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Latest News
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Hubble Pinpoints Record-Breaking Explosion |
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Peering across 7.5 billion light-years and halfway back to the Big Bang, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the fading optical counterpart of a powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the intrinsically brightest naked-eye object ever seen from Earth. For nearly a minute on March 19, this single "star" was as bright as 10 million galaxies. Hubble Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images of GRB 080319B, taken on Monday, April 7 show the fading optical counterpart of the titanic blast. Hubble astronomers had hoped to see the host galaxy where the burst presumably originated, but were taken aback that the light from the gamma ray burst is still drowning out the galaxy's light even three weeks after the explosion. Called a long-duration gamma ray burst, such events are theorized to be caused by the death of a very massive star, perhaps weighing as much as 50 times our Sun. |
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Around The Institute
Spring Symposium 2008
The universe is more complex than we imagined it to be a decade ago. Observations now indicate that the expansion of
the universe is accelerating. It is as if the universe is filled with a sea of "dark energy," the pressure of which
counteracts the pull of gravity on large scales. The past decade marked the discovery of dark energy and the revelation
of our profound ignorance of the cosmos, and dark-energy research over the next decade may well lead the way to a deeper
understanding of the laws of physics. The Space Telescope Science Institute's 2008 Spring Symposium, "A Decade of Dark Energy", will focus on cutting-edge issues in the study
of dark energy. Read more...
Hubble Servicing Mission 4
Hubble precisely measured the age of the universe. It found evidence of dark energy. It brought you images of distant
galaxies in the young universe. And now, with the state-of-the-art instruments delivered by Servicing Mission 4 (SM4),
the Hubble Space Telescope will look onto the universe with new eyes, surpassing even its previous vision. Hubble was
designed to be repaired and upgraded by astronauts, and these servicing missions have occurred several times since
Hubble’s launch in 1990. NASA has selected a crew for the upcoming servicing, and the astronauts have begun
training. Read more...
Hubble Legacy Archive
We are pleased to announce that the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA) has entered
the Data Release 1 (DR1) phase of operation. The HLA is an augmentation of
the Hubble Space Telescope data archive service. The goal of the archive is to
optimize the science derived from the telescope by providing improved browsing
capabilities and easy access to both standard and enhanced Hubble data
products. The Hubble Legacy Archive currently contains data from the ACS, WFPC2,
NICMOS, STIS, FOS, and GHRS instruments. The HLA project is a collaboration
between the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Space Telescope European
Coordinating Facility, and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.
Read more...
IAU Symposium 258: The Ages of Stars
How old is that star? That is one of the most difficult questions to answer in galactic astrophysics. Stellar ages
lie at the heart of astrophysics, and stellar evolution is all about time and how stars change with time. Stellar
and galactic evolution cannot be understood without some knowledge of ages. Now is an appropriate time to examine
the problem of stellar ages in detail. IAU Symposium 258 will bring together astronomers from the around the world to discuss
the current state of the problem of estimating ages of individual stars and of populations, where the advances are now being made,
and what the near future offers. Read more...
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated for NASA
by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.