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Wide-field View of Overlapping Galaxies NGC 3314 (ground-based view)
This image shows a wide field of view around the overlapping galaxy pair NGC 3314. While the two galaxies look as if they are in the midst of a collision, this is in fact a trick of perspective: the two are in chance alignment from our vantage point.
Distance:150 million light years
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Digitized Sky Survey 2
This video begins with an image of the whole night sky, before zooming in to the constellation of Hydra and the curious pair of galaxies cataloged as NGC 3314. These two galaxies are actually separated by around 20 million light years, even if from our vantage point they look like they are in the midst of a collision. The video ends with detailed Hubble observations of the two galaxies.
Distance:150 million light years
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2, N. Risinger
Panning across Overlapping Galaxies: NGC 3314 | Hubble
This video pans across Hubble observations of NGC 3314A and NGC 3314B, a pair of galaxies in the constellation Hydra. While they might look like they are in the midst of a cosmic collision, they are in fact separated by around 20 million light-years of space. The overlap is simply a trick of perspective.
Distance:150 million light years
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), W. Keel (University of Alabama)
The NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope has produced an incredibly detailed image of a pair of overlapping galaxies called NGC 3314. While the two galaxies look as if they are in the midst of a collision, this is in fact a trick of perspective: the two are in chance alignment from our vantage point.
Distance:150 million light years
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and W. Keel (University of Alabama)
Panning across a "Clouded Vision": Dense Core CB 130-3 | Hubble
A small, dense cloud of gas and dust called CB 130-3 blots out the center of this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. CB 130-3 is an object known as a dense core, a compact agglomeration of gas and dust. This particular dense core is in the constellation Serpens, and seems to billow across a field of background stars.
Image Description: This image shows an irregularly-shaped bright orange object composed of dense gas and dust, which appears darker and more compact at the center. This dense cloud, called CB 130-3, is outlined by thinner gas and dust in light shades of blue. The background shows a multitude of bright stars against a black background.
Dense cores like CB 130-3 are the birthplaces of stars, and as such are of particular interest to astronomers. During the collapse of these cores enough mass can accumulate in one place to reach the temperatures and densities required to ignite hydrogen fusion, marking the birth of a new star. While it may not be obvious from this image, a compact object teetering on the brink of becoming a fully fledged star is embedded deep within CB 130-3.
Astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to better understand the environment surrounding this fledgling star. As this image shows, the density of CB 130-3 is not constant; the outer edges of the cloud consist of only tenuous wisps, whereas at its core CB 130-3 blots out background light entirely. The gas and dust making up CB 130-3 affect not only the brightness but also the color of background stars, with stars towards the center the cloud appearing redder than their counterparts at the outskirts of this image. Astronomers used Hubble to measure this reddening effect and chart out the density of CB 130-3, providing insights into the inner structure of this stellar nursery.
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA & STScI, C. Britt, T. Huard
A small, dense cloud of gas and dust called CB 130-3 blots out the center of this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. CB 130-3 is an object known as a dense core, a compact agglomeration of gas and dust. This particular dense core is in the constellation Serpens, and seems to billow across a field of background stars.
Image Description: The image shows an irregularly-shaped bright orange object composed of dense gas and dust, which appears darker and more compact at the center. This dense cloud, called CB 130-3, is outlined by thinner gas and dust in light shades of blue. The background shows a multitude of bright stars against a black background.
Dense cores like CB 130-3 are the birthplaces of stars, and as such are of particular interest to astronomers. During the collapse of these cores enough mass can accumulate in one place to reach the temperatures and densities required to ignite hydrogen fusion, marking the birth of a new star. While it may not be obvious from this image, a compact object teetering on the brink of becoming a fully fledged star is embedded deep within CB 130-3.
Astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to better understand the environment surrounding this fledgling star. As this image shows, the density of CB 130-3 is not constant; the outer edges of the cloud consist of only tenuous wisps, whereas at its core CB 130-3 blots out background light entirely. The gas and dust making up CB 130-3 affect not only the brightness but also the color of background stars, with stars towards the center the cloud appearing redder than their counterparts at the outskirts of this image. Astronomers used Hubble to measure this reddening effect and chart out the density of CB 130-3, providing insights into the inner structure of this stellar nursery.
Credit: European Space Agency/Hubble, NASA & STScI, C. Britt, T. Huard, A. Pagan
Zooming in on Two Galaxies in a Ghostly Embrace: Arp-Madore 2026-424 | Hubble
This video gives the viewer a closer look at the Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This image shows the collision of two galaxies of equal size and was taken on June 19, 2019, in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is cataloged as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore “Catalog of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations”.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin (University of Washington)
Pan across Two Galaxies in a Ghostly Embrace: Arp-Madore 2026-424 | Hubble
This video pans over Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) as observed by the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This image shows the collision of two galaxies of equal size and was taken on June 19, 2019, in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is cataloged as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore “Catalog of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations.”
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin (University of Washington)
Two Galaxies in a Ghostly Embrace: Arp-Madore 2026-424 | Hubble
This image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face. This observation was made on June 19, 2019, in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is cataloged as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore “Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations.”
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin (University of Washington)
NASA’s X-59 Supersonic Aircraft: The Quiet Crew | A Profile of Bryan Watters
In this episode of The Quiet Crew, you will meet civil engineer Bryan Watters and learn about his role on the Quesst mission. Bryan has been supporting the mission by managing the restoration and modernization of hangar 4826—the future home of the X-59 aircraft. He is part of the crew on a mission to transform aviation as NASA and communities in the U.S. work together to verify that the X-59’s quiet, supersonic design can turn a sonic boom into a sonic thump. This new technology, along with a potential change in regulations, will allow airliners to fly faster over land, cutting passenger travel time in half without disturbing people on the ground.
The NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is an aeronautical research center. Its primary campus is located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California and is considered NASA's premier site for aeronautical research.
U.S. Space Station Crew Answers Naval Test Pilot & Student Questions
Aboard the International Space Station, NASA Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio answered pre-recorded questions about life and work on the orbiting laboratory during an in-flight event October 27, 2022, with students attending the United States Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. Both Mann and Cassada are graduates of the school. Mann, Cassada, and Rubio are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions as part of NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration approach, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.
Expedition 68 Crew
Station Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia): Flight Engineers Anna Kikina & Dmitri Petelin
NASA: Flight Engineers Nicole Mann, Frank Rubio & Josh Cassada
JAXA (Japan): Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Panning Across a Made-to-Measure Galaxy: NGC 7038 | Hubble
The spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 7038 wind languidly across this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 7038 lies around 220 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Indus. This image portrays an especially rich and detailed view of a spiral galaxy, and exposes a huge number of distant stars and galaxies around it. This is because it is made from a combined 15 hours worth of Hubble time focused on NGC 7038 and collecting light. So much data indicates that this is a valuable target, and indeed, NGC 7038 has been particularly helpful to astronomers measuring distances at vast cosmic scales.
Image Description: An enormous spiral galaxy fills half of the frame, in the center. It is oval-shaped, with four blue spiral arms winding around it. The galaxy’s centre shines brightly with pale yellow light. Thin strands of orange dust are spread around the centre, following the paths of the arms. Above and below the galaxy, very many small stars and galaxies are visible on the black background.
The distances to astronomical objects are determined using an interconnected chain of measurement techniques called the Cosmic Distance Ladder. Each rung in the ladder is calibrated by earlier steps, based on measurements of objects closer to us. This makes the accuracy of distances at the largest scales dependent on how accurately distances to nearby objects can be determined. Hubble inspected NGC 7038 with its Wide Field Camera 3 to calibrate two of the most common distance measurement techniques: type 1A supernovae and Cepheid variables.
One of Hubble's original science goals was to accurately establish distances to night-sky objects, and over its three decades of operation Hubble’s increasingly precise distance measurements have contributed to one of the most intriguing unsolved problems in astronomy. Distance measurements are used to derive a quantity known as the Hubble constant, which captures how fast the Universe is expanding. As astronomer’s measurements of the Hubble constant have become more precise, their value has become increasingly inconsistent with the value of the Hubble Constant derived from observations of the Big Bang’s afterglow. Astronomers have been unable to explain the mismatch between the two values of the Hubble constant, which suggests that a new discovery in cosmology is waiting to be made.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, D. Jones
Space Oddities: Panning across The Galactic Triplet Arp 248 | Hubble
This image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope shows two of the galaxies in the galactic triplet Arp 248—also known as Wild's Triplet—which lies around 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The two large spiral galaxies visible in this image—which flank a smaller, unrelated background spiral galaxy—seem to be connected by a luminous bridge. This elongated stream of stars and interstellar dust is known as a tidal tail, and it was formed by the mutual gravitational attraction of the two foreground galaxies.
Image Description: Two spiral galaxies are viewed almost face-on; they are a mix of pale blue and yellow in color, crossed by strands of dark red dust. They lie in the upper-left and lower-right corners. A long, faint streak of pale blue joins them, extending from an arm of one galaxy and crossing the field diagonally. A small spiral galaxy, orange in color, is visible edge-on, left of the lower galaxy.
This observation comes from a project which delves into two rogues’ galleries of weird and wonderful galaxies: A Catalogue Of Southern Peculiar Galaxies And Associations, compiled by astronomers Halton Arp and Barry Madore, and the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp. Each collection contains a menagerie of spectacularly peculiar galaxies, including interacting galaxies such as Arp 248, as well as one- or three-armed spiral galaxies, galaxies with shell-like structures, and a variety of other space oddities.
Hubble used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to scour this menagerie of eccentric galaxies in search of promising candidates for future observations with the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and Hubble itself. With such a wealth of astronomical objects to study in the night sky, projects such as this, which guide future observations, are a valuable investment of observing time. As well as the scientific merits of observing these weird and wonderful galaxies, they were also—very unusually—selected as Hubble targets because of their visual appeal to the general public!
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton
The Move to the Launch Pad for Artemis I | This Week @NASA
The move to the launch pad for NASA's Artemis I Moon rocket, a visual treat in the sky, and a NASA tech demo hitches a ride to space . . . a few of the stories to tell you about–This Week at NASA!
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
How is Propellant Loaded into NASA’s SLS Moon Rocket?
Rocket Science in 60 Seconds gives you an inside look at work being done at NASA to explore deep space. Chandler Scheuermann is an engineer at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where he works on the massive core stage for the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
In this episode, Chandler explains how teams at Kennedy Space Center in Florida load more than 730,000 gallons of super cold propellant into the propellant tanks of NASA’s Moon rocket on launch day. For more information about SLS and how it will launch the Artemis missions to the Moon, visit https://www.nasa.gov/sls
The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate NASA's commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond. It will travel 280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the Moon over the course of about a three-week mission. Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before.
On the Artemis III Mission, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone on the way to Mars.
