In early April, Taschen publishing house will put up for sale a new book with a collection of the most stunning images of deep space photographed with a telescope Hubble. It has been 25 years since the telescope was launched into orbit, and it still continues to inform us about what our universe looks like, in all its incredible beauty.
Barnard 33, or the Horsehead Nebula, is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion
Position: 05h 40m, –02°, 27", distance from Earth: 1,600 ly; instrument/year: WFC3/IR, 2012.
M83, or the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Hydra
Position: 13h 37m, –29°, 51", distance from Earth: 15,000,000 ly, instrument/year: WFC3/UVIS, 2009–2012.
Position: 18h 18m, –13°, 49", distance from Earth: 6,500 ly, instrument/year: WFC3/IR, 2014.
The book is called Expanding universe("The Expanding Universe") and timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Hubble launch. The Hubble photographs published in this book are not just breathtaking images, they are also an opportunity to learn more about space exploration. The book includes an essay by a photo critic, an interview with a specialist who explains exactly how these images are created, as well as two stories from astronauts about the role this unique telescope plays in space exploration.
RS Puppis is a variable star in the constellation Puppis
Position: 08h 13m, –34°, 34", distance from Earth: 6,500 ly, instrument/year: ACS/WFC, 2010.
M82, or the Cigar Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major
Position: 09h 55m, +69° 40", distance from Earth: 12,000,000 ly, instrument/year: ACS/WFC, 2006.
M16, or the Eagle Nebula, is a young open star cluster in the constellation Serpens
Position: 18h 18m, –13°, 49", distance from Earth: 6,500 ly, instrument/year: WFC3/UVIS, 2014.
Due to the fact that the telescope is in space, it can detect radiation in the infrared range, which is completely impossible to do from the surface of the Earth. Therefore, the resolution of Hubble is 7-10 times greater than that of a similar telescope located on the surface of our planet. So, for example, among other things, scientists first obtained maps of the surface of Pluto, learned additional data about planets outside the solar system, they managed to make significant progress in studying such mysterious black holes in the centers of galaxies, and also, which seems quite incredible, they were able to formulate a modern cosmological model and find out a more accurate age of the Universe (13.7 billion years).
Jupiter and its moon Ganymede
Sharpless 2-106, or the Snow Angel Nebula in the constellation Cygnus
Position: 20h 27m, +37°, 22", distance from Earth: 2,000 ly, instrument/year: Subaru, Telescope, 1999; WFC3/UVIS, WFC3/IR, 2011.
M16, or the Eagle Nebula, is a young open star cluster in the constellation Serpens
Position: 18h 18m, –13°, 49", distance from Earth: 6,500 ly, instrument/year: ACS/WFC, 2004.
HCG 92, or Stephen's Quintet, is a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus.
Position: 22h 35m, +33°, 57", distance from Earth: 290,000,000 light years, instrument/year: WFC3/UVIS, 2009.
M81, NGC 3031, or the Bode Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major
The Hubble Space Telescope, named after its inventor Edwin Hubble, is in low Earth orbit. Today it is the most modern and powerful telescope costing about one billion dollars. Hubble takes stunning photographs of the planets and their satellites, asteroids, distant galaxies, stars, nebulae... The high quality of the images is ensured by the fact that the telescope is located above the thick layer of the Earth's atmosphere, which does not affect the image distortion. It also allows us to see the universe in ultraviolet and infrared light for the first time. This part presents the best photographs of galaxies taken by the telescope.
NGC 4038 is a galaxy in the constellation Raven. The galaxies NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 are interacting galaxies, called "antenna galaxies":
The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) in the constellation Canis Hounds. It consists of a large spiral galaxy NGC 5194, at the end of one of the arms of which is a companion galaxy NGC 5195:
The Tadpole Galaxy in the direction of the constellation Draco. In the recent past, the Tadpole galaxy experienced a collision with another galaxy, which resulted in the formation of a long tail of stars and gas. The long tail gives the galaxy a tadpole-like appearance, hence its name. If we follow the terrestrial analogy, then as the tadpole grows, its tail will die off - stars and gas will form into dwarf galaxies, which will become satellites of a large spiral:
Stephen's Quintet is a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus. Four of the five galaxies in Stephan's Quintet are in constant interaction:
The barred galaxy NGC 1672 lies in the constellation Dorado, 60 million light-years from Earth. Image taken in 2005 using the Advanced Camera for Surveys:
The Sombrero Galaxy (Messier 110) is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo at a distance of 28 million light-years from Earth. As recent studies of this object by the Spitzer telescope have shown, it is two galaxies: a flat spiral is located inside an elliptical. The very strong X-ray emission is due, according to many astronomers, to the presence of a black hole with a mass of a billion solar masses in the center of this galaxy:
Galaxy Pinwheel (Pinwheel Galaxy). To date, this is the largest and most detailed image of a galaxy taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture was composed of 51 individual frames:
Lenticular galaxy NGC 7049 in the constellation Indus:
The Spindle Galaxy (NGC 5866) in the constellation Draco. The galaxy is observed almost edge-on, which makes it possible to see dark regions of cosmic dust located in the galactic plane. The Spindle Galaxy is about 44 million light-years away. Light takes about 60 thousand years to cross the entire galaxy:
Barred galaxy NGC 5584. The galaxy is only slightly smaller than the Milky Way. It has two dominant, clearly defined spiral arms and several deformed ones, the nature of which may be related to interaction with neighboring galactic structures:
NGC 4921 is a galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices. The object was discovered on April 11, 1785 by William Herschel. This image is assembled from 80 photographs:
Barred galaxy NGC 4522 in the constellation Virgo:
Galaxy NGC 4449. In the course of studying the galaxy with the help of the Hubble telescope, astronomers managed to capture a picture of active star formation. It is assumed that the cause of the process was the absorption of a smaller satellite galaxy. The photographs in different ranges show thousands of young stars, and there are also massive gas and dust clouds in the galaxy:
NGC 2841 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major:
The lenticular galaxy Perseus A (NGC 1275) consists of two interacting galaxies:
Two spiral galaxies NGC 4676 (Mice Galaxies) in the constellation Coma Berenices, taken in 2002:
The Cigar Galaxy (NGC 3034) is a star-forming galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. At the center of the galaxy, there is supposedly a supermassive black hole, around which two less massive black holes revolve, weighing 12 thousand and 200 suns:
Arp 273 is a group of interacting galaxies in the constellation Andromeda, located at a distance of 300 million light years from Earth. The largest of the spiral galaxies is known as UGC 1810 and is about five times as massive as its neighbor:
NGC 2207 is a pair of interacting galaxies in the constellation Canis Major, 80 million light-years from Earth:
NGC 6217 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Minor. Image taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) of the Hubble telescope in 2009:
Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Centaurus. This is one of the brightest and closest neighboring galaxies to us, only 12 million light-years separate us. In terms of brightness, the galaxy ranks fifth (after the Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda Nebula and the Triangulum Galaxy). The radio galaxy is the most powerful source of radio emission:
NGC 1300 is a barred spiral galaxy about 70 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Its size is 110 thousand light years, it is slightly larger than our Milky Way galaxy. A characteristic feature of this galaxy is the absence of an active nucleus, which indicates the absence of a central black hole. Image taken from the Hubble Space Telescope in September 2004. It is one of the largest images from the Hubble telescope, showing the entire galaxy:
Progress does not stand still, and the Hubble telescope is planned to be replaced by a technically more advanced observatory called the James Webb. This truly historic event will take place, according to various sources, in 2016-2018. The James Webb Space Telescope will have a mirror 6.5 meters in diameter (the Hubble diameter is 2.4 meters) and a solar shield the size of a tennis court.
The best photos of the Hubble telescope. Part 1. Galaxies (22 photos)
"Star Power"
This image of the Horsehead Nebula was taken in infrared using the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3. I must say that nebulae are one of the most "muddy" objects in observational astronomy, the same photograph is striking in its clarity. The fact is that Hubble is able to see through clouds of interstellar gas and dust. Of course, the telescope shots we tend to admire are overlays of several photographs—this one, for example, is made up of four shots.
The Horsehead Nebula, located in the constellation Orion, is a type of so-called dark nebulae - interstellar clouds so dense that they absorb visible light from other nebulae or stars behind them. The Horsehead Nebula is about 3.5 light years across.
"Heavenly Wings"
What we see as "wings" are actually gas released "bye" by an exceptionally hot dying star. The star glows brightly in ultraviolet light, but is hidden from direct observation by a dense ring of dust. Collectively referred to as the Butterfly Nebula, or NGC 6302, it lies in the constellation of Scorpius. However, it is better to admire the "Butterfly" from afar (fortunately, the distance from it to us is 4 thousand light years): the surface temperature of this nebula is 250 thousand degrees Celsius.
The Butterfly Nebula / ©NASA
"Take off your hat"
The Sombrero spiral galaxy (M104) is located in the constellation Virgo at a distance of 28 million light-years from us. Despite this, it is clearly visible from Earth. Recent studies, however, have shown that the Sombrero is not one galaxy, but two: a flat spiral galaxy is located inside an elliptical one. In addition to the amazing shape of the Sombrero, it is also known for the alleged presence in the center of it of a supermassive black hole with a mass of 1 billion solar masses. Scientists made this conclusion by measuring the frantic speed of rotation of stars near the center, as well as the strong X-ray emission emanating from this double galaxy.
The Sombrero Galaxy / ©NASA
"Unsurpassed Beauty"
This image is considered the hallmark of the Hubble telescope. In this composite image, we see barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300, about 70 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. The size of the galaxy itself is 110 thousand light years - it is slightly larger than our Milky Way, which, as you know, is about 100 thousand light years in diameter and which also belongs to the type of barred spiral galaxies. A feature of NGC 1300 is the absence of an active galaxy core, which may indicate that there is no sufficiently massive black hole in its center, or that there is no accretion.
This image, taken in September 2004, is one of the largest ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Which is not at all surprising, because it shows the entire galaxy.
"Pillars of Creation"
This image is considered one of the most famous photographs of the famous telescope. Its name is not accidental, since it depicts an active star-forming region in the Eagle Nebula (the nebula itself is located in the constellation Serpens). The dark regions in the Pillars of Creation Nebula are protostars. The most amazing thing is that "at the moment" as such, the pillars of creation no longer exist. According to the Spitzer infrared telescope, they were destroyed by a supernova explosion about 6 thousand years ago, but since the nebula was located at a distance of 7 thousand light years from us, we will be able to admire it for another thousand years.
"Pillars of Creation" / ©NASA
On December 26, 1994, NASA's largest space telescope, the Hubble, captured a huge white city floating in space. The photographs, located on the telescope's web server, became available to Internet users for a short time, but then were strictly classified.
After deciphering a series of images transmitted from the Hubble telescope, the films clearly showed a large white city floating in space.
NASA representatives did not have time to turn off free access to the telescope's web server, where all the images received from the Hubble get to be studied in various astronomical laboratories.
At first it was just a small hazy speck on one of the frames. But when University of Florida professor Ken Wilson decided to take a closer look at the photograph and, in addition to Hubble's optics, armed himself with a hand magnifier, he discovered that the speck had a strange structure that could not be explained either by diffraction in the lens set of the telescope itself, or by interference in communication channel when transmitting an image to Earth.
After a short operational meeting, it was decided to reshoot the section of the starry sky indicated by Professor Wilson with the maximum resolution for Hubble. Huge multi-meter lenses of the space telescope focused on the farthest corner of the universe, accessible to the telescope. Several characteristic clicks of the camera shutter sounded, with which the joker-operator sounded the computer command to fix the image on the telescope. And the "speck" appeared before the astonished scientists on the multi-meter screen of the projection installation of the Hubble control laboratory as a shining structure, similar to a fantastic city, a kind of hybrid of Swift's "flying island" of Laputa and science fiction projects of cities of the future.
The huge structure, spread out in the vastness of the Cosmos for many billions of kilometers, shone with an unearthly light. The Floating City was unanimously recognized as the Abode of the Creator, the place where only the throne of the Lord God can be located. A NASA representative stated that the City cannot be inhabited in the usual sense of the word, most likely, the souls of dead people live in it.
However, another, no less fantastic version of the origin of the cosmic City has the right to exist. The fact is that in search of extraterrestrial intelligence, the very existence of which has not even been questioned for several decades, scientists are faced with a paradox. If we assume that the Universe is massively populated by many civilizations at the most different levels of development, then among them there must inevitably be some kind of super-civilizations that have not just entered the Cosmos, but have actively populated the vast expanses of the Universe. And the activities of these supercivilizations, including engineering - to change the natural habitat (in this case, outer space and objects in the zone of influence) - should be noticeable at a distance of many millions of light years.
However, until recently, astronomers have not noticed anything like this. And now - a clear man-made object of galactic proportions. It is possible that the City, discovered by Hubble on Catholic Christmas at the end of the 20th century, turned out to be just such a desired engineering structure of an unknown and very powerful extraterrestrial civilization.
The size of the city is amazing. Not a single celestial object known to us is able to compete with this giant. Our Earth in this City would be just a grain of sand on the dusty side of the cosmic avenue.
Where does this giant move - and does it move at all? Computer analysis of a series of photographs taken from the Hubble showed that the movement of the City generally coincides with the movement of the galaxies surrounding it. That is, with respect to the Earth, everything happens within the framework of the Big Bang theory. The galaxies "scatter", the redshift increases with increasing distance, no deviations from the general law are observed.
However, during the three-dimensional modeling of the remote part of the Universe, a startling fact was revealed: it is not a part of the Universe that is moving away from us, but we are moving away from it. Why is the reference point moved to the City? Because it was this foggy speck in the photographs that turned out to be the “center of the Universe” in the computer model. The three-dimensional moving image clearly demonstrated that the galaxies somehow scatter, but precisely from that point of the Universe where the City is located. In other words, all galaxies, including ours, once came out of this very point in space, and it is around the City that the Universe rotates. And therefore, the first idea of the City, as the Abode of God, turned out to be extremely successful and close to the truth.
The huge structure, spread out in the vastness of the Cosmos for many billions of kilometers, shone with an unearthly light. The Floating City was unanimously recognized as the Abode of the Creator, the place where only the throne of the Lord God can be located. A NASA representative stated that the City cannot be inhabited in the usual sense of the word, most likely, the souls of dead people live in it.
However, another, no less fantastic version of the origin of the cosmic City has the right to exist. The fact is that in search of extraterrestrial intelligence, the very existence of which has not even been questioned for several decades, scientists are faced with a paradox. If we assume that the Universe is massively populated by many civilizations at the most different levels of development, then among them there must inevitably be some kind of super-civilizations that have not just entered the Cosmos, but have actively populated the vast expanses of the Universe. And the activities of these supercivilizations, including engineering - to change the natural habitat (in this case, outer space and objects in the zone of influence) - should be noticeable at a distance of many millions of light years.
However, until recently, astronomers have not noticed anything like this. And now - a clear man-made object of galactic proportions. It is possible that the City, discovered by Hubble on Catholic Christmas at the end of the 20th century, turned out to be just such a desired engineering structure of an unknown and very powerful extraterrestrial civilization.
The size of the city is amazing. Not a single celestial object known to us is able to compete with this giant. Our Earth in this City would be just a grain of sand on the dusty side of the cosmic avenue.
Where does this giant move - and does it move at all? Computer analysis of a series of photographs taken from the Hubble showed that the movement of the City generally coincides with the movement of the galaxies surrounding it. That is, with respect to the Earth, everything happens within the framework of the Big Bang theory. The galaxies "scatter", the redshift increases with increasing distance, no deviations from the general law are observed.
However, during the three-dimensional modeling of the remote part of the Universe, a startling fact was revealed: it is not a part of the Universe that is moving away from us, but we are moving away from it. Why is the reference point moved to the City? Because it was this foggy speck in the photographs that turned out to be the “center of the Universe” in the computer model. The three-dimensional moving image clearly demonstrated that the galaxies somehow scatter, but precisely from that point of the Universe where the City is located. In other words, all galaxies, including ours, once came out of this very point in space, and it is around the City that the Universe rotates. And therefore, the first idea of the City, as the Abode of God, turned out to be extremely successful and close to the truth.
