January 2009

  • Hubble's Next Discovery: You Decide

    By lisala on 1/31/09 5:52pm
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    As part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo's astronomical discoveries Image of the official Hubble's Next Discovery badge400 years ago, scientists and enthusiasts all over the world are celebrating 2009 as the International Year of Astronomy. NASA is offering everyone a chance to vote on which of six possible astronomical objects should be studied by the "new and improved" Hubble later this year. The six objects include:

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  • Best of Hubble: N63 A from 2005

    By lisala on 1/14/09 5:47pm
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    While we wait, with varying degrees of impatience, for the final Hubble upgrade I thought I'd post about some of my very favorite Hubble images from the past. Given that the Hubble entered orbit in April of 1990, there are a lot of images to choose from and for many images we now have a lot more information and better understanding of what the images show than we did a few years ago.

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  • Hubble Mystery Flasher

    By lisala on 1/7/09 10:52pm
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    On February 21, 2006 astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a Supernova Cosmology Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) hoping to discover supernovae noticed an odd flash of light. The light increased steadily, becoming brighter, two images of the same region of space, before and during the flashfor 100 days, and then became increasingly dim for another 100 days, before disappearing. The image linked in this post shows the same area before the flash, and during the flash.

    The steady increase and decrease in brightness doesn't match any known celestial event. The rise and fall in brightness has a signature that simply has never been recorded for any other type of celestial event. Kyle Barbary of LBNL presented a paper regarding the odd flash this week at the American Astronomical Society. Barbary says "We have never seen anything like it."

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