Image (Credit): Space shuttle Endeavour being carried by NASA’s Shuttle Carrier Aircraft as it arrives at the Los Angeles International Airport in California, on Friday, September21, 2012. (collectSPACE/Robert Z. Pearlman)
On this day in 2012, NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour arrived at the California Space Center after a 12-mile journey from the Los Angeles International Airport. Officially called the Space Transportation System (STS), the Endeavor was one of four fully-capable space shuttles operated by NASA (Space Shuttle Enterprise, the fifth space shuttle, was a prototype).
The first space shuttle to be delivered to NASA was the Columbia, delivered in 1979. Space Shuttle Endeavor was the last space shuttle to be delivered, arriving at NASA in 1991.
The space shuttles were the first orbital spacecraft designed for reuse. All of the shuttles had important mission from launching and maintaining satellites to transporting astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.
Here are a few more facts about Space Shuttle Endeavour:
Number of space missions: 25 from May 1992 to May 2011
Total miles traveled: 122,883,151
Total Time in space: 299 days
Key Mission: Repairing the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1993
Image (Credit): Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final mission patch. (California Science Center)
Newly formed exoplanets are often buried within disks of gas and dust, the leftover building blocks from a planet’s formation, also known as a protoplanetary disk. The difficulty of just locating such a new celestial body is part of what makes the discovery of the exoplanet Elias 2-24b—now the youngest ever confirmed—so exciting…Elias 2-24b is located approximately 450 light-years from Earth. It orbits its star at a distance of approximately 55 astronomical units (one astronomical unit being the average distance between Earth and the sun). Its mass is estimated to be at most 1.9 to 4.0 times that of Jupiter, though researchers believe its volume is likely to be much smaller than our local gas giant. Since its host star is less than 1 million years old, Elias 2-24b is estimated to be similarly young.
In a cosmic first, scientists say they have detected a planet that may have formed from the burned remains of its dead host star. The planet is likely a gas giant orbiting a white dwarf called HS 0209+0832 located about 270 light-years from Earth, according to the authors of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. After analyzing observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments, the team found chemical evidence that suggests the planet could have condensed from material expelled by the star as it fizzled out of energy and collapsed into a white dwarf.
Scientists have discovered a new planet that defies all expectations. It’s a lava world, but it’s also cold. In fact, it’s the coldest lava world we’ve ever seen with an atmosphere. Researchers spotted HD 3167 b, a rocky super-Earth covered in lava, orbiting a star 154 light-years away. This planet orbits so closely to its star that a “year” on the world (one revolution around its star) takes only one Earth day. But it’s not just a lava-covered rock — it’s the smallest lava world researchers have ever found. And yet, it has managed to hang onto its atmosphere.
Image (Credit): Composite image of Messier 64 (M64) from the JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, CSA, ESA, F. Belfiore (ESO), J. Lee (STScI), A. Leroy (OSU), and D. Thilker (JHU); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University))
This week’s image is from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. It is a composite image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope showing Messier 64 (M64), which is a spiral galaxy about 17 million light-years away.
Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it absorbs and re-emits light from surrounding newborn stars. These young stars are embedded in pink star-forming regions in the secondary Hubble-only image. M64’s inner and outer gas regions counter-rotate, creating regions of increased star formation where the two gas “currents” meet and compress. A merger between M64 and a smaller galaxy was likely the cause of the opposing motion of the outer gas. Spiral galaxies were once thought to have peaceful histories. M64 was key evidence that spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way, can and do experience mergers. Webb’s view of M64 will tell astronomers about the structure, motion, and composition of the galaxy’s dust and add context to the galaxy’s merger history and evolution.
Image (Credit): Nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA/Hubble, D. Gouliermis)
Talk about eerie. This week’s image is from the NASA/European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble Space telescope. The ghostly image shows nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44, which is about 160,000 light-years away. It is within the Large Magellanic Cloud that orbits our galaxy.
Here is more from NASA describing what you are seeing:
N44 is dominated by two features: a vast central void and a shell of dense, dusty gas. The central void is a ‘superbubble’ spanning roughly 210 by 140 light-years across. The glittering stars at the center of the void are responsible for its creation; through their powerful stellar winds and explosive supernovae, these stars expelled much of the gas from which they were born.
When the stars of N44’s central star cluster swept away this gas, the expelled gas compressed and formed a shell around the superbubble. New stars are forming in this compressed gas shell, making N44 an interesting target for astronomers who are using the nebula to study how stars form in this environment. Their goal is to understand how long it takes from the collapse of cold gas clouds into dense knots to the moment nuclear fusion ignites in the heart of a newborn star.
Image (Credit): A collection of 16 galactic images from Chandra and other telescopes. Each galactic image contains X-ray data from Chandra combined with data from telescopes such as NASA’s Webb, Hubble, IXPE, Swift, and NuSTAR, and others both in space and on the ground. (NASA/CXC/SAO)
This week’s images of 16 galaxies are from a variety of NASA telescopes. The galaxies are generally sorted into three types – spiral, elliptical, and irregular. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is a spiral galaxy, whereas Centaurus A (Cen A above) is a giant elliptical galaxy and NGC 1569 (also above) is a compact dwarf irregular galaxy.
Please go to this NASA link to see all of these galaxies in their full glory.
