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Continuing International Space Exploration Cooperation | This Week @NASA
Week of Jan. 13, 2023: Continuing a collaboration in space exploration with Japan, space station research heads back to Earth, and highlighting new science from NASA missions . . . a few of the stories to tell you about—This Week at NASA!
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Atlanta Shines: Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. | International Space Station
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthplace, Atlanta, Georgia, is seen on January 20, 2013, in this image from the International Space Station as it flew approximately 240 miles above the city.
NASA honors Dr. King’s life and legacy by expanding mission equity, engaging in public service, and sharing knowledge for the benefit of all humanity.
One of the Expedition 34 crew members aboard the International Space Station, flying at an altitude of approximately 240 miles, photographed this vertical night view of the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia.
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.
Tour: Astronomers Dig Out Buried Black Holes | NASA Chandra
Hundreds of black holes previously hidden, or buried, have been found using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This result helps give astronomers a more accurate census of black holes in the Universe.
The black holes in this new study are the supermassive variety that contain millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun. While astronomers think that almost all large galaxies harbor giant black holes in their centers, only some of the black holes will be actively pulling in material that produces radiation and some will be obscured by dust and gas.
The result was made possible by using data from the Chandra Source Catalog, a public repository including hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources detected by the observatory over its first 15 years. They combined the X-ray information with optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or SDSS. From this, a team of astronomers was able to identify hundreds of black holes that had previously been hidden. They are in galaxies not previously identified to contain quasars, extremely bright objects containing rapidly growing supermassive black holes.
While astronomers have already identified huge numbers of black holes over the years, many of these exotic objects remain elusive. This research has uncovered a missing population of black holes and helped scientists understand how they are behaving.
For about 40 years scientists have known about galaxies that look normal in optical light—with light from stars and gas but not the distinctive optical signatures of a quasar—but shine brightly in X-rays. They refer to these objects as “X-ray bright optically normal galaxies” or “XBONGs”.
By systematically combing through the deep Chandra Source Catalog and comparing to SDSS optical data, the researchers identified 817 XBONG candidates, more than ten times the number known before Chandra was in operation.
X-rays are particularly useful to search for rapidly growing black holes because material swirling around them is superheated to millions of degrees and then glows strongly in X-ray wavelengths. A thick cocoon of gas and dust surrounding a black hole will block most or all the light at optical wavelengths. X-rays, however, pass through the cocoon much more easily to be detected by Chandra.
However, X-rays could not make this discovery alone. Only by combining Chandra data with the optical was the team able to identify these previously unknown black holes. It is yet another example of how telescopes spanning the electromagnetic spectrum often work together to make exciting progress in exploring the Universe.
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.
Calling on a Galactic Neighbor: LEDA 48062 | Hubble
This image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy LEDA 48062 in the constellation Perseus. LEDA 48062 is the faint, sparse, amorphous galaxy on the right side of this image, and it is accompanied by a more sharply defined neighbor on the left, the large, disc-like lenticular galaxy UGC 8603. A smattering of more distant galaxies also litter the background, and a handful of foreground stars are also visible throughout the image.
Distance:30 million light years
Image Description: A faint, scattered collection of cool stars in the form of an irregular galaxy lies right of centre. A disc-shaped galaxy viewed nearly edge-on lies to the left, surrounded by a wide glow. Several smaller galaxies in various orientations cluster around the two. The background is black and mostly empty.
Have you ever wondered why the stars in Hubble images are surrounded by four sharp points? These are called diffraction spikes, and are created when starlight diffracts—or spreads around—the support structures inside reflecting telescopes like Hubble. The four spikes are due to the four thin vanes supporting Hubble’s secondary mirror and are only noticeable for bright objects like stars where a lot of light is concentrated on one spot. Darker, more spread-out objects like the galaxies LEDA 48062 and UGC 8603 do not possess visible diffraction spikes.
Hubble recently spent some time with our galactic neighbors. LEDA 48062 is only around 30 million light-years from the Milky Way, and was therefore included in the observing campaign Every Known Nearby Galaxy. The aim of this campaign was to observe precisely that: every known galaxy within 10 megaparsecs (around 33 million light-years) of the Milky Way. By getting to know our galactic neighbors, astronomers can determine what types of stars reside in various galaxies and also map out the local structure of the Universe.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully
At the start of 2023, the European Space Agency (ESA) is happily looking forward to another year filled with a host of thrilling new missions, cutting edge science and the continued effort to guarantee independent access to space for Europe. We will see the first images of the first Meteosat Third Generation satellite, the launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, and of Euclid and another Sentinel-1 satellite launch. It will also be the year of Ariane 6 which will make its inaugural flight and the first Dane in space, Andreas Mogensen will return to the ISS as the new astronaut-candidates commence their training. Near the end of the year the second Space Summit will further cement ESA’s ambitions for Space in Europe.
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.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
Hubble Finds Hungry Black Hole Twisting Captured Star into Donut Shape | NASA
Black holes are gatherers, not hunters. They lie in wait until a hapless star wanders by. When the star gets close enough, the black hole's gravitational grasp violently rips it apart and sloppily devours its gasses while belching out intense radiation.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have recorded a star's final moments in detail as it gets gobbled up by a black hole.
The scattered stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355 are strewn across this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This globular cluster lies less than 50,000 light-years from Earth in the Ophiuchus constellation. NGC 6355 is a galactic globular cluster that resides in our Milky Way galaxy's inner regions.
Image Description: "A dense collection of stars covers the view. Towards the center the stars become even more dense in a circular region, and also more blue. Around the edges there are some redder foreground stars, and many small stars in the background."
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars, and can be found in all types of galaxy. Their dense populations of stars and mutual gravitational attraction give these clusters a roughly spherical shape, with a bright concentration of stars surrounded by an increasingly sparse sprinkling of stars. The dense, bright core of NGC 6355 was picked out in crystal-clear detail by Hubble in this image, and is the crowded area of stars towards the center of this image.
With its vantage point above the distortions of the atmosphere, Hubble has revolutionized the study of globular clusters. It is almost impossible to distinguish the stars in globular clusters from one another with ground-based telescopes, but astronomers have been able to use Hubble to study the constituent stars of globular clusters in detail. This Hubble image of NGC 6355 contains data from both the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola, R. Cohen
A Look Back: 2022's Temperature Record| NASA Goddard
2022 effectively tied for Earth’s 5th warmest year since 1880, and the last 9 consecutive years have been the warmest 9 on record. NASA looks back at how heat was expressed in different ways around the world in 2022.
Hubble & Webb Views of Star Cluster NGC 346 in The Small Magellanic Cloud
This video features two views of NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies. The first image shown is from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which is followed by a new image of the object by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way.
The James Webb Space Telescope is an international partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI), A. James (STScI), N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
A Tour of Star Cluster NGC 346 | James Webb Space Telescope
This video tours areas of NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies.
NGC 346, a star cluster that lies within a nebula, is located 210,000 light years away. It resides within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way.
New findings from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveal the presence of a much more intricate network of gas and dust structures than previously discovered in the area. Within a plume of gas is cold molecular hydrogen, which provides a perfect environment for young stars to form, some of which can be seen in the image. These young stars generate energy that heats the gas, energizing and splitting the molecular hydrogen. This effectively carves rough ridges into the gas. Another area appears to show the head of a dragon, spitting out balls of hot gas. Its “eye” and the balls of gas are areas of active star formation, which will continue to change the environment around it. The wisps seen in the image are more evidence of that environmental change. Winds from nearby stars are blowing away material that surrounds still-forming stars, leaving these small structures behind. Around the arc, we see curly ribbons of glowing gas that outline the cold molecular gas of the region. These many pillars of creation show how pervasive the stellar erosion is in the region.
Eventually, over millions of years, the mixture of energized and dense hydrogen will give way to thousands of stars and far more of these filamentary structures.
Zooming into Star Formation Region NGC 346 | NASA Webb
This video takes the viewer on a journey to NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies, as seen by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way.
The James Webb Space Telescope is an international partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, ESO, ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey 2, A. Nota, N. Bartmann, M. Zamani
Star Formation in Cluster’s Dusty Ribbons: NGC 346 | NASA Webb
This image features NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies, as seen by the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope.
NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way.
[Image Description: A star forming region sweeps across the scene, dominated by hues of purple. Tones of yellow outline the region's irregular shape. Many bright stars dominate the scne, as well as countless smaller stars the scatter the image's background.
As stars form, they gather gas and dust, which can look like ribbons in Webb imagery, from the surrounding molecular cloud. The material collects into an accretion disc that feeds the central protostar. Astronomers have detected gas around protostars within NGC 346, but Webb’s near-infrared observations mark the first time they have also detected dust in these discs.
The James Webb Space Telescope is an international partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Star Formation in Cluster’s Dusty Ribbons: NGC 346 | James Webb Space Telescope
This image features NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies, as seen by the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope.
NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way.
Image Description: A star forming region sweeps across the scene, dominated by hues of purple. Tones of yellow outline the region's irregular shape. Many bright stars dominate the scne, as well as countless smaller stars the scatter the image's background.
As stars form, they gather gas and dust, which can look like ribbons in Webb imagery, from the surrounding molecular cloud. The material collects into an accretion disc that feeds the central protostar. Astronomers have detected gas around protostars within NGC 346, but Webb’s near-infrared observations mark the first time they have also detected dust in these discs.
The James Webb Space Telescope is an international partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
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