Topic: Milky Way Galaxy

NASA reports Herschel Space Observatory sees Hot Gases falling into Super Black Hole at center of Milky Way Galaxy

May 8, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot gas that may be orbiting or falling towards the supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

“The black hole appears to be devouring the gas,” said Paul Goldsmith, the U.S. project scientist for Herschel at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. “This will teach us about how supermassive black holes grow.”

This artist’s concept illustrates the frenzied activity at the core of our Milky Way galaxy. The galactic center hosts a supermassive black hole in the region known as Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, with a mass of about four million times that of our sun. The Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot gas that may be orbiting or falling toward the supermassive black hole. (Image credits: ESA-C. Carreau)

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NASA Hubble Space Telescope questions answered by Jennifer Wiseman

April 28, 2013 |

Greenbelt, MD – NASA’s Jennifer Wiseman is the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, where the mission is managed.

The following questions and answers were provided in April 2013 about the history and the status of the Hubble.

Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she serves as the Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. (Credit: NASA)

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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope takes a look at the Palomar 2 cluster

April 22, 2013 |

Greenbelt, MD – Palomar 2 is part of a group of 15 globulars known as the Palomar clusters. These clusters, as the name suggests, were discovered in survey plates from the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey in the 1950s, a project that involved some of the most well-known astronomers of the day, including Edwin Hubble.

They were discovered quite late because they are so faint — each is either extremely remote, very heavily hidden behind blankets of dust, or has a very small number of remaining stars.

Palomar 2, one of 15 globulars from the Palomar clusters. (Credit: ESA/NASA, Hubble)

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NASA Astronomers using Herschel Space Observatory discover oldest star producing Galaxy to date

April 18, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers, including Matt Bradford, Jamie Bock, Darren Dowell, Hien Nguyen and Jonas Zmuidzinas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, have discovered a dust-filled, massive galaxy churning out stars when the cosmos was a mere 880 million years old. This is the earliest starburst galaxy ever observed.

The discovery, appearing in the April 18th issue of Nature, was made using the European Space Agency’s Herschel space observatory, for which JPL helped build two instruments.

This artist’s impression shows the “starburst” galaxy HFLS3. The galaxy appears as little more than a faint, red smudge in images from the Herschel space observatory. (Image credit: ESA-C. Carreau)

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Herschel Space Observatory searches for Massive Stars

March 31, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – In this new view of a vast star-forming cloud called W3, the Herschel space observatory tells the story of how massive stars are born. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.

W3 is a giant gas cloud containing an enormous stellar nursery, some 6,200 light-years away in the Perseus Arm, one of our Milky Way galaxy’s main spiral arms.

W3 is an enormous stellar nursery about 6,200 light-years away in the Perseus Arm, one of the Milky Way galaxy’s main spiral arms, which hosts both low- and high-mass star formation. In this image from the Herschel space observatory, the low-mass forming stars are seen as tiny yellow dots embedded in cool red filaments, while the highest-mass stars — with greater than eight times the mass of our sun — emit intense radiation, heating up the gas and dust around them and appearing here in blue. (Image credits: ESA/PACS & SPIRE consortia, A. Rivera-Ingraham & P.G. Martin, Univ. Toronto, HOBYS Key Programme (F. Motte))

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NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer data confirms Spiral Galaxy as Largest ever discovered

January 14, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The spectacular barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has ranked among the biggest stellar systems for decades. Now a team of astronomers from the United States, Chile and Brazil has crowned it the largest known spiral, based on archival data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission, which has since been loaned to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Measuring tip-to-tip across its two outsized spiral arms, NGC 6872 spans more than 522,000 light-years, making it more than five times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.

This composite of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet (1,528 angstroms) data from NASA’s GALEX and 3.6-micron infrared data acquired by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ESO/JPL-Caltech/DSS)

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NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope searches for Gigantic Galaxy Clusters

December 8, 2012 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Our solar system, with its colorful collection of planets, asteroids and comets, is a fleck in the grander cosmos. Hundreds of billions of solar systems are thought to reside in our Milky Way galaxy, which is itself just a drop in a sea of galaxies.

The rarest and largest of galaxy groupings, called galaxy clusters, can be the hardest to find. That’s where NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) can help. The mission’s all-sky infrared maps have revealed one distant galaxy cluster and are expected to uncover thousands more.

A galaxy cluster 7.7 billion light-years away has been discovered using infrared data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/WIYN/Subaru)

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NASA reports Astronomers using Herschel space telescope discover planetary systems with vast Comet debris

November 28, 2012 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers have discovered vast comet belts surrounding two nearby planetary systems known to host only Earth-to-Neptune-mass worlds. These cometary belts could have delivered oceans to the innermost planets.

The findings are based on observations from the Herschel space telescope, a European Space Agency mission with important participation from NASA.

Last year, Herschel found that the dusty belt surrounding the nearby star Fomalhaut must be maintained by collisions between comets.

This artist’s impression shows the orbits of planets and comets around the star 61 Vir, superimposed on a view from the Herschel Space Telescope. (Image credits: ESA/AOES)

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NASA’s NuSTAR spacecraft captures image of Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way having a Thanksgiving Snack

November 23, 2012 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Deep in the heart of the spiral Milky Way galaxy, a hot vortex of matter swirls around a black hole more than a million times as massive as the sun.

Many galaxies, perhaps all, contain such a “monster in the middle.” These supermassive black holes sustain themselves by swallowing stars, planets, asteroids, comets and clouds of gas that wander by the crowded galactic core.

NASA’s NuSTAR spacecraft recently caught the Milky Way’s central black hole in the act of having a snack.

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Herschel Space Telescope captures image of dying star’s stellar explosion

November 18, 2012 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The aftershock of a stellar explosion rippling through space is captured in this new view of the supernova remnant called W44. The image combines longer-wavelength infrared and X-ray light captured by the European Space Agency’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories.

NASA also plays an important role in the Herschel mission, with the U.S project office based at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

Supernova remnant W44 is the focus of this new image created by combining data from ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. W44 is the vast purple sphere that dominates the left hand side of this image, and measures about 100 light-years across. (Image credits: Herschel: Quang Nguyen Luong & F. Motte, HOBYS Key Program consortium, Herschel SPIRE/PACS/ESA consortia. XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton)

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