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heic0705 — Science Release

Hubble sees "Comet Galaxy" being ripped apart by galaxy cluster

2 March 2007: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with several other ground- and space-based telescopes, has captured a galaxy being ripped apart by a galaxy cluster's gravitational field and harsh environment. The finding sheds light on the mysterious process by which gas-rich spiral-shaped galaxies might evolve into gas-poor irregular- or elliptical-shaped galaxies over billions of years. The new observations also show one mechanism to form the millions of "homeless" stars seen scattered throughout galaxy clusters.

heic0704 — Science Release

The NASA/ESA Hubble Telescope Celebrates Supernova 1987A's 20th Anniversary

22 February 2007: Twenty years ago, astronomers witnessed one of the brightest stellar explosions in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called SN 1987A, blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on 23 Feb., 1987.

heic0703 — Photo Release

The colourful demise of a Sun-like star

13 February 2007: A brand new image taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 shows the planetary nebula NGC 2440 - the chaotic structure of the demise of a star.

heic0702 — Photo Release

New stars shed light on the past

8 January 2007: A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows N90, one of the star-forming regions in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The rich populations of infant stars found here enable astronomers to examine star forming processes in an environment that is very different from that in our own Milky Way.

heic0701 — Science Release

First 3D map of the Universe's Dark Matter scaffolding

7 January 2007: By analysing the COSMOS survey – the largest ever survey undertaken with Hubble – an international team of scientists has assembled one of the most important results in cosmology: a three-dimensional map that offers a first look at the web-like large-scale distribution of dark matter in the Universe. This historic achievement accurately confirms standard theories of structure formation.

heic0619 — Science Release

Star on a Hubble diet

11 December 2006: High-resolution observations from Hubble have shed light on the real mass of a star previously believed to be amongst the heaviest known in our Milky Way. Originally, the mass of the star was thought to be an incredible 200-300 solar masses, but turned out to be only 100 solar masses.

heic0618 — Science Release

New Hubble Servicing Mission to upgrade instruments

31 October 2006: After more than a decade of fascinating discoveries, The Hubble Space Telescope will soon be given the new beginning that it deserves. Today, NASA has decided to approve a Space Shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the observatory, despite new Shuttle safety rules formulated after the Columbia disaster that would normally rule out such a rescue mission.

heic0617 — Photo Release

Latest views of the V838 Monocerotis light echo from Hubble

26 October 2006: Hubble has returned to the intriguing V838 Monocerotis many times since its initial outburst in 2002 to follow the evolution of its light echo. Two new images provide the most astonishing views of V838 to date.

heic0616 — Science Release

Hubble yields direct proof of stellar sorting in a globular cluster

24 October 2006: A seven year study with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with the best observational evidence yet that globular clusters sort out stars according to their mass, governed by a gravitational billiard ball game between stars. Heavier stars slow down and sink to the cluster's core, while lighter stars pick up speed and move across the cluster to its periphery. This process, called "mass segregation", has long been suspected for globular star clusters, but has never before been directly seen in action.

heic0615 — Photo Release

Colliding galaxies make love, not war

17 October 2006: A new Hubble image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. As the two galaxies smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The brightest and most compact of these are called super star clusters.

heic0614 — Science Release

Flies in a spider's web: Galaxy caught in the making

12 October 2006: New Hubble images have provided a dramatic glimpse of a large massive galaxy under assembly as smaller galaxies merge. This has commonly been thought to be the way galaxies grew in the young Universe, but now Hubble observations of the radio galaxy MRC 1138-262, nicknamed the "Spiderweb Galaxy", have shown dozens of star-forming satellite galaxies in the actual process of merging.

heic0613 — Science Release

Hubble observations confirm that planets form from disks around stars

9 October 2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with ground-based observatories, has at last confirmed what philosopher Emmanuel Kant and scientists have long predicted: that planets form from debris disks around stars.

heic0612 — Science Release

Hubble finds 16 candidate extrasolar planets far across our Galaxy

4 October 2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates that are orbiting a variety of distant stars. In accomplishing this, Hubble looked farther into our Milky Way galaxy than has ever successfully been done before in searching for extrasolar planets. The Hubble observations reach all the way into the central bulge of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away, or one-quarter the diameter of the Milky Way's spiral disk.

heic0611 — Science Release

Hubble finds hundreds of young galaxies in the early Universe

21 September 2006: Astronomers analyzing two of the deepest views of the cosmos made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered a gold mine of galaxies, more than 500 that existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang. These galaxies thrived when the cosmos was less than 7 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. This sample represents the most comprehensive compilation of galaxies in the early Universe, researchers said.

heic0610 — Science Release

Planet or failed star? Hubble photographs one of the smallest stellar companions ever seen

7 September 2006: Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have photographed one of the smallest objects ever seen around a normal star beyond our Sun. Weighing in at 12 times the mass of Jupiter, the object is small enough to be a planet. The conundrum is that it's also large enough to be a brown dwarf, a failed star.

heic0609 — Photo Release

Cassiopeia A - The colourful aftermath of a violent stellar death

29 August 2006: A new image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides a detailed look at the tattered remains of a supernova explosion known as Cassiopeia A (Cas A). It is the youngest known remnant from a supernova explosion in the Milky Way. The new Hubble image shows the complex and intricate structure of the star's shattered fragments.

heic0608 — Science Release

Hubble sees faintest stars in a globular cluster

17 August 2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered what astronomers are reporting as the dimmest stars ever seen in any globular star cluster.

heic0607 — Photo Release

Large and small stars in harmonious coexistence

14 August 2006: The latest photo from the Hubble Space Telescope, presented at the 2006 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Prague this week, shows a star forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This sharp image reveals a large number of low-mass infant stars coexisting with young massive stars.

heic0606 — Photo Release

Hubble captures a 'five-star' rated gravitational lens

23 May 2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first-ever picture of a distant quasar lensed into five images. In addition the image holds a treasure of lensed galaxies and even a supernova.

heic0605 — Science Release

Hubble provides spectacular view of ongoing comet breakup

27 April 2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is providing astronomers with extraordinary views of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 as it disintegrates before our eyes. Recent Hubble images have uncovered many more fragments than have been reported by ground-based observers. These observations provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the demise of a comet nucleus.

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