Hubble Heritage

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We are very excited to wish the Hubble Space Telescope an early happy 26th birthday with the release of our anniversary image of NGC 7635: the Bubble Nebula!

John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, in Washington, D.C shares: "As Hubble makes its 26th revolution around our home star, the sun, we celebrate the event with a spectacular image of a dynamic and exciting interaction of a young star with its e...nvironment. The view of the Bubble Nebula, crafted from Wide Field Camera 3 images, reminds us that Hubble gives us a front row seat to the awe-inspiring universe we live in.”

For this week’s #ThrowbackThursday we’re excited to revisit our 2013 release of object IRAS 20324+4057 – a protostar in the Cygnus OB2 Association. Created from a composite of Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) data and ground-based hydrogen data from the Isaac Newton Telescope, the image displays a ‘caterpillar-shaped knot’ in the early stages of star formation. Still collecting gases from the envelope seen around it, this star is thought to end up as a star about one ...to ten times the mass of our Sun.

This week we’re excited to announce our new release for March 2016!

This stunning release reveals an astounding number of stars within the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. Using the infrared vision on the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers were able to peer through some of the large dense clouds of dust and gas found at the center of our galaxy to get a peek at over half a million stars surrounding our supermassive black hole. Astronomers estimate there are around 10 million ...more stars that are too faint to glimpse in this image.

First released in 2005, this week’s #ThrowbackThursday is an ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) image of scattered light from the Boomerang Nebula. The two lobes seen in this image are each almost 1 light-year in length – half the distance from our Sun to Alpha Centauri (the nearest stellar system to us). They were created in an ejection process known as bipolar outflow; head to our website for more information on what we think causes a bipolar outflow in young nebula like thi...s one!

This #throwbackthursday we’re looking back at our 2004 release of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, or NGC 6543! This planetary nebula, found in the constellation Draco, is about 3,000 light-years from us. Recorded and studied in 1786 by William Herschel, the Cat’s Eye Nebula was the first planetary nebula ever discovered!

However, it wasn’t until 1994 when the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at it that we began to truly unravel the mysteries and complexities of this phenomenon. When... Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) imaged this nebula we got our first look at the surprising number of concentric rings of gas within the nebula. In the years since our first look at the structure of this nebula we’ve continued to image and study it in the hopes of better understanding the mechanisms that caused such a captivating formation.

Our #throwbackthursday of this week will be taking us to a time not too long ago and to a galaxy not too far away. We’re revisiting our 2006 release of the bright compact HII region, N180B, in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The LMC is only 160,000 light-years from where we are here in the Milky Way galaxy! (Which might sound really far away, but actually makes the LMC one of our closest galaxy neighbors.)

Within this image we see N180B, an active region of star formation that c...ontains some of the brightest clusters of stars known to exist: “OB associations”. As explained in more detail on our website, OB associations are known as such because they are clusters that contain Class O and Class B stars which are the brightest and hottest classes of stars. (O stars can be a million times brighter than our Sun!)

This week we’re excited to announce a new image going live on our website (http://heritage.stsci.edu).

This co-release with ESA is of a giant elliptical galaxy found in the Coma Cluster. While the image itself appears placid and calm it harbors in the center of the galaxy one of the most massive black holes ever discovered! As shared on our website, this black hole is 21 billion times the mass of the Sun. In comparison, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is... thought to be only 4 million times the mass of the Sun.

This week for our #throwbackthursday we are returning to the release of the Hubble Heritage Project 10-year anniversary image! Released in 2008, this image displays some intricate details of a gaseous cavity within the star-forming region of NGC 3324.

From the description listed on our website (linked below!) we can see within this image the “dramatic dark towers of cool gas and dust that rise above the glowing wall of gas. The dense gas at the top resists the blistering ult...raviolet radiation from the central stars, and creates a tower that points in the direction of the energy flow. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot young stars in NGC 3324 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away.”

This week for our #throwbackthursday we're looking at the interacting galaxies in Arp 142!

First released in 2013, this image of the interacting galaxies Arp 142 is found 326 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. Another great example of how messy galaxy interaction can be, this pair has reminded scientists of the profile of a bird! What do you think it looks like?

For more information about these galaxies, how the Hubble Space Telescope took these images, or... how the Hubble Heritage team prepared the press release image take a look at our website: http://heritage.stsci.edu/2013/23/index.html
#interactinggalaxies #hubblespacetelescope #galaxies #tbt #hubbleheritage

This week, instead of our usual #throwbackthursday, we're happy to present a new release!

Just in time for the release of the movie "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens," NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed what looks like a cosmic, double-bladed lightsaber!

For more information on this source (which isn't found in a galaxy far, far away, but in our very own Milky Way!) take a look at our website: ...
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2015/42/caption.html

For this week's #ThrowbackThursday we're revisiting our 2012 release of a fortuitously aligned set of galaxies known as NGC 3314!

Even though it appears that these galaxies lie on top of one another they are actually tens of millions of light years apart in space and aren't interacting with each other at all!

For more information on these galaxies and the data used to make this image check out: http://heritage.stsci.edu/2012/29/caption.html

This week for our #ThrowbackThursday we’re taking a look at one of our past collections of planetary nebula!

Interestingly, planetary nebulae are named as such not because they are where planets form, but because when viewed through small telescopes these nebulae appear small and round – so they looked like planets to observers long ago!

These nebulae are actually giant clouds of gases ejected by a dying star! In these Hubble images, included in our 2007 release, the red, g...reen, and blue colors represent light being emitted by nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen gases, respectively. All of these nebula lie within the Milky Way Galaxy and are about the same distance, about 7,000 light years, away from us.

Want a sneak peak about what we might be talking about at our AMA today at 2pm? Take a look at our website where we've set up a page to hold information relevant to what you might be asking us:
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2015/AMA/index.html

Highly suggested is the video on image processing listed part way down the page!