Topic: Subaru Telescope

Earth’s most powerful telescopes enhance NASA’s Juno Spacecraft’s Jupiter Flyby

July 1, 2017 |

Written by Laurie Cantillo / Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – Telescopes in Hawaii have obtained new images of Jupiter and its Great Red Spot, which will assist the first-ever close-up study of the Great Red Spot, planned for July 10th. On that date, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will fly directly over the giant planet’s most famous feature at an altitude of only about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers).

Throughout the Juno mission, numerous observations of Jupiter by Earth-based telescopes have been acquired in coordination with the mission, to help Juno investigate the giant planet’s atmosphere.

This composite, false-color infrared image of Jupiter reveals haze particles over a range of altitudes, as seen in reflected sunlight. It was taken using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii on May 18, 2017, in collaboration with observations of Jupiter by NASA’s Juno mission.

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NASA reports Caltech Researchers discover evidence of a new Planet, Planet 9

January 25, 2016 |

Written by Kimm Fesenmaier
California Institute of Technology

Pasadena, CA – Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system.

The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.

The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.

This artistic rendering shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side. (Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))

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NASA astronomers to use Hubble, Spitzer, Herschel space telescopes to examine Burned Out Elliptical Galaxies

February 3, 2014 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and Europe’s Herschel Space Observatory, have pieced together the evolutionary sequence of compact elliptical galaxies that erupted and burned out early in the history of the universe.

Enabled by Hubble’s infrared imaging capabilities, astronomers have assembled for the first time a representative spectroscopic sampling of ultra-compact, burned-out elliptical galaxies — galaxies whose star formation was finished when the universe was only 3 billion years old, less than a quarter of its current estimated age of 13.8 billion years.

This graphic shows the evolutionary sequence in the growth of massive elliptical galaxies over 13 billion years, as gleaned from space-based and ground-based telescopic observations. The growth of this class of galaxies is quickly driven by rapid star formation and mergers with other galaxies. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Toft (Niels Bohr Institute), and A. Feild (STScI)

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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 Astronomers discover “Super Jupiter” planet orbiting Massive Star

November 20, 2012 |

Written by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – Astronomers using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii have discovered a “super-Jupiter” around the bright star Kappa Andromedae, which now holds the record for the most massive star known to host a directly imaged planet or lightweight brown dwarf companion.

Designated Kappa Andromedae b (Kappa And b, for short), the new object has a mass about 12.8 times greater than Jupiter’s. This places it teetering on the dividing line that separates the most massive planets from the lowest-mass brown dwarfs.

The “super-Jupiter” Kappa Andromedae b, shown here in an artist’s rendering, circles its star at nearly twice the distance that Neptune orbits the sun. With a mass about 13 times Jupiter’s, the object glows with a reddish color. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger)

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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope data sheds new light on possible exoplanet in orbit around the Star Fomalhaut

October 28, 2012 |

Written by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – A second look at data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is reanimating the claim that the nearby star Fomalhaut hosts a massive exoplanet. The study suggests that the planet, named Fomalhaut b, is a rare and possibly unique object that is completely shrouded by dust.

Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus and lies 25 light-years away.

This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its sun, Fomalhaut. (Credit: ESA; Hubble, M. Kornmesser; and ESO, L. Calçada and L. L. Christensen)

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A Star with Spiral Arms

November 2, 2011 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

 Greenbelt, MD – For more than four hundred years, astronomers have used telescopes to study the great variety of stars in our galaxy. Millions of distant suns have been catalogued. There are dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, exploding stars, binary stars; by now, you might suppose that every kind of star in the Milky Way had been seen.

That’s why a recent discovery is so surprising. Researchers using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii have found a star with spiral arms.

Two spiral arms emerge from the gas-rich disk around SAO 206462, a young star in the constellation Lupus. This image, acquired by the Subaru Telescope and its HiCIAO instrument, is the first to show spiral arms in a circumstellar disk. The disk itself is some 14 billion miles across, or about twice the size of Pluto's orbit in our own solar system. (Credit: NAOJ/Subaru)

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