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| Astronomers use Hubble to 'weigh' Dog Star's companion [heic0516] |
| White dwarfs are important to theories of both stellar and cosmological evolution. New results published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society provide for the first time an accurate measurement of the weight of the nearest white dwarf, Sirius B, companion of the brightest star in the sky. It turns out that Sirius's companion, despite being smaller than the Earth, has a mass that is 98% that of our own Sun. |
| Date: 13 Dec 2005 |
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| Most detailed image of the Crab Nebula [heic0515] |
| A new Hubble image - among the largest ever produced with the Earth-orbiting observatory - gives the most detailed view so far of the entire Crab Nebula. The Crab is arguably the single most interesting object, as well as one of the most studied, in all of astronomy. The image is the largest ever taken with Hubble's WFPC2 workhorse camera. |
| Date: 05 Dec 2005 |
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| Young stars sculpt gas with powerful outflows [heic0514] |
| This Hubble Space Telescope view shows one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space, located 210 000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. At the centre of the region is a brilliant star cluster called NGC 346. A dramatic structure of arched, ragged filaments with a distinct ridge surrounds the cluster. |
| Date: 10 Nov 2005 |
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| Extra Moons for Pluto? |
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has spotted two possible new moons orbiting Pluto, the ninth planet in our solar system. If confirmed, the candidate moons could provide new insight into the nature and evolution of the Pluto system and the early Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a vast region of icy, rocky bodies beyond Neptune's orbit. |
| Date: 01 Nov 2005 |
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| Spitzer and Hubble find a 'big baby' galaxy in the newborn Universe [heic0513] |
| Two space observatories, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have teamed up to weigh the stars in several very distant galaxies. One of these galaxies is not only amongst the most distant ever seen, but it appears to be unusually massive and mature for its place in the young Universe. This has surprised astronomers because the earliest galaxies in the Universe are commonly thought to have been much smaller agglomerations of stars that gradually merged together later to build large majestic galaxies like our Milky Way. |
| Date: 27 Sep 2005 |
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| Astronomers Required for the ESA Space Telescope Division at the Space Telescope Science Institute |
| ESA provides personnel to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) as part of its collaboration with NASA on
the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Some of this personnel are funded from the Space Telescope Division,
Directorate of the Scientific Programme of ESA, through a contract with the STScI. |
| Date: 27 Sep 2005 |
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| Hubble finds mysterious disk of blue stars around a black hole [heic0512] |
| Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have identified the source of a mysterious blue light surrounding a supermassive black hole in our neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Though the light has puzzled astronomers for more than a decade, the new discovery makes the story even more mysterious. |
| Date: 20 Sep 2005 |
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| Black hole in search of a home [heic0511] |
| The detection of a super massive black hole without a massive host galaxy is the surprising result from a large Hubble and VLT study of quasars. This is the first convincing discovery of such an object. One intriguing explanation is that the host galaxy may be made almost exclusively of dark matter. |
| Date: 14 Sep 2005 |
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| Supernova remnant menagerie [heic0507] |
| A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust is seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby supernova remnant. Denoted N 63A, the object is the remains of a massive star that exploded, spewing its gaseous layers out into an already turbulent region. |
| Date: 07 Jun 2005 |
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| Hubble celebrates 15th anniversary with spectacular new images [heic0506] |
| During the 15 years that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has orbited the Earth, it has taken three-quarters of a million photos of the cosmos - images that have awed, astounded and even confounded astronomers and the public alike. Today NASA and ESA released new views of two of the most well-known images Hubble has ever taken: the Eagle Nebula, and spiral galaxy M51, known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. |
| Date: 25 Apr 2005 |
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| Saturn's aurorae defy scientists' expectations [heic0504] |
| The dancing light of the aurorae on Saturn behaves in ways different from how scientists have thought possible for the last 25 years. New research by a team of US and European planetary scientists led by John Clarke of Boston University, USA, has overturned theories about how Saturn's magnetic field behaves and how its aurorae are generated. |
| Date: 17 Feb 2005 |
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| Light continues to echo three years after stellar outburst [heic0503] |
| The Hubble Space Telescope's latest image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002.
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| Date: 03 Feb 2005 |
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| Hubble finds infant stars in neighbouring galaxy [heic0502] |
| Hubble astronomers have uncovered, for the first time, a population of infant stars in the Milky Way satellite galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC, visible to the naked eye in the southern constellation Tucana), located 210,000 light-years away.
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| Date: 13 Jan 2005 |
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| Hubble's infrared eyes home in on suspected extrasolar planet [heic0501] |
| Unique follow up observations carried out with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are providing important supporting evidence for the existence of a candidate planetary companion to a relatively bright young brown dwarf star located 225 light-years away in the southern constellation Hydra. |
| Date: 11 Jan 2005 |
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| Symphony of colours in the Tarantula [heic0416] |
| The Tarantula Nebula is the most vigorous star forming region known in the local Universe. Using the power of the freely available ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator package a young amateur astronomer has created this amazing panorama of the centre of the Tarantula. The original image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and subsequently retrieved from the ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive in Munich, Germany. |
| Date: 15 Dec 2004 |
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| Stellar survivor from 1572 A.D. explosion supports supernova theory [heic0415] |
| An international team of astronomers is announcing today that they have identified the probable surviving companion star to a titanic supernova explosion witnessed in the year 1572 by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and other astronomers of that era. |
| Date: 28 Oct 2004 |
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| Cat's Eye Nebula in Stunning Detail [heic0414] |
A new study of a large number of planetary nebulae has revealed that rings, such as those seen here around the Cat's Eye Nebula, are much more common than thought so far and have been found in at least one third of all planetary nebulae. Although the rings may be the key to explaining the final 'gasp' of the dying central star, the mystery behind the Cat's Eye Nebula's nested 'Russian doll' structure remains largely unsolved. |
| Date: 09 Sep 2004 |
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| Hubble peers inside a celestial geode [heic0413] |
| In this unusual image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the celestial equivalent of a geode - a gas cavity carved by the stellar wind and intense ultraviolet radiation from a young hot star. |
| Date: 13 Aug 2004 |
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| FITS format liberation - DIY astronomical images with the expert touch [heic0412] |
| For many years astronomical images from the world's telescopes were reserved for an elite of astronomers and technical people. Now anyone with a desktop computer running Adobe® Photoshop® software can try their hand at crafting astronomical images as beautiful as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. A free software plug-in, released today, makes a treasure trove of archival astronomical images and spectra from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and many other famous telescopes accessible to home astronomy enthusiasts. |
| Date: 08 Jul 2004 |
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| Hubble studies generations of star formation in neighbouring galaxy [heic0411] |
| The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the iridescent tapestry of star birth in a neighbouring galaxy in this panoramic view of glowing gas, dark dust clouds, and young, hot stars. The star-forming region, catalogued as N11B lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), located only 160 000 light-years from Earth. With its high resolution, the Hubble Space Telescope is able to view details of star formation in the LMC as easily as ground-based telescopes are able to observe stellar formation within our own Milky Way galaxy. |
| Date: 01 Jul 2004 |
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