Hubble Space Telescope

• Hubble Reveals Stellar Fireworks Accompanying Galaxy Collision.
• Hubble Uncovers Brilliant Star in Milky Way's Core.
• Hubble Sees a Neutron Star Alone in Space.
• Blobs In Space: The Legacy Of A Nova.
• Mars:
• Hubble Watches The Red Planet As Mars Global Surveyor Begins Aerobraking.
• Rapid Weather Changes Observed on Mars.
• Decay of a Martian Dust Storm.
• Hubbles's Look At Mars Shows Canyon Dust Storm, Cloudy Conditions For Pathfinder Landing.
• Comparison View of Mars Cloud Cover.
• Seasonal Changes In Mars' North Polar Ice Cap.
• Four View of Mars In Northern Summer.
• Springtime Dust Storm Swirls At Martian North Pole.
• Hubble's sharpest view of Mars.
• Hubble captures a full rotation of Mars.
• Gamma-Ray Bursts:
• Hubble Stays On Trail Of Fading Gamma-Ray Burst Fireball, Results Point To Extragalactic Origin. 
• Optical counterpart of gamma-ray burst GRB 970228 in a distant galaxy.
• Visible fireball from gamma-ray burst: GRB 970508.
• Black holes:
• Hubble Finds A Bare Black Hole Pouring Out Light. 
• Signature of a supermassive black hole found in the center of galaxy M84 .
• Massive Black Holes Dwell In Most Galaxies.
• Fireworks near a black hole in the core of Seyfert galaxy NGC 4151.
• Hubble Reveals Huge Crater on the Surface of the Asteroid Vesta.
• World's Most Powerful Telescopes Team Up With A Lens In Nature To Discover Farthest Galaxy In The Universe.
• Hubble Separates Stars In The Mira Binary System.
• Family portrait: Massive star NGC 2264 IRS and six baby sun-like stars.
• Arp 220: A collision in the heart of a galaxy.
• Supernova 1987a:
• STIS reveals invisible high-speed collision around supernova 1987A.
• Hubble's spectrograph chemically analizes the ring around supernova 1987A .
• Neptune
• Hubble Captures Volcanic Eruption Plume From Io .
• Rare Hubble Portrait of Io and Jupiter
• Jupiter's Auroras
• Giant Orion molecular cloud observed in infrared light .
• Destruction of Proto-Planetary Disks in Orion's Trapezium.
• Giant "Twisters" and star wisps in the Lagoon Nebula (M8).
• The Egg Nebula in infrared light .
• Bright Starbirth Region in a Dim Galaxy
• Giant Starbirth Region In Neighboring Galaxy
• Hubble Census Tracks a Stellar "Baby Boom"
• Comet-Like objects in Heart of Cartwheel Galaxy
• Intergalactic Stars.
• Quasars
• Eta carinae
• Changes in the Crab Pulsar
• Young Galaxy Building Blocks
• Hubble Space Telescope Completes Sixth Year of Exploration
• Some Hubble "firsts"
• Hubble surprises
• Some of the Hubble Findings that Have Earned a Place in Astronomy History
• Hubble Findings That Have Yet To Be Fully Explained
• Hubble Trivia

Intergalactic Stars

This is an artist's concept of the view of the nighttime sky from the surface of a hypothetical planet orbiting an "intergalactic" star in the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Hubble Space Telescope discovered 600 similar "outcast" stars in a small region in the Virgo cluster, 60 million light-years away from Earth. The stars detected are all bright red-giants. Many more dimmer stars, beyond Hubble's detection, may be among the galaxies, as well, suggesting this population of "lone stars" accounts for 10 percent of the cluster's mass.

 

• Hubble finds Intergalactic Stars.
• Intergalactic Vista From A Lonely Star.

Ray Villard, Harry Ferguson (STSci), and NASA.
January 14, 1997

Hubble Census Tracks a Stellar "Baby Boom"  These graphs trace the history of the rate of star formation over the past 12 billion years fromt relatively shortly after the birth of the universe to the present.  Data from Hubble observations (left) show a steep rise in star formation rate thar happened shortly after the big bang, while data from ground-based observatories (right) show the precipitous decline in star formation rate started from about 9 billion years to present. The maximum rate, perhaps as high as 15 times today's rate, must be in the gap between these two data sets.

Hubble Space Telescope Completes Sixth Year of Exploration

Over the past six years Hubble's rapid-fire rate of unprecedented discoveries has invigorated astronomy. Not since the invention of the telescope nearly 400 years ago have astronomers' vision of the universe been so revolutionized over such a short stretch of time. Unburdened of distortion by our atmosphere, nearly everywhere the 12.5-ton Earth orbiting observatory looks into space, new details about planets, stars, and galaxies come into crystal clear view.

Hubble has helped confirm some astronomical theories, challenged others, and more often than not, comes up with complete surprises for wich theories do not yet even exist.

This recent Hubble pictures released by the Space Telescope Science Institute highlight its range of research and give a peek at the awesome beauty of space. They include:

A star cluster 2.2 million light-years away

A mysterious gravitational lens

The planet Saturn with rings tilted edge-on

The planet Uranus seen in detail, surpassed only by interplanetary space probes

• Made the deepest visible look back in time to the era where galaxies may have first formed.
• Detected relic helium from the Big Bang in the intergalactic medium between galaxies.
• Provided the first clear optical images of the host galaxies wich quasars are embedded in.
• Discovered the first natural ultraviolet laser in space.
• Discovered a new distant class of cross-shaped gravitational lenses wich might eventually provide a powerful new "magnifying glass" for probing the univers.
• First map of an asteroid seen from Earth's vicinity.
• Identified a class of transient "shattered moons" that orbit along the outer visible edge of Saturn's rings.
• Provided enough detail to make the first surface map of the planet Pluto.

• An extraordinary thin pair of rings of glowing gas encircle supernova 1987A, the closest in 400 years.
• Cocoons of gas sorrounding dying stars are remarkably complex. Giant comet-like gas clouds are created in the Helix nebula.
• Some stars incubate inside tall pillars of gas and dust.
• Disks of dust around newborn stars in the Orion nebula that may be embryonic solar systems.

• Massive black holes are real, and may be commonly found in the core of galaxies.
• The first stages of planet formation are common among stars.
• The dark spot in Neptune's atmosphere is transient. It dissappeared frome one hemisphere, and a new spot emerged in the opposite hemisphere.
• Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, has a thin oxygen atmosphere.
• A belt of hundreds of milions of comets encircles the solar system.

• Does the univers appear to be younger than the oldest stars?
• Why did galaxies have such a wide variety of shapes in the early univers?
• How do dying stars create a variety of complex and unique gaseous structures late in their lives?

• Hubble Space Telescope has observed approximately 8000 celestial objects. That's nearly the total number of stars that can be seen from Earth with naked eye.
• 2.5 trillion bytes of science data from Hubble observations are stored on 375 optical disks.
• Hubble relies on an adress book with the precise locations of 15 million stars to allow it to lock onto celestial targets.
• At least 1000 scientific papers have been published on Hubble science findings by astronomers from more than 35 countries.
• Hubble has circled Earth about 37000 times, racking up a total "mileage" of 800 million miles.

Latest HST Observations

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