Pic of the Week: Hubble and the Crab Nebula

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): A 2024 image of the Crab Nebula captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, STScI, William Blair (JHU); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It is an image of the Crab Nebula taken 25 years after the Hubble’s first image of the nebula. If you want to learn more about this history, a paper titled The Crab Nebula Revisited Using HST/WFC3 can be found in The Astrophysical Journal.

Here is a little more from NASA on earlier sightings of the nebula:

This new Hubble observation continues a legacy that stretches back nearly 1,000 years, when astronomers in 1054 recorded the supernova as an impressively bright new star that, for weeks, was visible even during the day. The Crab Nebula is the aftermath of SN 1054, located 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus…

The supernova remnant was discovered in the mid-18th century, and in the 1950s Edwin Hubble was among several astronomers who noted the close correlation between Chinese astronomical records of a supernova and the position of the Crab Nebula. The discovery that the heart of the Crab contained a pulsar — a rapidly rotating neutron star — that was powering the nebula’s expansion finally aligned modern observations and ancient records.

Pic of the Week: 3D Map of the Universe

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The DESI map showing the position of galaxies and quasars. (NOIRLab)

This week’s image is from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which had a 5-year goal to map millions of galaxies and quasars, and thereby create the largest high-resolution 3D map of the Universe ever made.The image above shows the results of this work (completed in less than 5 years) containing more than 47 million galaxies and quasars.

In explaining the DESI results, NOIRLab stated:

DESI has now measured cosmological data for six times as many galaxies and quasars as all previous measurements combined. The collaboration will immediately begin processing the completed dataset, with the first dark energy results from the full five-year survey expected in 2027. In the meantime, DESI collaborators continue to analyze the survey’s first three years of data, refining dark energy measurements and producing additional results on the structure and evolution of the Universe, with several papers planned later this year.

Stephanie Juneau, associate astronomer and National Science Foundation NOIRLab representative for DESI, noted:

Ultimately, we are doing this for all humanity, to better understand our Universe and its eventual fate. After finding hints that dark energy might deviate from a constant, potentially altering that fate, this moment feels like sitting on the edge of my seat as we analyze the new map to see whether those hints will be confirmed. I’m also very intrigued by the many other discoveries that await in this new dataset.”

Pic of the Week: The Artemis II Crew

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA

This week’s image shows the Artemis II crew – NASA Commander Reid Wiseman, NASA Pilot Victor Glover, NASA Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen. It looks like a movie poster, which makes sense given that it is one of the better shows this year and lasts for 10 days.

You can find this poster and many others on the NASA images website.

You can follow the status of the mission on the main NASA page for the duration of the mission (shown below).

Credit: NASA

Pic of the Week: Multiple Views of Saturn

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit):Two views of Saturn, one from NASA’s JWST and the second from the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

This week’s images of Saturn from 2024 were just released by NASA. They show the planet in a variety of ways, depending on the telescope and instruments being used. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) and Hubble Space Telescope each have their own unique abilities that can bring the distant gas giant to life.

In its comments on the two images above, NASA noted:

Together, scientists can effectively ‘slice’ through Saturn’s atmosphere at multiple altitudes, like peeling back the layers of an onion. Each telescope tells a different part of Saturn’s story, and the observations together help researchers understand how Saturn’s atmosphere works as a connected three-dimensional system. Both complement previous observations done by NASA’s Cassini orbiter during its time studying the Saturnian system from 1997 to 2017...These 2024 observations, taken 14 weeks apart, show the planet moving from northern summer toward the 2025 equinox. As Saturn transitions into southern spring, and later southern summer in the 2030’s, Hubble and Webb will have progressively better views of that hemisphere.

Pic of the Week: Exposed Cranium Nebula

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Side-by-side view of the Cranium nebula using two instruments on the JWST. You can see more stars and galaxies shining through with the NIRCam’s view, but you get a nice cosmic dust glows with the MIRI’s mid-infrared. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

This week’s images come from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Each image shows a different view of the Cranium nebula depending on the JWST instrument being used. It is also called the “Exposed Cranium” Nebula because it looks like a brain in a see-through skull.

Here is a little more from NASA on what you are seeing above:

The nebula appears to have distinct regions that capture different phases of its evolution — an outer shell of gas that was blown off first and consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure that contains a mix of different gases. Both Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) show a distinctive dark lane running vertically through the middle of the nebula that defines its brain-like look of left and right hemispheres. Webb’s resolution shows that this lane could be related to an outburst or outflow from the central star, which typically occurs as twin jets burst out in opposite directions. Evidence for this is particularly notable at the top of the nebula in Webb’s MIRI image, where it looks like the inner gas is being ejected outward.