Galaxy NGC 2336 — a barred spiral galaxy that stretches an immense 200,000 light-years across — is captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, V. Antoniou, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
NGC 2336 is the quintessential galaxy — big, beautiful and blue — and it is captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The barred spiral galaxy stretches an immense 200,000 light-years across and is located approximately 100 million light years away in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).
Its spiral arms are glittered with young stars, visible in their bright blue light. In contrast, the redder central part of the galaxy is dominated by older stars.
NGC 2336 was discovered in 1876 by German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel, using a 28-centimeter telescope. This Hubble image is so much better than the view Tempel would have had — Hubble’s main mirror is 2.4 meters across, nearly ten times the size of the telescope Tempel used. In 1987, NGC 2336 experienced a Type-Ia supernova, the only observed supernova in the galaxy since its discovery 111 years earlier.
Larger black holes may be the usual attention-getters, but the smaller ones may be at least as important. A team using the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a concentration of small black holes in the NGC 6397 globular star cluster (pictured above) 7,800 light-years away — the first to have its mass and extent recorded. While the researchers had hoped to find an elusive intermediate-mass black hole, this represents a breakthrough of its own.
Part of the challenge came from determining the mass. Scientists used the velocities of stars in the cluster, gathered over several years from both Hubble and the ESA’s Gaia observatory, to find the masses of the black holes. The normally invisible bodies tugged stars around in “close to random” orbits rather than the neatly circular or elongated paths you’d normally see with black holes.
The group likely formed as the black holes fell toward the cluster’s center through gravitational interactions with smaller stars. Heavier stars tend to gravitate toward the middle even when they haven’t collapsed into black holes.
The findings could expand humanity’s understanding of black holes and the phenomena they create. A bunch like this may be a key source of gravitational waves, for instance. So long as researchers can collect more data, this surprise discovery might pay plenty of dividends.
On the left is an image of the Jewel Bug Nebula (NGC 7027) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2019 and released in 2020. Further analysis by researchers produced the RGB image on the right, which shows extinction due to dust, as inferred from the relative strength of two hydrogen emission lines, as red; emission from sulfur, relative to hydrogen, as green; and emission from iron as blue. Credit: STScI, Alyssa Pagan
Images of two iconic planetary nebulae taken by the Hubble Space Telescope are revealing new information about how they develop their dramatic features. Researchers from Rochester Institute of Technology and Green Bank Observatory presented new findings about the Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302) and the Jewel Bug Nebula (NGC 7027) at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Friday, January 15, 2021.
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 observed the nebulae in 2019 and early 2020 using its full, panchromatic capabilities, and the astronomers involved in the project have been using emission line images from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared light to learn more about their properties. The studies were first-of-their-kind panchromatic imaging surveys designed to understand the formation process and test models of binary-star-driven planetary nebula shaping.
“We’re dissecting them,” said Joel Kastner, a professor in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and School of Physics and Astronomy. “We’re able to see the effect of the dying central star in how it’s shedding and shredding its ejected material. We’re now seeing where material that the central star has tossed away is being dominated by ionized gas, where it’s dominated by cooler dust, and even how the hot gas is being ionized, whether by the star’s UV or by collisions caused by its present, fast winds.”
On top is an image of the Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2019 and released in 2020. Further analysis by researchers produced the RGB image on the bottom, which shows extinction due to dust, as inferred from the relative strength of two hydrogen emission lines, as red; emission from nitrogen, relative to hydrogen, as green; and emission from iron as blue. Credit: STScI, APOD/J. Schmidt; J. Kastner (RIT) et al.
Kastner said analysis of the new HST images of the Butterfly Nebula is confirming that the nebula was ejected only about 2,000 years ago—an eyeblink by the standards of astronomy – and established that the S-shaped iron emission that helps give it the “wings” of gas is even younger. Surprisingly, they found that while astronomers previously believed they had located the nebula’s central star, that previously-identified star is actually not associated with the nebula and is instead much closer to Earth than the Butterfly Nebula. Kastner said he hopes that future studies with the James Webb Space Telescope could help locate the real dying star at the heart of the nebula.
The team’s ongoing analysis of the Jewel Bug Nebula is built on a 25-year baseline of measurements dating back to early Hubble imaging. Paula Moraga Baez, an astrophysical sciences and technology Ph.D. student from DeKalb, Ill., called the nebula “remarkable for its unusual juxtaposition of circularly symmetric, axisymmetric, and point-symmetric (bipolar) structures.” Moraga noted, “The nebula also retains large masses of molecular gas and dust despite harboring a hot central star and displaying high excitation states.”
The RGB image on the right reveals the spatial separation of molecules CO+ (red) and HCO+ (blue), indicative of UV and X-ray processes, respectively. The much deeper optical image of [O III] (green) provides a juxtaposition of the ionized atomic structure and that of radio molecular observations. Credit: STScI, Alyssa Pagan; J. Bublitz (NRAO/GBO) et al.
Jesse Bublitz ’20 Ph.D. (astrophysical sciences and technology), now a postdoctoral researcher at Green Bank Observatory, has extended the team’s analysis of NGC 7027 with radio images from the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) Telescope, from which he has identified molecular tracers of how impinging ultraviolet and X-ray light continues to alter the chemistry of the nebula. The combined observations from telescopes at other wavelengths, like Hubble, and bright molecules CO+ and HCO+ from NOEMA indicate how different regions of NGC 7027 are affected by the high-energy radiation from its central star.
“We’re very excited about these findings,” said Bublitz. “We had hoped to find structure that clearly showed CO+ and HCO+ spatially coincident or entirely in distinctive regions, which we did. This is the first map of NGC 7027, or any planetary nebula, in the molecule CO+, and only the second CO+ map of any astronomical source.”
Meeting: 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society
In addition to Kastner, Moraga, and Bublitz, the research team involved in the HST imaging work includes Rodolfo Montez Jr. ’10 Ph.D. (astrophysical sciences and technology) from Harvard-Smithsonian CfA; Bruce Balick from University of Washington; as well as Adam Frank and Eric Blackman from University of Rochester. Bublitz’s international team of collaborators on radio molecular line imaging of NGC 7027 includes Kastner, Montez Jr., and astrophysicists from Spain, France, and Brazil.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this sharp view of NGC 4535, nicknamed the “Lost Galaxy.”
ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
There are a lot of gorgeous galaxies out there in the universe, but it’s hard to top a truly sublime spiral, the kind of galaxy that swirls sparkling curved arms across the dark of space. That’s what’s on show in a new Hubble Space Telescope portrait of galaxy NGC 4535.
NGC 4535 has an engaging nickname: the Lost Galaxy. It’s not actually lost in space, but the moniker comes from how it looks with gear that’s not as fancy as Hubble.
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“Despite the incredible quality of this image, taken from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 4535 has a hazy, somewhat ghostly, appearance when viewed from a smaller telescope,” the European Space Agency said in a statement Friday.
According to ESA, amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland viewed the galaxy in the 1950s and gave it the whimsical Lost Galaxy nickname in honor of its ethereal appearance.
NASA unveils 30 dazzling new Hubble space images for an epic anniversary
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NASA also shared the image this week. NASA and ESA jointly operate Hubble. The space telescope’s image shows a stunning amount of detail. The bright blue spots are where young, hot stars hang out. The lighter colors closer to the middle highlight older and cooler stars.
The Lost Galaxy view is part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS, or PHANGS, survey, which includes a collection of data on star formation. The galaxy resides in the constellation Virgo at a distance of 50 million light-years from Earth, but Hubble makes it feel like it’s close to home.
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