Mystery of Astronomy

Swift telescope’s fast response, combined with future gravitational wave detectors like ESA - European Space Agency’s LISA (a partnership with NASA), will be key for revealing the nature of supermassive black holes in the cores of active galaxies.

Read more about why we use all of our “senses” in space: https://go.nasa.gov/4kX5UQn

Credit - NASA & ESA

🆕 This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 346 kicks off celebrations for the upcoming anniversary – the first in a series revisiting previous Hubble targets, combining new processing techniques with the latest data.

🔗 esahubble.org/news/heic2502/

Credit - NASA

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Space Telescope Science Institute

Feeling crabby? 🦀

This stunning mosaic image from Hubble's 16th year shows a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion, called the Crab Nebula.

The nebula gets its name from a 1844 drawing, so don’t worry if you don't see the resemblance.

At the center of the Crab Nebula lives a rapidly spinning neutron star, made from the ultra-dense core of the exploded star, that ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second: https://go.nasa.gov/4j7Cj4V

We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up here: https://go.nasa.gov/4c8gQqa

Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)

Space bubbles 🫧

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635. Residing in the constellation Cassiopeia, the nebula spans seven light-years across and is about 7,100 light-years in distance from Earth.

Credit - NASA

Beneath the cosmic canvas, we are but stardust dreaming of eternity. Explore the mysteries above and within!

You've heard of auroras, but there's something else that sometimes glows green in very dark skies. 🍀 Airglow occurs when molecules in the upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light to shed their excess energy.

The result is a tenuous bubble of light that closely encases our entire planet, visible from space.

NASA missions such as the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD), and the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) have studied this part of the atmosphere.



More about airglow and what it can teach us about weather in space and on Earth: https://go.nasa.gov/4hF6Y8g

Credit - NASA

We've looked at an eclipse from both sides now... What a capture!

While NASA's Glenn Research Center was looking up to see last night's Blood Moon, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander was looking back at the "diamond ring" of a solar eclipse. Enjoy this reminder that what you see often depends on your point of view.

Sometimes the universe blooms cosmic flowers. 🌼

This cosmic chrysanthemum is the Tycho supernova remnant. First seen 450 years after skygazers spotted an exploding star, scientists are still learning from its remains. Our IXPE telescope added new insight by detecting polarized X-ray light, helping us understand how the Tycho supernova remnant is a powerful particle accelerator: https://go.nasa.gov/4kOBn7e

Credit - NASA

The universe also has eras!

Webb observed a surprising and extremely distant galaxy that existed 330 million years after the big bang, during what we call the universe’s “era of reionization.” This galaxy was emitting ultraviolet light at a specific wavelength that would typically have been absorbed by neutral hydrogen atoms prevalent at this point in the universe’s history. During the era of reionization, this neutral hydrogen was gradually ionized by the ultraviolet light emitted by newly forming stars. This is an ongoing process over hundreds of millions of years - and at just 330 million years after the big bang, there should still have been enough neutral hydrogen to shield this galaxy from Webb’s view - and yet Webb saw a strong signal from it.

(How did an infrared telescope see this galaxy emitting ultraviolet light? This galaxy is so distant that its light has been shifted towards the redder end of the electromagnetic spectrum by the expansion of the universe. As the space between objects stretches, any light in that space will also stretch. This effect is called redshift - and is why this galaxy’s ultraviolet light was perceived by us to be infrared.)

The implications of Webb seeing a signal from this galaxy are that perhaps the reionization process of neutral hydrogen started earlier than scientists think it did. Or perhaps there were some unexpectedly powerful sources of ionizing radiation early on in the galaxy’s history. What exactly those sources could be (maybe the much sought-after earliest generation of stars?) is still a mystery.

Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/3Xxo3tR

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA), Joris Witstok (Cambridge, University of Copenhagen), P. Jakobsen (University of Copenhagen), Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb), JADES Collaboration

The innovative team behind Parker Solar Probe has been awarded the 2024 Collier Trophy! This award recognizes exceptional achievement in aeronautics and astronautics.

Parker has flown closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft before it.

Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/4hImrog

Credit - NASA

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has shown us the universe like no other telescope can. It’s been 35 years!

Hear from the team that operates Hubble, and find out how they tag-team with other telescopes like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, in this episode of "Curious Universe:" https://go.nasa.gov/4kxOtFJ