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Celebrating Hubble – 30th anniversary year

John Healy

Who would have expected the Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) to still be in operation after being launched into low Earth orbit in 1990? So, NASA/ESA kickstarted its 30th anniversary with some majestic galactic photos.

Wiki:

Five Space Shuttle missions have repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope, including all five of the main instruments. … The fifth servicing mission … was completed in 2009.

Galaxy UGC 2885 may be the largest one in the local universe. It is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars. This galaxy is 232 million light-years away, located in the northern constellation of Perseus. Credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville)

heic2002 – Photo Release > Hubble Surveys Gigantic Galaxy (6 January 2020)

To kickstart the 30th anniversary year of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble has imaged a majestic spiral galaxy. Galaxy UGC 2885 may be the largest known in the local universe. It is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars.

HST Galaxy UGC 2885
A number of foreground stars in our Milky Way can be seen in the image, identified by their diffraction spikes. The brightest appears to sit on top of the galaxy’s disc, though UGC 2885 is really 232 million light-years farther away. The giant galaxy is located in the northern constellation Perseus. Credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville).

See also: EarthSky.org > “New Hubble view of gigantic galaxy” posted by Eleanor Imster and Deborah Byrd (January 13, 2020)

UGC 2885 is one of the spiral galaxies studied by the famous astronomer Vera Rubin (1928–2016) in her groundbreaking research in the 1970s. … She and astronomer Kent Ford examined more than 60 spiral galaxies. They found, in every case, that stars on the outer edges of galaxies revolved around the galaxies’ centers at least as fast as those in the inner regions. That observed fact ran counter to Kepler’s Laws of Motion, formulated in the early 1600s. Kepler’s insights suggested that stars in a galaxy’s outer regions should be moving more slowly than those in its inner regions, just as the outer planets in our solar system move more slowly than the inner planets.

Astronmomers reached a dramatic conclusion about Rubin and Ford’s findings: these galaxies contain mass we cannot see. This missing mass today is called dark matter.

Additional images

HST > An Active Centre

HST Galaxy ESO 021-G004
This swirling mass of celestial gas, dust, and stars is a moderately luminous spiral galaxy named ESO 021-G004, located just under 130 million light-years away. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario et al.
NASA's Great Space Observatories
Update April 3, 2020

YouTube > NASA Goddard > “The Hubble Space Telescope Virtual (360°) Tour” (Mar 30, 2020)

View the Hubble Space Telescope in its orbit above Earth’s surface and an overview of the technology behind Hubble’s spectacular cosmic images. This 360 degree video points out Hubble’s instruments, mirrors, and other major components, and explains their purpose.
Update May 19, 2020

HST > “Hubble Celebrates its 30th Anniversary with a Tapestry of Blazing Starbirth” (24 April 2020).

Hubble Space Telescope’s iconic images and scientific breakthroughs have redefined our view of the Universe. To commemorate three decades of scientific discoveries, this image is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the telescope has observed during its 30-year lifetime. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbour NGC 2020 which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, approximately 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the “Cosmic Reef” because it resembles an undersea world.

This image is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed during its 30-year lifetime. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbour NGC 2020 which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, approximately 163,000 light-years away.

YouTube > HubbleESA > “3D Animation of the Cosmic Reef ” (Apr 24, 2020)

This 3D animation explores the 30th anniversary image of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in impressive detail. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbour NGC 2020 which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, approximately 163,000 light-years away.

Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Bacon, J. DePasquale, L. Hustak, J. Olmstead, A. Pagan, D. Player, and F. Summers (STScI). Music: “Cosmic Reef” by J. DePasquale (STScI)

2 thoughts on “Celebrating Hubble – 30th anniversary year”

  1. See also > Space.com > “Giant ‘Rubin’s Galaxy’ stars in stunning Hubble photo named for dark matter pioneer” by Doris Elin Urrutia (January 15, 2020)

    [Image (see image in post above) caption] This Hubble Space Telescope photograph features spiral galaxy UGC 2885 (Rubin’s galaxy), located 232 million light-years away in the northern constellation Perseus. The brightest star in this picture belongs to the Milky Way and is located much closer to Earth than UGC 2885. Image credit: NASA/ESA/B. Holwerda (University of Louisville).

    Andromeda GalaxyThe arms and core of the Andromeda Galaxy glow among a sea of multicolored stars in this deep-space photo captured from the Cumeada Observatory at the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve in Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal. Image credit: Miguel Claro.

    “How it got so big is something we don’t quite know yet,” [University of Louisville in Kentucky researcher] Holwerda said in the Hubble statement. “It’s as big as you can make a disk galaxy without hitting anything else in space.”

  2. Imagine an exposure time of over 11 days to take a single photo … staring into the sky where there’s nothing visible … empty places … the deep fields, the Ultra Deep Field … seeing how the universe has changed over thirteen billion years (of the 13.8 billion since the Big Bang) … clusters of galaxies … gravitational lensing …

    • YouTube > NASA Goddard > “Episode 3: Time Machines (Hubble – Eye in the Sky miniseries)” (Jul 23, 2020)

    (from transcript) The farthest we’ve been able to see with the Hubble telescope goes back about 600 – 800 million years after the expansion began, so we think we get much, much closer to the first objects with the Webb telescope.

    … when we get the complete picture of every wavelength you can possibly see from ultraviolet to infrared, we hope to have the story of the growth of the first galaxies from the primordial material.

    (Description) Episode 3: Time Machines – Hubble has looked back billions of years in time to see some of the earliest galaxies in their infancy, and it has fundamentally changed what we know about the universe itself. Find out from Nobel laureate John Mather and Hubble Senior Project Scientist Jennifer Wiseman how Hubble will work with the future James Webb Space Telescope to revolutionize our understanding of the universe even further.

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