Engineers at NASA Goddard and Northrop Grumman are simulating the handling of the telescope's mirror segments, which will be assembled into the Primary Mirror Assembly. The mock-up has already been beneficial in preparing for integration and test operations.
The SPIRE instrument package has successfully made its first observations, targeting two galaxies near the Milky Way. The telescope's high-resolution images will aid in studying the birth and development of galaxies, shedding light on star formation processes.
A new class of pulsars detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the existence of a large population of radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars. The study identifies 16 pulsars using computational techniques developed to analyze data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope.
Astronomers at the University of Hawaii have discovered a binary star-disk system with two stars surrounded by dust disks capable of forming planetary systems. The system, 253-1536, is the first known example of two optically visible stars with enough mass to form an Earth-like planet.
Freedman, Kennicutt, and Mould's work resolves decades-long debate on the Hubble constant, revealing the universe is 14 billion years old. This finding enables scientists to estimate the density of the universe and understand its fate.
The James Webb Space Telescope, a massive infrared space telescope, will unfold in space once it achieves orbit. The telescope, roughly 65 feet from end to end, has a sunshield the size of a tennis court and an 18-segment mirror that looks like a honeycomb.
NASA's Hubble telescope will be upgraded with a new, high-performance Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) technology developed for the James Webb Space Telescope. The ASIC will enable improved repair and upgrade capabilities for Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument.
The new value of the Hubble constant is 74.2 kilometers per second per megaparsec, derived from observations of Cepheid variables in seven galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope. This refined measurement provides a more precise understanding of dark energy's nature and its role in accelerating the universe's expansion.
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will explore the 'cosmic web', a rarefied network of hot gas lanes connecting galaxies, and map the structure of the universe. Astronomers hope to detail the evolution of the large-scale structure and understand how galaxies formed.
The CU-Boulder instrument, part of NASA's Hubble Servicing mission, will probe the universe's evolution from its perch on the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists aim to reconstruct the physical conditions and evolution of the early universe by gathering information from ultraviolet light.
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has achieved significant milestones, including the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Solar Dynamic Observatory. The center is also working on future missions to study global precipitation, Mars' lost atmosphere, and dark energy.
Tabetha Boyajian, a GSU astronomy graduate student, has been awarded the prestigious Hubble Fellowship to pursue postdoctoral research on stellar sizes and planetary systems. She will use the CHARA Array to measure the size of stars and determine their effective temperature, shedding light on the habitable zones of planets.
The Compact Array Broadband Backend (CABB) project has upgraded CSIRO's radio telescope near Narrabri in NSW, increasing its bandwidth from 128 MHz to 2 GHz. This upgrade enables astronomers to capture more data from the sky faster and detect cosmic objects more quickly.
Astronomers have used the world's biggest radio telescope to study the brightest galaxies that NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can see. The team found a correlation between active galaxies with the brightest gamma-ray emission and those with the fastest jets.
The study confirms individual galaxies are source of Far Infrared Background, a decade-old question answered. BLAST's submillimeter survey uncovers dust-enshrouded galaxies with properties deciphered through multi-wavelength data.
The James Webb Space Telescope's first flight mirror segment has successfully completed its series of cryogenic temperature tests, a crucial step towards the telescope's launch in 2013. The mirrors will undergo further polishing and verification to achieve the required 20 nanometer accuracy.
A Rochester Institute of Technology scientist improved Hubble's Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer calibration to enable high-precision polarimetry. This technique helps scientists study active galactic nuclei and proto-planets around young stars.
The James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors are made of beryllium, a light metal that withstands extreme temperatures and is highly reflective. The 18 hexagonal mirror segments will allow the telescope to see galaxies from 13 billion light-years away.
The new map combines nearly three months of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, offering an unparalleled look at the high-energy cosmos. The image reveals flares from supermassive black holes in distant galaxies and pulsars, as well as a globular cluster in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Lee Feinberg, Optical Telescope Element Manager for the James Webb Space Telescope, has been elected as a fellow of SPIE for his significant contributions to large space optics and optical technology. He will receive his award at the SPIE Optics and Photonics meeting in San Diego this August.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected the most extreme gamma-ray burst yet, emitting energies 3,000 to 5 billion times that of visible light. The burst, GRB 080916C, occurred at a distance of 12.2 billion light-years away and is believed to be powered by an exotic massive star running out of nuclear fuel.
A recent gamma-ray burst observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is the most extreme recorded to date, with energies exceeding those of 9,000 ordinary supernovae. The blast's tremendous power and speed make it a significant finding in the field of gamma-ray bursts.
The James Webb Space Telescope's Backplane, a critical component supporting the 21-foot primary mirror, is being assembled with unprecedented thermal stability performance. This structure will maintain motionlessness to enable precise focusing of telescope optics and instruments, crucial for discovering the first stars and galaxies.
The Carnegie Hubble Program aims to decrease the uncertainty of the Hubble constant from 10% to 3% by refining distances to galaxies using Cepheid variable stars and Spitzer telescope observations. The team will observe 700 hours of nearby galaxies, correcting for lingering uncertainties and systematic errors.
The Hubble Space Telescope is set to undergo its fifth and final service mission, which will provide the telescope with a future as bright as its past despite being nearly 18 years into troubled beginnings. The repairs will upgrade instruments, replace gyroscopes and heat shields, and add new capabilities for deeper observations.
Astronomers have discovered carbon dioxide on a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star, HD 189733b. The detection is significant as it could be a sign of biological activity, and further studies will focus on characterizing the planet's atmosphere to determine its habitability.
The University of Delaware is part of an international team building the IceCube neutrino telescope, which will study high-energy cosmic events. The $150 million project will detect neutrinos passing through the Antarctic ice, opening new insights into astrophysics.
The Extended Submillimeter Array (eSMA) enables the study of the formation of new stars and planets using submillimetre light. Post-doc Sandrine Bottinelli used the telescope to determine the ratio of atomic to molecular carbon in an extremely distant galaxy.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has directly observed a planet circling another star, Fomalhaut b. The exoplanet orbits Fomalhaut at a distance of 10.7 billion miles, 10 times that of Saturn from the sun.
The discovery reveals the planet's massive size and potential for a vast ring system. The images taken with Hubble Space Telescope provide direct proof of the planet's existence and orbit around star Fomalhaut.
The NASA-designed Sunshield is made of a super-tough polymer-based film that can block the sun's energy while maintaining structural integrity. The telescope needs to be extremely cold to observe distant galaxies and stars in infrared light, and the Sunshield plays a crucial role in achieving this.
Rochester Institute of Technology will develop a zero-noise detector with the Moore Foundation's $2.8M award, promising to enhance telescope sensitivity and astrophysics discoveries. The project aims to resolve noise limitations in existing detectors.
The James Webb Space Telescope model is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany until October 28, 2008. The model showcases the telescope's size and complexity, measuring 80 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 40 feet tall.
Astronomers used gravitational lensing and adaptive optics to observe a young star-forming galaxy, finding clear signs of orderly rotation and evidence for a spiral disk with a central nucleus. The study demonstrates the power of future telescopes like the Thirty Meter Telescope.
Researchers at Durham University and Caltech used gravitational lensing to study a young star-forming galaxy in the distant Universe, revealing its internal velocity structure and spiral disk. The findings provide insight into how the galaxy evolved into a present-day system like our Milky Way.
The detection of GRB 080913 marks the most distant gamma-ray burst ever seen, occurring 12.8 billion light-years away. This finding reveals that the universe was less than one-seventh its present age when the star exploded.
Development models for James Webb Telescope components have successfully passed temperature and vibration tests, allowing engineers to proceed with building actual instrument parts. The Mid-Infrared Instrument, which will operate between mid-infrared wavelengths of 5-28.5 microns, must be kept icy cold due to its extreme sensitivity to...
A $70 million CU-Boulder instrument will be installed on the Hubble Space Telescope in mid-October to study the 'fossil record' of gases in the early universe. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will gather information from ultraviolet light, allowing scientists to reconstruct the physical condition and evolution of the early universe.
NJIT physics professor Andrew Gerrard has installed a 1.2-meter diameter telescope atop Jenny Jump Mountain, allowing amateurs to observe the heavens at professional levels. The telescope will also aid researchers in studying gravity waves affecting earth's circulation and climate change.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed its first all-sky map in gamma rays, showcasing the glowing gas of the Milky Way and pulsars in unprecedented detail. The telescope's high-energy capabilities will enable discoveries of new pulsars and reveal powerful processes near super-massive black holes.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed the entire gamma-ray sky, discovering pulsars in our galaxy and powerful processes near supermassive black holes. The telescope's first all-sky image shows glowing gas, blinking pulsars, and a flaring galaxy billions of light-years away.
The Hubble Space Telescope has resolved individual threads of gas in the filaments of galaxy NGC 1275, revealing a magnetic structure that sustains them for over 100 million years. The discovery provides crucial clues about how giant black holes affect their surroundings.
The new telescope glasses offer a wide-field telescope made of straight and curved mirrors built completely within the spectacle lens, reducing the appearance of the device. This design enables the wearer to simultaneously view the magnified field above the unmagnified view of the uninterrupted horizontal field.
Goddard is launching multiple space missions in the upcoming year, focusing on upgrading the famous Hubble Space Telescope and studying powerful gamma-rays. The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) will also make global observations of the region beyond the termination shock, exploring the galactic frontier.
Researchers have determined the masses of the coldest class of brown dwarfs for the first time outside the solar system. The team used ultrasharp images from the Keck Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope to measure the sizes and durations of binary systems, revealing two new brown dwarf binaries with masses as low as 6% of the sun's mass.
The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) will search for answers to long-standing questions about dark matter, black holes, and gamma-ray bursts. With its extraordinary sensitivity and wide field-of-view, GLAST has the potential to detect thousands of hitherto unknown gamma-ray sources.
Astronomers capture high-resolution images of Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory. The images reveal increased changes in the planet's atmosphere, including a color change from white to red near the Great Red Spot.
Astronomers find nine young, compact galaxies with masses of 200 billion times the Sun's, each only 5,000 light-years across. These ultra-dense galaxies formed 11 billion years ago and are thought to be building blocks for today's largest galaxies.
Researchers have created an online map that shows locations experiencing problems with internet connectivity, providing a snapshot of the internet's weak points. The Hubble tool monitors about 90% of the internet and can help professional network operators identify and fix issues quickly.
A team of astronomers from Queen's University Belfast have discovered the nature of five supernova precursor stars using Hubble images. The study reveals that stars with masses as low as seven times the mass of the Sun can explode as supernovae, challenging current understanding of massive star collapse.
A NASA satellite has detected a record-breaking gamma ray burst explosion halfway across the universe. The explosion was seen with the naked eye from Earth, shattering previous records and providing insights into the universe's most distant objects.
The James Webb Space Telescope sunshield, crucial to the mission's success, has completed its preliminary design review. The five-layer sunshield will deploy in space to shade the telescope optics and enable it to reach proper operating temperature.
The Naval Research Laboratory will design a lunar telescope, the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer (DALI), to study the last unexplored epoch in the Universe's history. The telescope aims to detect signals from hydrogen atoms in the Dark Ages, which can provide insights into the first stars, galaxies, and modern Universe.
The Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham achieved its first binocular light using twin side-by-side 8.4-meter primary mirrors, showcasing the telescope's power and clarity. The images reveal details of the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, including newly formed hot stars and older, cooler stars.
NASA awards CU-Boulder $1 million to lead the study of a space observatory that will find Earth-like planets and detect biomarkers like methane, oxygen, and water. The project plans to launch a 4-meter telescope into an orbit roughly 1 million miles from Earth, with a giant starshade to block starlight.
The James Webb Space Telescope employs the miniaturized SIDECAR to convert analog signals into digital data, reducing noise and improving transmission robustness. This technology enables efficient signal processing and minimizes system noise.
Galaxies in crowded environments, like superclusters, experience violent lives due to high-speed collisions and stripping away of gas. The Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys mapped dark matter scaffolding, revealing dense clumps that match the location of old galaxies.
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a double Einstein ring, caused by the bending of light from two distant galaxies behind a massive foreground galaxy. The discovery offers insights into dark matter and the nature of distant galaxies.
For the first time, astronomers have directly visualized the distribution of dark matter in a supercluster, allowing for the detection of irregular clumps and detailed shapes. This breakthrough study, led by UBC researcher Catherine Heymans, uses NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to map the Abell 901/902 supercluster.
The Hubble servicing mission, scheduled for August 2008, aims to equip the telescope with new instruments, including the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and Wide Field Camera 3. These upgrades will enhance Hubble's capabilities to explore the universe, studying dark matter, dark energy, and planetary atmospheres.