17 light-years.

(NASA/MCT via Getty Images)

The barred spiral galaxy M83, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, is seen in a NASA Hubble Space Telescope mosaic released January 9, 2014. The Hubble photograph captures thousands of star clusters, hundreds of thousands of individual stars, and "ghosts" of dead stars called supernova remnants.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout via Reuters)

IN SPACE - This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra.The International Astronomical Union announced on August 24, 2006 that it no longer considers Pluto a planet, a status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The announcement reduces the solar system from nine planets to eight.

(Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

A new view of the Whirlpool Galaxy, one of the largest and sharpest images Hubble Space Telescope has ever taken, is released by NASA. A new view of the Eagle Nebula, one of the two largest and sharpest images Hubble Space Telescope has ever taken, is released by NASA on Hubble's 15th anniversary April 25, 2005. The new Eagle Nebula image reveals a tall, dense tower of gas being sculpted by ultraviolet light from a group of massive, hot stars. During the 15 years Hubble has orbited the Earth, it has taken more than 700,000 photos of the cosmos.

(REUTERS/NASA/Handout)

Galaxy Ngc 5866, Image Of The Disk Galaxy Ngc 5866 Taken With The Advanced Camera For Surveys (Acs) On The Hubble Space Telescope, November 2005.

(Encyclopaedia Britannica/UIG Via Getty Images)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope catches the Boomerang Nebula in this image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in early 2005 and released on September 13, 2005. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes of matter that are being ejected from a central star. Each lobe of the nebula is nearly one light-year in length, making the total length of the nebula half as long as the distance from the Sun to the nearest neighbors-the Alpha Centauri stellar system, located roughly 4 light-years away. The Boomerang Nebula resides 5,000 light-years from Earth. Hubble's sharp view is able to resolve patterns and ripples in the nebula very close to the central star that are not visible from the ground.

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Hubble Telescope reveals new discovery of universe's brightest galaxies - AOL

These six Hubble Space Telescope images reveal a jumble of misshapen-looking galaxies punctuated by exotic patterns such as arcs, streaks, and smeared rings. These unusual features are the stretched shapes of the universe's brightest infrared galaxies that are boosted by natural cosmic magnifying lenses. Some of the oddball shapes also may have been produced by spectacular collisions between distant, massive galaxies. The faraway galaxies are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than our Milky Way. The galaxies existed between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago.

NASA, ESA, and J. Lowenthal (Smith College)

Just like water distorting the view of objects beneath its surface, gravitational fields have warped images of some of the universes brightest infrared galaxies that were recently captured by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope.

This process, known as gravitational lensing, occurs when the intense gravity of a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies magnifies the light of fainter, more distant background sources.

While the phenomenon had been seen before, it is shown off to rare effect in the new Hubble Telescope snapshots.

The images are also particularly important because they show relatively tiny details of ultra-luminous starburst galaxies that would be unimaginable without the magnification provided by gravity.

These galaxies are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way and are ablaze with star formation, churning out more than 10,000 new stars in a year.

The reason for this frenzied star production is unknown, however, and these galaxies have traditionally been very difficult to study in visible light because of the dust that they create which cloaks them from view.

Thanks to the magnification provided by gravity in the new images of these galaxies, scientists now have a novel opportunity to examine their inner workings more closely and develop a better understanding of how galaxy and star formation occurs.

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Hubble views luminous galaxies through gravitational lens - Cosmos

NASA's Hubble space telescope has captured a series of stunning images of some of the universe's brightest galaxies.

Only a few dozen of these bright infrared galaxies - which are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way - exist in the universe.

They reside in unusually dense regions of space that somehow triggered rapid star formation in the early universe.

Hubble was able to capture the images thanks to a natural phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which occurs when the intense gravity of a massive galaxy magnifies the light of fainter, more distant background sources.

In this case, the distant galaxies have been magnified to reveal a tangled web of misshapen objects, punctuated by exotic patterns such as rings and arcs.

NASA scientists believe that the unusual forms may have been produced by spectacular collisions between distant, massive galaxies in a sort of "cosmic demolition derby".

"We have hit the jackpot of gravitational lenses," said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

"These ultra-luminous, massive, starburst galaxies are very rare. Gravitational lensing magnifies them so that you can see small details that otherwise are unimaginable. We can see features as small as about 100 light-years or less across.

"We want to understand what's powering these monsters, and gravitational lensing allows us to study them in greater detail."

Part of the reason that the galaxies are so bright is that they are pumping out more than 10,000 new stars a year.

The star-birth frenzy creates lots of dust, which enshrouds the galaxies, making them too faint to detect in visible light. But they glow fiercely in infrared light, shining with the brilliance of 10 trillion to 100 trillion suns.

The distance of the galaxies from Earth means that the scenes captured by Hubble actually took place between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago, at the peak of the universe's star-making boom.

However, the galaxies' star-birth production is still 5,000 to 10,000 times higher than that of our Milky Way, raising the question of what powered the prodigious star birth.

One possible explanation is that their star-making output is stoked by the merger of two spiral galaxies.

However, Lowenthal said that computer simulations of the birth and growth of galaxies show that major mergers occur at a later epoch than the one in which these galaxies are seen.

Best photos taken by Hubble telescope

Another suggestion is that lots of gas - the material that makes stars - is flooding into the faraway galaxies.

"The early universe was denser, so maybe gas is raining down on the galaxies, or they are fed by some sort of channel or conduit, which we have not figured out yet," Lowenthal said.

The research team plans to use Hubble and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to analyse the details of the monster galaxies, in the hope of shedding more light on their formation.

Link:
Hubble telescope uses 'cosmic magnifying-glass' to capture stunning photos of Universe's brightest galaxies - Mirror.co.uk