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This particular galaxy cluster is called eMACS J1823.1+7822, and lies almost nine billion light-years away in the constellation Draco. It is one of five exceptionally massive galaxy clusters explored by Hubble in the hopes of measuring the strengths of these gravitational lenses and providing insights into the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters. Strong gravitational lenses like eMACS J1823.1+7822 can help astronomers study distant galaxies by acting as vast natural telescopes which magnify objects that would otherwise be too faint or distant to resolve.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, H. Ebeling
The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing a colorful star-forming disc surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust. A handful of bright stars with criss-cross diffraction spikes stand out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image. JO206 lies over 700 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius, and this image of the galaxy is the sixth and final instalment in a series of observations of jellyfish galaxies.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy that is tilted partially toward us. Its inner disc is bright and colorful, with bluish and reddish spots of star formation throughout the arms. An outer disc of pale, dim dust surrounds it. It has many arms, which are being pulled away from the disc, down and to the right. They stretch into long, faint trails that cross the image. The background is dark and mostly empty, with three bright stars.
Jellyfish galaxies are so-called because of their resemblance to their aquatic namesakes. In this image, the disc of JO206 is trailed by long tendrils of bright star formation that stretch towards the bottom right of this image, just as jellyfish trail tentacles behind them. The tendrils of jellyfish galaxies are formed by the interaction between galaxies and the intra-cluster medium, a tenuous superheated plasma that pervades galaxy clusters. As galaxies move through galaxy clusters they ram into the intracluster medium, which strips gas from the galaxies and draws it into the long tendrils of star formation.
The tentacles of jellyfish galaxies give astronomers a unique opportunity to study star formation under extreme conditions, far from the influence of the main disc of the galaxy. Surprisingly, Hubble revealed that there are no striking differences between star formation in the discs of jellyfish galaxies and star formation in their tentacles, which suggests the environment of newly-formed stars has only a minor influence on their formation.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team
On Friday, April 14, 2023, at 09:14 am local time, an Ariane 5 launcher, operated by Arianespace, successfully lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, carrying the European Space Agency (ESA) JUICE space probe.
The spacecraft, built by Airbus Defence and Space for the European Space Agency (ESA), will carry out Europe’s first mission to Jupiter. It will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the planet’s icy moons: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which will arrived in July 2031. JUICE will study the moons as potential habitats for life, addressing two key questions: what are the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life, and how does the solar system work?
The propulsion system for the JUICE spacecraft was developed, built, and integrated in Germany by ArianeGroup’s Orbital Propulsion teams, and comprises the 400 N main engine to be used for Jupiter orbit injection, 20 small thrusters, and two titanium propellant tanks.
After this mission, one Ariane 5 launch remains before Ariane 6 takes up the baton, supporting Europe’s institutional missions and meeting the rapidly growing needs of the commercial market.
The Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher is an ESA program carried out in cooperation between public institutions and industry across 12 European partner countries.
ArianeGroup delivers a flight-ready launcher on the launch pad to its subsidiary Arianespace, which markets and operates Ariane 5 from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. During launch campaigns, Arianespace works closely with the French space agency (CNES), the design authority for Ariane 5 and responsible for the satellite preparation facilities and the launch base.
THE LAUNCH AT A GLANCE:
- 346th launch operated by Arianespace
- More than 1150 satellites launched by Arianespace
- 6058kg is the total payload carried by the launcheR for this mission
China's Main Engine for Crewed Lunar Landing Completes 6th Test | CCTV
The main engine for China's crewed lunar landing mission successfully completed its 6th test on the stand, announced the Academy of Aerospace Solid Propulsion Technology on Saturday, June 3, 2023.
China’s moon missions, which began with the uncrewed lunar-orbiter Chang’e 1 in 2007, are aimed at building a basic lunar research station by 2028. China plans to land humans on the Moon by 2030.
Milky Way Galaxy Rising over Trona Pinnacles in Southern California Desert
This timelapse consists of 1060 frames taken over 5 hours as the Milky Way core rises in mid-May at in the Southern California desert. Unfortunately, there were a surprising number of folks driving out to this remote spot very late at night, leading to the flashes of light that appear on the landscape.
The Fading Milky Way
Light pollution is a growing environmental problem that threatens to erase the night sky before its time. A recent study revealed that perhaps two-thirds of the world's population can no longer look upwards at night and see the Milky Way—a hazy swath of stars that on warm summer nights spans the sky from horizon to horizon.
The Milky Way is dimming, not because the end of the Universe is near, but rather as a result of light pollution: the inadvertent illumination of the atmosphere from street lights, outdoor advertising, homes, schools, airports and other sources. Every night billions of bulbs send their energy skyward where microscopic bits of matter—air molecules, airborne dust, and water vapor droplets—reflect much of the wasted light back to Earth.
Pan of Jellyfish Galaxy JW39 in Coma Berenices | Hubble
The jellyfish galaxy JW39 hangs serenely in this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies over 900 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, and is one of several jellyfish galaxies that Hubble has been studying over the past two years.
Despite this jellyfish galaxy’s serene appearance, it is adrift in a ferociously hostile environment; a galaxy cluster. Compared to their more isolated counterparts, the galaxies in galaxy clusters are often distorted by the gravitational pull of larger neighbors, which can twist galaxies into a variety of weird and wonderful shapes. If that was not enough, the space between galaxies in a cluster is also pervaded with a searingly hot plasma known as the intracluster medium. While this plasma is extremely tenuous, galaxies moving through it experience it almost like swimmers fighting against a current, and this interaction can strip galaxies of their star-forming gas.
This interaction between the intracluster medium and the galaxies is called ram-pressure stripping, and is the process responsible for the trailing tendrils of this jellyfish galaxy. As JW39 has moved through the cluster the pressure of the intracluster medium has stripped away gas and dust into long trailing ribbons of star formation that now stretch away from the disc of the galaxy.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy. It is large in the center with a lot of detail visible. The core glows brightly and is surrounded by concentric rings of dark and light dust. The spiral arms are thick and puffy with grey dust and glowing blue areas of star formation. They wrap around the galaxy to form a ring. Part of the arm is drawn out into a dark thread above the galaxy, and dust from the arm trails off to the right.
Astronomers using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 studied these trailing tendrils in detail, as they are a particularly extreme environment for star formation. Surprisingly, they found that star formation in the ‘tentacles’ of jellyfish galaxies was not noticeably different from star formation in the galaxy disc.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team
Pan of Star-studded Globular Cluster NGC 6325 in Ophiuchus| Hubble
The densely packed globular cluster NGC 6325 glistens in this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This concentrated group of stars lies around 26,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Globular clusters like NGC 6325 are tightly bound collections of stars with anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of members. They can be found in all types of galaxies, and act as natural laboratories for astronomers studying star formation. This is because the constituent stars of globular clusters tend to form at roughly the same time and with similar initial composition, meaning that astronomers can use them to fine-tune their theories of how stars evolve.
Image Description: A dense cluster of bright stars. The core of the cluster is to the left and has a distinct group of blue stars. Surrounding the core are a multitude of stars in warmer colors. These stars are very numerous near the core and become more and more sparse, and more small and distant, out to the sides of the image. A few larger stars also stand in the foreground near the edges of the image.
Astronomers inspected this particular cluster not to understand star formation, but to search for a hidden monster. Though it might look peaceful, astronomers suspect this cluster could contain an intermediate-mass black hole that is subtly affecting the motion of surrounding stars. Previous research found that the distribution of stars in some highly concentrated globular clusters—those with stars packed relatively tightly together—was slightly different from what astronomers expected.
This discrepancy suggested that at least some of these densely packed globular clusters—including perhaps NGC 6325—could have a black hole lurking at the center. To explore this hypothesis further, astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to observe a larger sample of densely populated globular clusters, which included this star-studded image of NGC 6325. Additional data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys were also incorporated into this image.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola, R. Cohen
Pan: Exploring Explosive Aftermath in Galaxy NGC 298 | Hubble
The spiral galaxy NGC 298 basks in this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 298 lies around 89 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, and appears isolated in this image—only a handful of distant galaxies and foreground stars accompany the lonely galaxy. While NGC 298 seems peaceful, in 1986 it was host to one of astronomy's most extreme events: a catastrophic stellar explosion known as a Type II supernova.
Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys captured NGC 298 as part of an investigation into the origins of Type II supernovae. All Type II supernovae are produced by the collapse and subsequent explosion of young, massive stars, but they can produce a spectacular diversity of brightnesses and spectral features.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy. It is tilted diagonally, and slightly towards the viewer, making its core and disc separately visible. Its disc is speckled by small stars, has threads of dark reddish dust and bubbles of bright, glowing gas. The core shines brightly in a warmer color. Several tiny stars and small galaxies are included in the black background.
Astronomers suspect that the diversity of this cosmic firework show might be due to gas and dust being stripped from the stars that will eventually produce Type II supernovae. Observing the region surrounding supernova explosions can reveal traces of the progenitor star’s history preserved in this lost mass, as well as revealing any companion stars that survived the supernova. Hubble used the brief periods between scheduled observations to explore the aftermath of a number of Type II supernovae, hoping to piece together the relationship between Type II supernovae and the stellar systems which give rise to them.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick
Galaxy Messier 85: The Darkness Within? | Hubble Space Telescope
This atmospheric image shows a galaxy named Messier 85, captured in all its delicate, hazy glory by the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. Messier 85 slants through the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair), and lies around 50 million light-years from Earth. It was first discovered by Charles Messier’s colleague Pierre Méchain in 1781, and is included in the Messier catalogue of celestial objects.
Messier 85 is intriguing—its properties lie somewhere between those of a lenticular and an elliptical galaxy, and it appears to be interacting with two of its neighbors: the beautiful spiral NGC 4394, located out of frame to the upper left, and the small elliptical MCG 3-32-38, located out of frame to the center bottom.
The galaxy contains some 400 billion stars, most of which are very old. However, the central region hosts a population of relatively young stars of just a few billion years in age; these stars are thought to have formed in a late burst of star formation, likely triggered as Messier 85 merged with another galaxy over four billion years ago. Messier 85 has a further potentially strange quality. Almost every galaxy is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its center, but from measurements of the velocities of stars in this galaxy, it is unclear whether Messier 85 contains such a black hole.
This image combines infrared, visible and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, R. O'Connell
Shenzhou-15 Crew Exits Spacecraft in Inner Mongolia | China Space Station
The Shenzhou-15 crew, Junlong Fei (费俊龙, commander), Qingming Deng (邓清明) and Lu Zhang (张陆), was successfully recovered from their spacecraft at the Dongfeng landing site, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, on June 3, 2023, at 22:34 UTC (June 4, at 06:34 China Standard Time). They were the third crew to complete a six-month long-duration mission aboard the China Space Station.
Credit: China National Space Administration (CNSA)/China Central Television (CCTV)
Shenzhou-15 Crew Landing in Inner Mongolia | China Space Station
[No audio] The Shenzhou-15 crew spacecraft successfully landed at the Dongfeng landing site, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, on June 3, 2023, at 22:34 UTC (June 4, at 06:34 China Standard Time). The Shenzhou-15 spacecraft transported the fourth crew of three astronauts, Junlong Fei (费俊龙, commander), Qingming Deng (邓清明) and Lu Zhang (张陆), from the third six-month mission on the China Space Station.
Credit: China National Space Administration (CNSA)/China Central Television (CCTV)
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón's Poem for Jupiter's Ocean Moon Europa | NASA
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón reads her poem for the Europa Clipper mission during an event with NASA, Thursday, June 1, 2023, in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress in Washington.
The original poem, entitled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” connects two water worlds— Earth and Europa. The poem will be engraved on a plaque carried aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft as part of NASA’s "Message in a Bottle" campaign, which invites people around the world to sign their names to the poem that will journey to another world. Participants’ names will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.89 billion kilometers) aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft, set to launch in October 2024, on its voyage to Jupiter and its moons.
Read the poem in Spanish/vea en español [Adobe PDF]:
The commissioned work was released on June 1, 2023, for NASA’s "Message in a Bottle" campaign, which invites people around the world to sign their names to the poem that will journey to another world. Participants’ names will travel 1.8 billion miles, or 2.89 billion kilometers, aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft on its voyage to Jupiter and its moons.
The mission is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2024, and reach orbit around Jupiter by 2030. Over several years, it will conduct multiple flybys of Europa, gathering detailed measurements to determine if the moon has conditions suitable for life.
A Poem for Jupiter's Ocean Moon Europa by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón | NASA
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón wrote an original poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, which is believed to harbor a vast ocean beneath its icy surface.
Narrated by Limón herself, the poem is entitled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” and it connects two water worlds—Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored. The poem will be engraved on a plaque carried aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
The commissioned work was released on June 1, 2023, for NASA’s "Message in a Bottle" campaign, which invites people around the world to sign their names to the poem that will journey to another world. Participants’ names will travel 1.8 billion miles, or 2.89 billion kilometers, aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft on its voyage to Jupiter and its moons.
The mission is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2024, and reach orbit around Jupiter by 2030. Over several years, it will conduct multiple flybys of Europa, gathering detailed measurements to determine if the moon has conditions suitable for life.
Pluto's Largest Moon Charon | NASA's New Horizons Mission
A darkened and mysterious north polar region known to some as Mordor Macula caps this high-resolution view of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. It was captured by NASA's New Horizons Mission near the spacecraft's closest approach on July 14, 2015. The combined blue, red, and infrared data was processed to enhance colors and follow variations in Charon's surface properties with a resolution of about 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles). A stunning image of Charon's Pluto-facing hemisphere, it also features a clear view of an apparently moon-girdling belt of fractures and canyons that seems to separate smooth southern plains from varied northern terrain. Charon is 1,214 kilometers (754 miles) across. This is about 1/10th the size of planet Earth but a whopping 1/2 the diameter of Pluto itself, and makes it the largest satellite relative to its parent body in the Solar System.
New Horizons successfully pulled off the first exploration of the Pluto system in July 2015, followed by the farthest flyby in history—and first close-up look at a Kuiper Belt object (KBO)—with its flight past Arrokoth on New Year’s Day 2019. From its unique perch in the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons is making observations that cannot be made from anywhere else; even the stars look different from the spacecraft’s point of view.
As New Horizons team members use giant telescopes like the Japanese Subaru observatory to scan the skies for another potential (and long-shot) KBO flyby target, New Horizons itself remains healthy, collecting data on the solar wind and space environment in the Kuiper Belt, other KBOs, and distant planets like Uranus and Neptune.
Shenzhou-15 Crew Returning to Earth after 6-Month Mission | China Space Station
The Shenzhou-15 crew will return to Earth on June 4, 2023, having completed all their scheduled tasks, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said on Friday. The trio, consisting of commander Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming, and Zhang Lu, started their mission with fanfare. Their time at the China Space Station has earned them even more respect.
NASA SpaceX CRS-28 Falcon 9 & Dragon Pre-Launch | Kennedy Space Center
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft atop is on the pad at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 2, 2023. SpaceX is scheduled to launch its 28th commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station for NASA. Launch is scheduled for no earlier than June 3 at 12:35 p.m. EDT. Dragon will deliver approximately 7,000 pounds of crew supplies, equipment, and science experiments to the orbiting laboratory. Dragon is also carrying two new roll-out solar arrays that will be extracted from its unpressurized trunk about two days after its docking then staged on a pallet attached to the station’s starboard-side truss structure.
The Dragon spacecraft is expected to spend about a month attached to the orbiting outpost before it returns to Earth with research and return cargo, splashing down off the coast of Florida.
Credit: Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX)
