What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! Comet or asteroid? This Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the gradual self-destruction of an asteroid, whose ejected dusty material has formed two long, thin, comet-like tails. The longer tail stretches more than 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) and is roughly 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide. The shorter tail is about a quarter as long. The streamers will eventually disperse into space. Credits: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), and O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory) If we saw this in the sky odds are we would all think it is a comet and its tail. But that is not the case.....it is an asteroid in the process of gradual self-destruction! Read the story behind the stunning image. All of that debris will become part of the dust in the solar system that I blogged about yesterday, Sky Guy in the Atlantic

Hey Space Placers! I am sure you are getting your March Madness Brackets set up. Check out the most accurate to date determination of how much our home galaxy "weighs", or more precisely, how much mass does it contain. Center of Milky Way Galaxy Taken Underway on Azamara Quest Pretty amazing story and result. Most of our galaxy's mass is in the form of dark matter - something we can detect by its gravitational influence but cannot see. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Bad news about Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The primary camera,  Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, is broken and not  working. Worse yet, NASA cannot pull in the people necessary to try and fix it because of the stupid partial government shut down. The problem is that NASA Goddard, where many of HST's expert work, is closed. We'll have to see what happens....... Sky Guy Greg

Hey Space Placers! Happy 2019. Back from being sick and the holidays. Check out this INCREDIBLE video of the nearby Triangulum Galaxy (M-33) released today by the  SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE   using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images: Be sure to read the story about the 665 MB picture taken by HST. Release type: American Astronomical Society Meeting CREDIT: NASA, ESA For comparison here is my astrophoto of M-33 taken with my 10-inch telescope and DSLR: Local Group Galaxy M-33 in a 10-inch Telescope and DSLR Credit: Greg Redfern Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! This new discovery of a galaxy that contains little or NO Dark Matter is so huge it puts my blog about yesterday's "Return to The Moon" conference in Washington, D.C. on hold. Astronomers just announced  yesterday   that using an array of commercial 400mm telephoto lenses called Dragonfly   they have found a galaxy called  NGC 1052-DF2  that is the size of the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG), contains less than 0.5% of the stars in the MWG, and has little or no Dark Matter which is found in every other galaxy to date. This galaxy is so sparse that when the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photographed it distant background galaxies could be seen through it! Hubble Views ‘Ghostly’ Galaxy Lacking Dark Matter This large, fuzzy-looking galaxy is so diffuse that astronomers call it a “see-through” galaxy because they can clearly see distant galaxies behind it. The ghostly object, catalogued as NGC 1052-DF2, doesn’t have a noticeable central regio...

Hey Space Placers!  Here's a fascinating article about the 3 way tug of war going on between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC, SMC) which can be seen in the Southern Hemisphere and our very own Milky Way Galaxy (MWG). LMC & SMC and Achenar Taken by Greg Redfern Underway On Oceania LMC and SMC orbit our MWG and all 3 are undergoing gravitational interactions, some of which result in the Magellanic Stream and Leading Arm which can be seen in the following photo: Caption From NASA: This is a photo mosaic of an edge-on view of the Milky Way galaxy, looking toward the central bulge. Superimposed on it are radio-telescope images, colored pink, of the stretched, arc-shaped Magellanic Stream below the plane of the galaxy and the shredded, fragmented Leading Arm crossing the galaxy’s plane and extending above it. These gas clouds are being gravitationally pulled apart like taffy from the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds—satellite galaxies to our Milky Way—whic...

Hey SPACE PLACERS! UPDATE: Info on Jupiter opposition from NASA. Check out the latest pic of Jupiter taken by Hubble Space Telescope (HST). NASA You can see Jupiter for yourself by looking in the SE right at sunset as tomorrow Jupiter will be directly opposite the Sun or what astronomers call opposition. Jupiter will remain bright in the sky all night. If you have binoculars you can see the four main moons if you hold the binoculars steady enough. Bracing against a wall or car top helps. A telescope really brings forth the 'King of The Planets' in all his glory. Enjoy.

Hey Space Placers! Incredible news today from Hubble Space Telescope observations that states there are a minimum of TWO TRILLION GALAXIES in the visible Universe. That is an amazingly large number that I suspect will grow even larger once the James Webb Space Telescope and the 30 and 39 Meter Telescopes are built and in operation. This increases the number of previously observed galaxies by at least 10. The visible Universe just got a whole lot bigger. I can hardly wait until we get those next generation telescopes observing and see what we shall see! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Credit:   NASA  and  ESA Acknowledgment:  J. Hester (ASU) and M. Weisskopf ( NASA /GSFC) The latest released Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image ,  the Crab Nebula, M1. For comparison here is one of my pics of M-1taken in a 10-inch telescope. You can see the reason why it is called the Crab Nebula. G. Redfern Sky Guy in Cloudy VA

Hey Space Placers! Due to Virginia becoming Venus as far as cloud cover I have not been able to take one single picture of Mars through my telescope or even in the night time sky. Needless to say this has been very, very FRUSTRATING to me!! Well, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) doesn't have that problem. This picture of the Red Planet was taken by HST on 5/12/16 at a distance of 50 million miles from Earth and the detail is exquisite as you can see. NASA/ESA I really hoping that the sky will clear so I can attempt some pics of Mars this opposition. I'll have my final part tomorrow on what to look for in the coming weeks. Sky Guy in Venus VA

Hey Space Placers! Look at this incredible picture of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy taken by Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Source: Hubblesite.org Isn't it beautiful? There are 500,000 stars crammed into an area of space that would be the equivalent of the distance from our Sun to the Alpha Centauri system, a little over 4 light years away. To learn even more about the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster and Hubble, join astronomers and scientists during a live Hubble Hangout discussion at 3pm EDT on Thurs., March 31 at  http://hbbl.us/y6k . Here is the full story behind the picture . Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Greeting from Tenerife. Check out this UNREAL picture taken of Jupiter by the Hubble Space Telescope . Get the background on the photo here . Sea Dream I leaves for Barbados tonight. Sky Guy Greg

Hey Space Placers! NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is speeding towards a flyby of Pluto in July 2015. This will be historic as Pluto will be the last of the original nine planets to be visited by a spacecraft. But what to do with a healthy spacecraft after the Pluto flyby that has lots of life left in her? The answer? Go to new worlds and explore them in the depths of the solar system - an area where we will not probably be going for a while. To facilitate the post-Pluto mission of New Horizons Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been looking for worlds beyond Pluto - and has found two potential candidates for the spacecraft to visit . HST will continue the search for Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that fit New Horizons' requirements through August. The decision on what worlds to explore will have to be made in the fall of 2015. It will then take 2-3 years to fly to the new target(s).  New Horizons will start her science mission on Pluto in January….it has been a lo...

Hey Space Placers! The Universe is ALWAYS throwing us curves. You would think that the biggest galaxies would be the best at forming new stars. But a new study using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) shows that dwarf galaxies formed a large portion of new stars early in the Universe. The decade long study shows that dwarf galaxies doubled their entire mass of stars in as "little" as 150 million years - a mere eye blink of time in astronomical terms. Normal size galaxies would take 1-3 BILLION years to do so. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! UPDATE: Tweet: Alex Parker  ‏ @ Alex_Parker     29m Here's the first raw Hubble image from our KBO search. We should have our first clean stacks by the end of the day. pic.twitter.com/3FNSgDHL4M Alex Parker HST That DID NOT take long to get the 1st pic! -------------------------------------------------------- NASA's New Horizons spacecraft that is enroute to Pluto was just brought out of hibernation last week and all systems are go for a July 2015 flyby of the last planet of the known solar system (Pluto was a main planet when New Horizons was launched on 2006 - it is now classified as a dwarf planet. It was also the only planet not visited by a spacecraft). Pluto Flyby of KBO NASA Because it takes so long to get out to Pluto and budgets are tight for new planetary missions, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Time Allocation Committee has decided to conduct a test to see if it is feasible to find a post-Pluto flyby target in an ...

Hey Space Placers! If you have ever been in a dark sky site in summer or winter you probably noticed the faint band of light that crosses the sky during those seasons. You may have wondered what you were looking at or already knew that you were seeing a portion of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Not named for the candy bar, but for its appearance in the sky, the Milky Way was named by the ancients who had a really good view of the sky before lights and massive population took away the dark. These cultures of long ago envisioned the band of light that they could see so plainly - it really is bright when there are no lights or Moon to interfere with the view, especially in summer - as being a milky colored river running across the sky. Today we know that what we are seeing when we see this band of light is literally the collective light of millions of stars that comprise some of the arms of the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy. It is difficult to discover the nature of the Milky W...

Hey Space Placers! Hubble Space Telescope (HST) found a very bright and distant glaxy thanks to the gravitational lensing of an intervening galaxy cluster. As explained in the news release, "A so-called gravitational lens is produced when space is warped by a massive foreground object, whether it is the Sun, a black hole, or an entire cluster of galaxies. The light from more-distant background objects is distorted, brightened, and magnified as it passes through this gravitationally disturbed region." The galaxy is the brightest lensed galaxy found to date and it represents a time when the Universe was about 1/3 of its present age. The picture below shows the compnents of the lenses galaxy's image and what the galaxy looks like without the gravitational lensing distortion.   Astronomers will study this galaxy further to learn more about galaxies as they existed so long ago. Read More About It: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/08/ful...

Hey Space Placers! Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has discovered a 4th moon for Pluto. The discovery was made while HST was searching for rings around the dwarf planet during an observing run conducted June 28-July 3rd. The discovery announcement was made on July 20th. This new moon, temporarily designated P4, is the smallest of Pluto's moons, being only 8 to 21 miles across. When you consider that HST was observing Pluto at a distance of more than 3 BILLION miles, it is an incredible find. Read More About It: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/20jul_p4/ Tomorrow: Huge Water Discovery in space. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Check out this pic from HST that shows star birth in the Centaurus A galaxy. Quite impressive! Read More About It: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/18/image/a/format/web/

Hey Space Placers! Been enjoying a few days off hope everyone is enjoying this weekend according to their faith. This is a newly released photo from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to mark its 21st anniversary. What a grand sight indeeed! Read More About It: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/hubble-rose.html Sky Guy in VA