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    Hubble provides Holistic View of Stars gone Haywire

    June 21, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    1) The “wings” of NGC 6302 are regions of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit that are tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour. NGC 6302 lies between 2,500 and 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
    2) Recently, NGC 7027’s central star was identified in a new wavelength of light — near-ultraviolet — for the first time by using Hubble’s unique capabilities
    Credits: NASA, ESA and J. Kastner (RIT)

    As nuclear fusion engines, most stars live placid lives for hundreds of millions to billions of years. But near the end of their lives they can turn into crazy whirligigs, puffing off shells and jets of hot gas...

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    Hubble finds best Evidence for Elusive Mid-sized Black Hole

    April 1, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This illustration depicts a cosmic homicide in action. A wayward star is being shredded by the intense gravitational pull of a black hole that contains tens of thousands of solar masses. The stellar remains are forming an accretion disk around the black hole. Flares of X-ray light from the super-heated gas disk alerted astronomers to the black hole’s location; otherwise it lurked unknown in the dark. The elusive object is classified as an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH), as it is much less massive than the monster black holes that dwell in the centers of galaxies. Therefore, IMBHs are mostly quiescent because they do not pull in as much material, and are hard to find. Hubble observations provide evidence that the IMBH dwells inside a dense star cluster...
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    Hubble uncovers Black hole that Shouldn’t Exist

    July 13, 2019, Categories  Uncategorized

    NGC 3147 (left) and artist impression of black hole
    A Hubble Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3147 appears next to an artist’s illustration of the supermassive black hole residing at the galaxy’s core. The Hubble image shows off the galaxy’s sweeping spiral arms, full of young blue stars, pinkish nebulas, and dust in silhouette. However, at the brilliant core of NGC 3147 lurks a monster black hole, weighing about 250 million times the mass of our Sun. Hubble observations of the black hole demonstrate two of Einstein’s theories of relativity. The reddish-yellow features swirling around the center are the glow of light from gas trapped by the hefty black hole’s powerful gravity. The black hole is embedded deep within its gravitational field, shown by the green grid that illustrates warped space...
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    Hubble astronomers assemble Wide View of the Evolving Universe

    May 4, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    apparent size comparison of Legacy Field mosaic with full Moon
    This graphic compares the dimensions of the Hubble Legacy Field on the sky with the angular size of the Moon. The Hubble Legacy Field is one of the widest views ever taken of the universe with Hubble. The new portrait, a mosaic of nearly 7,500 exposures, covers almost the width of the full Moon. The Moon and the Legacy Field each subtend about an angle of one-half a degree on the sky (or half the width of your forefinger held at arm’s length).
    Credits: Hubble Legacy Field Image: NASA, ESA, and G. Illingworth and D. Magee (University of California, Santa Cruz); Moon Image: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center and Arizona State University


    Astronomers have put together the largest and most comprehensive “history book” of galaxies into one single image, using 16 years’ worth of observations ...

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