HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

[GENESIS]

Staring into the crowded, dusty core of two merging galaxies, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a region where star formation has gone wild.

The interacting galaxies appear as a single, odd-looking galaxy called Arp 220. The galaxy is a nearby example of the aftermath of two colliding galaxies. In fact, Arp 220 is the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth. This latest view of the galaxy is yielding new insights into the early universe, when galactic wrecks were more common.

The sharp eye of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has unveiled more than 200 mammoth star clusters. The newly found clusters far outnumber the six spied by Hubble in a 1992 observation of Arp 220 taken by the Wide Field Planetary Camera, which did not have the sharpness of the Advanced Camera. The heftiest Arp 220 cluster observed by Hubble contains enough material to equal about 10 million suns, which is twice as massive as any comparable star cluster in the Milky Way Galaxy.

The clusters are so compact, however, that even at their moderate distance they look to Hubble like brilliant single stars. Astronomers know the clusters are not stars because they are much brighter than a star would be at that distance, 250 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens.

The star birth frenzy is happening in a very small region, about 5,000 light-years across (about 5 percent of the Milky Way's diameter), where the gas and dust is very dense. There is as much gas in that tiny region as there is in the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

"This is star birth in the extreme," said astronomer Christine D. Wilson of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and the leader of the study. "Our result implies that very high star-formation rates are required to form supermassive star clusters. This is a nearby look at a phenomenon that was common in the early universe, when many galaxies were merging."

Wilson's team obtained measurements of the masses and ages for 14 of the clusters, which allowed them to more accurately estimate the masses and ages for all the clusters. The observations revealed two populations of star clusters. One population is less than 10 million years old; the second, 70 to 500 million years old. Clusters in the younger group are more massive than those in the older group.

Wilson doesn't know whether the flurry of star birth occurred at two different epochs or at a continuous frantic pace and perhaps they are not seeing the intermediate-age population. She does know that the starburst was fueled by a collision between two galaxies that began about 700 million years ago. The effects of the merger have stretched out over hundreds of millions of years.

The team's results appeared in the April 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The finding is based on new observations with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and on a previous study by the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. The Advanced Camera observations, taken in visible light in August 2002, revealed the large cluster population and produced ages for the older grouping of clusters. The near infrared camera study snapped images of the younger cluster population.

Although the new Hubble image showcases Arp 220 in visible light, the galaxy shines brightest in infrared light. In fact, Arp 220 is called an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG). ULIRGs are the products of mergers between galaxies, which can create firestorms of star birth. Starlight from the new stars heats the surrounding dust, causing the galaxies to glow brilliantly in infrared light.

Only a small amount of visible light escapes through the dust-enshrouded galaxy. If astronomers had an unobstructed view of Arp 220 in visible light, the galaxy would shine 50 times brighter than our Milky Way Galaxy because of the light from its massive clusters and associated star formation.

Arp 220 shares a kinship with other interacting galaxies, such as the well-known Antennae galaxies. Both are the products of galactic mergers. The merging process in Arp 220, however, is farther along than in the Antennae. In fact, said Wilson, one cannot even see the two galaxies that combined to make up Arp 220. Radio data show two objects 1,000 light-years apart that may represent the cores of the original galaxies.

The galaxy will continue to manufacture star clusters until it exhausts all of its gas, which at the current rate will happen in about 40 million years. This may seem like a long time, but it is practically a blink of an eye for a process occurring on a galactic scale. Then Arp 220 will look like the elliptical galaxies seen today, which have little gas. Some of the giant clusters â€" those that are now 100 million years old â€" will still be there.

The galaxy is the 220th object in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

[mravic]

Hubble u kvaru.
http ://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2114858

[SrdjanP]

Hubble u kvaru.
http ://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2114858

Uf.. i to bas kamera ACS.  

[Gugi]

Zanimlljive su im te izjave: "Pa ne znamo odakle kvar" i neizbjezno "ali cemo ustvrditi i otkloniti ga".

Kako ne znaju u momentu gdje je kvar na HUBBLE-u? Jesu li oni strucnjaci ili ja, mi...

Samo da ga poprave! We want new photos!!!  

[GENESIS]

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726

Susan Hendrix
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-7745

   June 30, 2006
RELEASE: 06-272


NASA Issues Hubble Space Telescope Status Report

NASA engineers successfully activated the Advanced Camera for Surveys at 9:12 a.m. EDT Friday aboard the agency's Hubble Space Telescope. Checkout was completed at 10:20 a.m. EDT with science observations scheduled to resume Sunday, July 2.

"This is the best possible news," said Ed Ruitberg, deputy associate director for the Astrophysics Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "We were confident we could work through the camera issue, and now we can get back to doing more incredible science with the camera."

Engineers began uploading commands to the instrument Thursday, June 29, in an effort to restore operational status. A pre-programmed observing timeline for normal camera science operations will begin executing at approximately 8 p.m. EDT on July 2.

Engineers received indications on Monday, June 19, that power supply voltages were out of acceptable limits, causing the camera to stop functioning. The instrument was taken off line, so engineers could study the problem and determine the appropriate remedy. Hubble observations continued using other onboard science instruments.

The third-generation Hubble instrument consists of three electronic cameras, filters and dispersers that detect light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared. Astronauts installed the camera during a servicing mission in March 2002. It was developed jointly by Goddard, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colo.; and the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore.

[stefan]

Rusi prave zamenu za Habl



        Rusi veruju da će kosmički teleskop Habl (Hubble) do 2008. godine ili prestati da postoji ili će se njegov opseg predaje informacija znatno umanjiti, pa su odlučili da do te godine realizuju projekat pod nazivom Svetska kosmička opservatorija «Ultraviolet» koja će uz pomoć medjunarodnog satelita izučavati udaljene galaksije u ultraljubičastom dijapazonu spektra.
         "Takva istraživanja omogućavaju otkrivanje sasvim novih prostranstava gde je moguće videti nepoznate planete", rekao je predstavnik Roskosmosa Jurij Nosenko i ujedno saopÅ¡tio da je prvi poziv za saradnju upućen kolegama iz Kine, ali se poziv odnosi na sve zainteresovane zemlje.
         U okviru tog projekta Kinezi, odnosno drugi učesnici projekta, mogli bi da na satelit prikače svoje aparature za prenoÅ¡enje podataka ili sami odluče kako i u kom obimu će da učestvuju.
         Teleskop Habl, kojim NASA vrÅ¡i istraživanje, ruski stručnjak je ocnio kao nepouzdan, jer je na njemu često dolazilo do kvarova i da, osim toga, radi samo u bližem ultraljubičastom dijapazonu, Å¡to ne ispunjava sve zadatke istraživanja dalekih galaksija.
        S druge strane, upravo zahvaljujući Hablu, istraživači NASA doÅ¡li su do saznanja da planeta Pluton ima tri satelita, a ne jedan, kako se do sada verovalo.
        Prema dosadaÅ¡njim otkrićima, deveta planeta Sunčevog sistema, koju su astronomi otkrili 1930. godine, imala je samo juedan satelit, nazvan Haron, koji je otkriven 1978. godine i koji je od Plutona udaljen 1.200 kilometara, ali je sada NASA saopÅ¡tila da ona ima joÅ¡ dva satelita, privremeno nazvanih S/2005 P1 i S/2005 P2, koji od planete udaljeni izmedju 44.000 i 53. 000 kilometara.
         Habl je te satelite otkrio 15. maja ove godine, a potvrda prvih otkrića usledila je samo tri dana kasnije, kada je obavljeno dodatno snimanje. Tom prilikom, kako je naveo istraživač Endrju Å tef, prostranstvo oko Plutona je pomno istraženo i njegovom sistemu nisu zabeležena druga nebeska tela sa prečnikom većim od 16 kilometara.

[charlie]

        S druge strane, upravo zahvaljujući Hablu, istraživači NASA doÅ¡li su do saznanja da planeta Pluton ima tri satelita, a ne jedan, kako se do sada verovalo.

Interesuje me cime se vrsila detekcija prvog Plutonovog satelita?

[GENESIS]

HUBBLE space telescope
Image archive : Top 100

Ovde je link za najlepse slike dobijene od Hubble svemirskog teleskopa:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/top100/