Space Telescope still astonishes. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HUBBLE! Late April, 2019. Single-item pullout.
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# 4 feature...
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From the section:
☆ "The Main News -- though you might not find it any place but here..."
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From the section:
☆ "The Main News -- though you might not find it any place but here..."
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HUBBLE!
This incredible image of the hourglass-shaped Southern Crab Nebula was taken to mark the Hubble Space Telescope’s 29th anniversary in space.
This incredible image of the hourglass-shaped Southern Crab Nebula was taken to mark the Hubble Space Telescope’s 29th anniversary in space.
Each year the telescope dedicates a small portion of its precious observing time to take a special anniversary image, focused on capturing particularly beautiful and meaningful objects. Click to enlarge.
Launched April 24, 1990 from the space shuttle Discovery, the orbiting reflecting telescope was initially useless because of a minor, but crucial, flaw in its huge mirror. Another space shuttle mission had to do something that was never thought possible: partial disassembly of the telescope by spacewalking astronauts. They placed an array of tiny corrective mirrors inside Hubble that functioned like a person being fitted with vision-correcting glasses. And additional shuttle missions performed challenging and unprecedented tasks to extend its capabilities, as well.
Hubble has since revolutionized how astronomers and the general public see the Universe. The images Hubble provides are spectacular from both a scientific and a purely aesthetic point of view.
This new image adds a lot of science and changes our understanding of the nebula, even as it demonstrates the telescope’s continued capabilities.
This peculiar nebula is one of the many objects that Hubble has demystified throughout its productive life. This, the Southern Crab Nebula, is so named to distinguish it from the better-known Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant visible in the constellation of Taurus.
The image reveals active, dynamic processes. It shows nested, hourglass-shaped, structures created by the interaction between a pair of stars -- a binary star system -- at its center.
The pair of stars is unequal and constantly changing. They are a red giant and a white dwarf. The red giant is shedding its outer layers in the last phase of its life before it, too, lives out its final years as a white dwarf.
Some of the red giant's ejected material is attracted by the gravity of its companion. When enough of this cast-off material is pulled onto the white dwarf, it also ejects the material outwards in an eruption, creating the structures we see in the nebula. Eventually, the red giant will finish throwing-off its outer layers and stop feeding its white dwarf companion. Prior to this, there may also be more eruptions, creating even more intricate structures.
But... Astronomers did not always know this. The object was first written about in 1967, but was assumed to be an ordinary star. That was until 1989, when it was observed using telescopes at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory. An image taken then showed a roughly crab-shaped extended nebula, formed by symmetrical bubbles of gas and dust.
These observations only showed the outer hourglass emanating from a bright central region that could not be clearly resolved.
It was not until Hubble observed the Southern Crab in 1999 that the entire structure came into view. That image revealed the inner nested structures, suggesting that the phenomenon that created the outer bubbles had occurred twice in the (astronomically) recent past.
It is fitting that Hubble has returned to this object twenty years after its first observation. This new image adds to the story of an active and evolving object and contributes to the story of Hubble's role in our evolving understanding of the Universe.
We noted that several space shuttle missions were tasked to perform rebuilds and maintenance that have kept Hubble functioning far beyond its designed lifetime. Sadly, with no similar manned space capabilities since abandonment of the shuttle program, Hubble's days are numbered, since no further maintenance can be performed.
Want more? Check out THIS:
INTERACTIVE 3D MODEL OF THE HUBBLE SPACECRAFT:
http://sci.esa.int/hubble/31384-3d-model/
(Our thanks to Bethany Downer, ESA/Hubble Public Information Officer in Garching, Germany, for much of the information used here.)
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LEGALESE, CONTACTING US, 'N SUCH...
Boilerplate? Where's the main pressure gauge? And the firebox?
What "boilerplate"? Who came up with that goofy term for the basic essential informational stuff...
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