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Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations
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September 9, 2009: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, ready to uncover new worlds, peer ever deeper into space, and even map the invisible backbone of the universe. The first snapshots from the refurbished Hubble showcase the 19-year old telescope's new vision

Topping the list of exciting new views are colorful multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation," and a "butterfly" nebula. With its new imaging camera, Hubble can view galaxies, star clusters, and other objects across a wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. A new spectrograph slices across billions of light-years to map the filamentary structure of the universe and trace the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life. The telescope's new instruments also are more sensitive to light and can observe in ways that are significantly more efficient and require less observing time than previous generations of Hubble instruments. NASA astronauts installed the new instruments during the space shuttle servicing mission in May 2009. Besides adding the instruments, the astronauts also completed a dizzying list of other chores that included performing unprecedented repairs on two other science instruments
Now that Hubble has reopened for business, it will tackle a whole range of observations. Looking closer to Earth, such observations will include taking a census of the population of Kuiper Belt objects residing at the fringe of our solar system, witnessing the birth of planets around other stars, and probing the composition and structure of the atmospheres of other worlds. Peering much farther away, astronomers have ambitious plans to use Hubble to make the deepest-ever portrait of the universe in near-infrared light. The resulting picture may reveal never-before-seen infant galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 500 million years old. Hubble also is now significantly more well-equipped to probe and further characterize the behavior of dark energy, a mysterious and little-understood repulsive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate |
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Astronomers Find Hyperactive Galaxies in the Early Universe
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Even some galaxies may have been hyperactive youngsters. Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy. They are whirling at a speed of one million miles per hour—about twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way. Even stranger, the galaxies are a fraction the size of our Milky Way, and so may have evolved over billions of years into the full-grown galaxies seen around us today. Astronomers are puzzled by how galaxies like these formed. They may be what will eventually become the dense central regions of very large galaxies
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The galaxies were found by using the combined power of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile. Hubble shows that the galaxies are a fraction the size of most galaxies we see today. The Gemini telescope clocks their speed by using spectroscopy. To witness the formation of these extreme galaxies astronomers plan to observe galaxies even farther back in time with Hubble’s new Wide Field Camera 3. |
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Rare Spherical Planetary Nebula Abell 39
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The simple spherical geometry of planetary nebula Abell 39 will help astronomers identify the source of very serious errors in measuring the chemical composition of dying stars"The truly spherical nature of this beautiful nebula helps us eliminate a common confusion concerning the actual three-dimensional geometry of most nebulae," says George Jacoby, director of the Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO (WIYN) Observatory and co-author of a study with Gary Ferland of University of Kentucky and Kirk Korista of Western Michigan University.The butterfly-like shape of many nebulae, and filaments or clumps of dense gas within them, cause starlight to penetrate the nebulae unevenly, depending on the density and thickness of the clumps, as well as the distance of the gas from the star. Only in rare cases can the nebula's geometry be deduced from indirect measurements in order to model the interactions.As reported today in San Diego at the 197th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, researchers found that the star that produced Abell 39 had only half the amount of oxygen found in the Sun. This result is not especially unusual, because the Sun has a relatively enriched composition of heavy elements. But for some stars, the same sorts of analyses have yielded compositions that can disagree with each other by a factor of three or more."Such discrepancies are totally unsatisfactory for developing a detailed picture of how chemical elements were built up over time in our galaxy and in other parts of the Universe," Jacoby explains.Abell 39 is the 39th entry in a catalog of large nebulae discovered by astronomer George Abell in 1966. This image of it was taken at the WIYN Observatory's 3.5-meter (138-inch) telescope, through a blue-green filter that isolates the light emitted by oxygen atoms in the nebula at a wavelength of 500.7 nanometers.Unfortunately, Abell 39 is so faint that Jacoby and collaborators were unable to measure all the critical information from the nebula that is needed to isolate the cause of the composition measurement discrepancies, even though they used the National Science Foundation's Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory to collect spectral details. Instead, they provide their predictions of what they expected to measure, in order to guide future observers with more sensitive equipment and larger telescopes.The nebula has a diameter of about five light-years, and the thickness of the spherical shell is about a third of a light-year. Positioned in the constellation Hercules, the nebula is located roughly 7,000 light-years from Earth. Careful viewing of the image shows that the "central" star is off-center to the right by a small amount (less than a tenth of a light-year.) The cause of this shift is unknown. Furthermore, the very faint glow barely visible around the brightest part of the nebula is evidence for a larger halo surrounding the main body. As a curiosity, several distant galaxies can be seen right through the nebula and just outside of it |
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NGC 1333
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Explanation: NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud. This striking close-up view spans about 4 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1313. It shows details of the dusty region along with hints of contrasting emission in red jets and glowing gas from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago |
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collocations of astronomy
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Hi my friends
From now I want to teach you some simple collocation of astronomy and then I will bring you a fantastic picture with some explanations
So the first collocation
Reflection Nebula
A reflection nebula is created when light from a star is scattered or reflected off a neighbouring dust cloud. The scattered light is slightly polarised and has a spectrum similar to that of the illuminating star, only bluer. This shift in colour arises because the typical size of dust grains in the cloud are comparable to the wavelength of blue light. The result is that blue light is scattered more efficiently than longer, red wavelengths giving the characteristic blue colour for these nebulae
Reflection nebulae are usually less dense than dark nebulae, and have sizes that are determined by the source of illumination. Their extent is not defined by the size of the dust cloud but rather the area over which their brightness remains above the point of detection. The nebulosity surrounding the stars in the Pleiades is perhaps the most well known example of a reflection nebula
The Pleiades is one of the most famous reflection nebulae. Credit: AAO/ROE/David Malin
ost famous reflection
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Hello my friends.I'm an English nut & I've made this weblog to make better my and your English .I want you to tell your suggestions in English. If you don’t tell English suggestions I won't accept them So PLEASE TELL ENGLISH SUGGESTIONS
anonymous0731@yahoo.com |
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