Topic: Stars

NASA reports Project 1640 explores the Atmosphere of Planets far away

May 12, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Gone are the days of being able to count the number of known planets on your fingers. Today, there are more than 800 confirmed exoplanets — planets that orbit stars beyond our sun — and more than 2,700 other candidates.

What are these exotic planets made of? Unfortunately, you cannot stack them in a jar like marbles and take a closer look. Instead, researchers are coming up with advanced techniques for probing the planets’ makeup.

This image shows the HR 8799 planets with starlight optically suppressed and data processing conducted to remove residual starlight. The star is at the center of the blackened circle in the image. The four spots indicated with the letters b through e are the planets. This is a composite image using 30 wavelengths of light and was obtained over a period of 1.25 hours on June 14th and 15th, 2012. (Image courtesy of Project 1640)

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NASA’s reports Astronomers have found Green Galaxy churning out Stars

May 5, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers have spotted the “greenest” of galaxies, one that converts fuel into stars with almost 100-percent efficiency.

The findings come from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps.

“This galaxy is remarkably efficient,” said Jim Geach of McGill University in Canada, lead author of a new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “It’s converting its gas supply into new stars at the maximum rate thought possible.”

The tiny red spot in this image is one of the most efficient star-making galaxies ever observed, converting gas into stars at the maximum possible rate. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/IRAM)

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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’s Hubble Space Telescope takes image of Horsehead Nebula in the Orion Molecular Cloud

April 21, 2013 |

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory’s launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24th, 1990.

Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery more than a century ago. The nebula is a favorite target for amateur and professional astronomers.

NASA’s Hubble Space telescope takes pic of Horsehead Nebula. (Credit:NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

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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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Nashville Predators host Dallas Stars at Bridgestone Arena Friday

April 11, 2013 |

Dallas Stars vs. Nashville Predators

Friday, April 12th, 2013 | 7:00pm (CT)
Nashville, TN | Bridgestone Arena

Nashville, TN - The Nashville Predators and Dallas Stars wrap up their three-game 2012-13 set on Friday at Bridgestone Arena with the Predators having won each of the first two meetings.

Most recently on March 12th in Dallas, Pekka Rinne made 32 saves to record his league-leading fifth shutout of the season, Shea Weber and Gabriel Bourque scored power-play goals, and Rich Clune scored the eighth penalty-shot goal in franchise history on the 24th all-time attempt in a 4-0 Nashville win.

Nashville Predators’ Pekka Rinne. (Photo by Don McPeak-USA TODAY Sports)

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Nashville Sounds announce Roster for Opening Day

March 31, 2013 |

Nashville, TN – The Nashville Sounds – the Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers – have announced their tentative Opening Day 25-man roster, a group highlighted by the Brewers’ 2012 minor league player and pitcher of the year, nine returning players from the 2012 squad, and eight members of Milwaukee’s 40-man roster.

Well-decorated first baseman Hunter Morris advances to Nashville after an outstanding 2012 campaign at Double-A Huntsville, where he netted Southern League MVP honors, a minor league Gold Glove Award, and was named the Brewers’ Robin Yount Performance Award winner as the organization’s player of the year.

Nashville Sounds. (Mike Strasinger / Nashville Sounds)

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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 reports Herschel space observatory finds youngest starts to date

March 20, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers have found some of the youngest stars ever seen, thanks to the Herschel space observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.

Observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile, a collaboration involving the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden, and the European Southern Observatory in Germany, contributed to the findings.

Astronomers have found some of the youngest stars ever seen thanks to the Herschel space observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions. Dense envelopes of gas and dust surround the fledging stars known as protostars, making their detection difficult until now. The discovery gives scientists a window into the earliest and least understood phases of star formation. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/ESO/JPL-Caltech/Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy)

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