ASSEMBLY OF THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

A crane in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., lowers a test mass simulator (center of frame) onto the Ambient Optical Assembly Stand or AOAS to ensure it can support the James Webb Space Telescope's Optical Telescope Element during its assembly.  Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

FROM:  NASA 

Dropping in on a James Webb Space Telescope Clean Room Test
The James Webb Space Telescope is a large space telescope, optimized for infrared wavelengths. It is scheduled for launch later in this decade. Webb will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way galaxy. Webb will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own solar system. Webb's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.

Webb will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter, and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. The mirror and sunshade won't fit into a rocket fully open, so both will be folded and open once Webb is in outer space. Webb will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from Earth at the second Lagrange point.

The James Webb Space Telescope was named after a former NASA administrator.

WISE IMAGE OF ORION NEBULA

FROM: NASA

The Orion nebula is featured in this sweeping image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The nebula (also catalogued as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke.

This metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks forming around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green.

Astronomers now realize that the Orion nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame nebula. This complex in our Milky Way galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light.

Color in this image represents specific infrared wavelengths. Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red represents 22-micron light. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

15 BILLION YEARS TO EARTH

 

 

FROM: NASA


This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Located about 28,000 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters are particularly useful for studying stellar evolution, since all of the stars in the cluster have the same age (about 15 billion years), but cover a range of stellar masses. Every star visible in this image is either more highly evolved than, or in a few rare cases more massive than, our own Sun. Especially obvious are the bright red giants, which are stars similar to the Sun in mass that are nearing the ends of their lives. Photo Credit: NASA.

THE OLDEST EXAMPLE OF A SUPERNOVA

FROM:  NASA
All That Remains


Infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, were combined in this image of RCW 86, the dusty remains of the oldest documented example of an exploding star, or supernova. It shows light from both the remnant itself and unrelated background light from our Milky Way galaxy. The colors in the image allow astronomers to distinguish between the remnant and galactic background, and determine exactly which structures belong to the remnant.

Dust associated with the blast wave of the supernova appears red in this image, while dust in the background appears yellow and green. Stars in the field of view appear blue. By determining the temperature of the dust in the red circular shell of the supernova remnant, which marks the extent to which the blast wave from the supernova has traveled since the explosion, astronomers were able to determine the density of the material there, and conclude that RCW 86 must have exploded into a large, wind-blown cavity.

Image Credit-NASA-JPL-Caltech-UCLA

FIELD OF STARS: MESSIER 107

FROM: NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a show, lit only by the flashbulbs of the audience’s cameras. Yet the many stars of this object, known as Messier 107, are not a fleeting phenomenon, at least by human reckoning of time -- these ancient stars have gleamed for many billions of years.,br /> Messier 107 is one of more than 150 globular star clusters found around the disc of the Milky Way galaxy. These spherical collections each contain hundreds of thousands of extremely old stars and are among the oldest objects in the Milky Way. The origin of globular clusters and their impact on galactic evolution remains somewhat unclear, so astronomers continue to study them.,br /> Messier 107 can be found in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer) and is located about 20,000 light-years from our solar system.,br /> French astronomer Pierre Méchain first noted the object in 1782, and British astronomer William Herschel documented it independently a year later. A Canadian astronomer, Helen Sawyer Hogg, added Messier 107 to Charles Messier's famous astronomical catalogue in 1947.,br /> This picture was obtained with the Wide Field Camera of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. ,br /> Image credit: ESA/NASA

NASA'S HUBBLE SHOWS MILKY WAY COLLISION WITH ANDROMEDA GALAXY

Photo Credit:  NASA

FROM:  NASA

WASHINGTON -- NASA astronomers announced Thursday they can now predict 

with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our galaxy, sun, 

and solar system: the titanic collision of our Milky Way galaxy with 

the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. 

The Milky Way is destined to get a major makeover during the 

encounter, which is predicted to happen four billion years from now. 

It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, 

but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed. 

"Our findings are statistically consistent with a head-on collision 

between the Andromeda galaxy and our Milky Way galaxy," said Roeland 

van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in 

Baltimore. 

The solution came through painstaking NASA Hubble Space Telescope 

measurements of the motion of Andromeda, which also is known as M31. 

The galaxy is now 2.5 million light-years away, but it is inexorably 

falling toward the Milky Way under the mutual pull of gravity between 

the two galaxies and the invisible dark matter that surrounds them 

both. 

"After nearly a century of speculation about the future destiny of 

Andromeda and our Milky Way, we at last have a clear picture of how 

events will unfold over the coming billions of years," said Sangmo 

Tony Sohn of STScI. 

The scenario is like a baseball batter watching an oncoming fastball. 

Although Andromeda is approaching us more than two thousand times 

faster, it will take 4 billion years before the strike. 

Computer simulations derived from Hubble's data show that it will take 

an additional two billion years after the encounter for the 

interacting galaxies to completely merge under the tug of gravity and 

reshape into a single elliptical galaxy similar to the kind commonly 

seen in the local universe. 

Although the galaxies will plow into each other, stars inside each 

galaxy are so far apart that they will not collide with other stars 

during the encounter. However, the stars will be thrown into 

different orbits around the new galactic center. Simulations show 

that our solar system will probably be tossed much farther from the 

galactic core than it is today. 

To make matters more complicated, M31's small companion, the 

Triangulum galaxy, M33, will join in the collision and perhaps later 

merge with the M31/Milky Way pair. There is a small chance that M33 

will hit the Milky Way first. 

The universe is expanding and accelerating, and collisions between 

galaxies in close proximity to each other still happen because they 

are bound by the gravity of the dark matter surrounding them. The 

Hubble Space Telescope's deep views of the universe show such 

encounters between galaxies were more common in the past when the 

universe was smaller. 

A century ago astronomers did not realize that M31 was a separate 

galaxy far beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble measured 

its vast distance by uncovering a variable star that served as a 

"milepost marker." 

Hubble went on to discover the expanding universe where galaxies are 

rushing away from us, but it has long been known that M31 is moving 

toward the Milky Way at about 250,000 miles per hour. That is fast 

enough to travel from here to the moon in one hour. The measurement 

was made using the Doppler effect, which is a change in frequency and 

wavelength of waves produced by a moving source relative to an 

observer, to measure how starlight in the galaxy has been compressed 

by Andromeda's motion toward us. 

Previously, it was unknown whether the far-future encounter will be a 

miss, glancing blow, or head-on smashup. This depends on M31’s 

tangential motion. Until now, astronomers had not been able to 

measure M31's sideways motion in the sky, despite attempts dating 

back more than a century. The Hubble Space Telescope team, led by van 

der Marel, conducted extraordinarily precise observations of the 

sideways motion of M31 that remove any doubt that it is destined to 

collide and merge with the Milky Way. 

"This was accomplished by repeatedly observing select regions of the 

galaxy over a five- to seven-year period," said Jay Anderson of 

STScI. 

"In the worst-case-scenario simulation, M31 slams into the Milky Way 

head-on and the stars are all scattered into different orbits," said 

Gurtina Besla of Columbia University in New York. "The stellar 

populations of both galaxies are jostled, and the Milky Way loses its 

flattened pancake shape with most of the stars on nearly circular 

orbits. The galaxies' cores merge, and the stars settle into 

randomized orbits to create an elliptical-shaped galaxy." 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

FROM:   NASA

The Galaxy Next Door

Hot stars burn brightly in this new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the ultraviolet side of a familiar face. 

At approximately 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is our Milky Way's largest galactic neighbor. The entire galaxy spans 260,000 light-years across -- a distance so large, it took 11 different image segments stitched together to produce this view of the galaxy next door. 

The bands of blue-white making up the galaxy's striking rings are neighborhoods that harbor hot, young, massive stars. Dark blue-grey lanes of cooler dust show up starkly against these bright rings, tracing the regions where star formation is currently taking place in dense cloudy cocoons. Eventually, these dusty lanes will be blown away by strong stellar winds, as the forming stars ignite nuclear fusion in their cores. Meanwhile, the central orange-white ball reveals a congregation of cooler, old stars that formed long ago. 

When observed in visible light, Andromeda’s rings look more like spiral arms. The ultraviolet view shows that these arms more closely resemble the ring-like structure previously observed in infrared wavelengths with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers using Spitzer interpreted these rings as evidence that the galaxy was involved in a direct collision with its neighbor, M32, more than 200 million years ago. 

Andromeda is so bright and close to us that it is one of only ten galaxies that can be spotted from Earth with the naked eye. This view is two-color composite, where blue represents far-ultraviolet light, and orange is near-ultraviolet light.