New data released by NASA today include direct evidence of a supermassive black hole and remarkable new details on the explosive life cycle of stars. NASA also reported that all new Hubble instruments and upgrades are generally performing well.
"We're extremely excited about the quality and precision of the images from Hubble," said Wes Huntress, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science. "Following check-out of the instruments, Hubble will return to full science operations, and we can expect a continuing flow of new and exciting discoveries."
These initial results clearly demonstrate the ability of the new instruments to fulfill their science goals with the Hubble Telescope, say project astronomers. Project officials are pleased to report that other instruments and electronics installed during the second servicing mission are performing well.
Among Hubble's recent observations:
Jets and Gaseous Disk Around the Egg Nebula -- A new infrared instrument peered deep into the dust-obscured central region around a dying star embedded in the Egg nebula. A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas 3,000 light years from Earth. The new images provide a clear view of a twin pair of narrow bullet-shaped "jets" of gas and dust blasted into space. The instrument, called the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, also revealed an unusual scalloped edge along a doughnut-shaped molecular hydrogen cloud in the nebula.
"Because we can now see these 'missing pieces' in infrared and visible light, we have a more complete view of the dynamic and complicated structure of the star," said Rodger Thompson of the University of Arizona, Tucson, the principal investigator for the infrared instrument. "It also allows us to see a 'fossil record' of the star's late evolutionary stages."
Unveiling Violent Starbirth in the Orion Nebula - The new infrared instrument penetrated the shroud of dust along the back wall of the Orion nebula, located in the "sword" of the constellation Orion. Data revealed what can happen to a stellar neighborhood when massive young stars begin to violently eject material into the surrounding molecular cloud. Although ground-based infrared cameras have previously observed this hidden region known as OMC-1, the Hubble's new instrument provides the most detailed look yet at the heart of this giant molecular cloud. Hubble reveals a surprising array of complex structures, including clumps, bubbles, and knots of material. Most remarkable are "bullets" composed of molecular hydrogen -- the fastest of which travels at more than one million mph (500 km/s). These bullets are colliding with slower-moving material, creating bow shocks, like a speedboat racing across water.
Monster Black Hole in Galaxy M84 - In a single exposure, a new powerful instrument called the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph discovered a black hole at least 300 million times the mass of the Sun. The spectrograph made a precise observation along a narrow slit across the center of galaxy M84, located 50 million light-years away. This allowed the instrument to measure the increasing velocity of a disk of gas orbiting the black hole. To scientists, this represents the signature of a black hole, among the most direct evidence obtained to date. Due to their nature, it's impossible to directly photograph black holes. Scientists must instead look for clues to show the effects of black holes on surrounding dust, gas and stars.
"Hubble proved the existence of supermassive black holes three years ago," said Bruce Woodgate of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, and principal investigator for the new spectrograph. "With this new instrument, we can do it 40 times faster than we used to."
Composition and Structure of the Ring Around Supernova 1987A - The new spectrograph also provides an unprecedented look at a unique and complex structure in the universe -- a light-year-wide ring of glowing gas around Supernova 1987A, the closest supernova explosion in 400 years. The spectrograph dissects the ring's light to tell scientists which elements are in the ring and helps paint a picture of the physics and stellar processes which created the ring. This gives astronomers better insight into how stars evolve and become a supernova, and into the origin of the chemical elements created in these massive explosions.
Hubble Status -- NASA project officials are encouraged that a problem detected earlier with one of the cameras on the infrared instrument has shown some improvement. The problem stems from the unexpected movement of the dewar -- an insulated vessel containing solid nitrogen at extremely cold temperatures. After launch, the nitrogen expanded more than expected as it warmed, moving the dewar into contact with another surface in the mechanism and pushing one of the cameras out of its range of focus. The camera has moved back about one-third of the distance required to be within reach of the instrument's internal focusing mechanism. This is because the dewar is "relaxing" toward its normal state, as pressure caused by the expansion of the nitrogen is reduced. The ice keeps the sensitive infrared detector cooled. Project officials also are considering how to deal with unexpected, excessive coolant loss.
"We are anticipating a shorter lifetime for the instrument, but we don't know how much shorter," said Goddard Hubble Project Scientist David Leckrone. "We are taking steps to work around the problem, and will increase the percentage of time this instrument will be used."
NASA officials also report that other upgrades to Hubble are performing well, including the newly installed solid state recorder, fine guidance sensor and solar array drive electronics. The solid state recorder has significantly improved data storage and playback, and the new fine guidance sensor is by far the best of the three on Hubble.
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Image files in GIF and JPEG format and captions may be accessed on Internet via anonymous ftp from ftp.stsci.edu in /pubinfo.
GIF JPEG
PRC97-11 Egg Nebula gif/eggnic.gif jpeg/eggnic.jpg
PRC97-12 M84 gif/m84stis.gif jpeg/m84stis.jpg
PRC97-13 Orion OMC-1 gif/omc1nic.gif jpeg/omc1nic.jpg
PRC97-14 SN1987A gif/sn87stis.gif jpeg/sn87stis.jpg
GIF and JPEG images, captions and press release text are available via the
World Wide Web through the links in the following photo captions and via links
in
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html.
Images supporting this news release are also available via TODAY@NASA
PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC97-11
NICMOS PEERS INTO HEART OF DYING STAR
The Egg Nebula, also known as CRL 2688, is shown on the left as it appears in visible light with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and on the right as it appears in infrared light with Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). Since infrared light is invisible to humans, the NICMOS image has been assigned colors to distinguish different wavelengths: blue corresponds to starlight reflected by dust particles, and red corresponds to heat radiation emitted by hot molecular hydrogen.
Objects like the Egg Nebula are helping astronomers understand how stars like our Sun expel carbon and nitrogen -- elements crucial for life -- into space. Studies on the Egg Nebula show that these dying stars eject matter at high speeds along a preferred axis and may even have multiple jet-like outflows. The signature of the collision between this fast-moving material and the slower outflowing shells is the glow of hydrogen molecules captured in the NICMOS image.
The distance between the tip of each jet is approximately 200 times the diameter of our solar system (out to Pluto's orbit).
Credits:
Rodger Thompson, Marcia Rieke, Glenn Schneider, Dean Hines
(University of Arizona); Raghvendra Sahai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); NICMOS
Instrument Definition Team; and NASA
PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC97-12
STIS RECORDS A BLACK HOLE'S SIGNATURE
The colorful "zigzag" on the right is not the work of a flamboyant artist, but the signature of a supermassive black hole in the center of galaxy M84, discovered by Hubble Space Telescope's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS).
The image on the left, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary and Camera 2 shows the core of the galaxy where the suspected black hole dwells. Astronomers mapped the motions of gas in the grip of the black hole's powerful gravitational pull by aligning the STIS's spectroscopic slit across the nucleus in a single exposure.
The STIS data on the right shows the rotational motion of stars and gas along the slit. The change in wavelength records whether an object is moving toward or away from the observer. The larger the excursion from the centerline -- as seen as a green and yellow picture element (pixels) along the center strip, the greater the rotational velocity. If no black hole were present, the line would be nearly vertical across the scan.
Instead, STIS's detector found the S-shape at the center of this scan, indicating a rapidly swirling disk of trapped material encircling the black hole. Along the S-shape from top to bottom, velocities skyrocket as seen in the rapid, dramatic swing to the left (blueshifted or approaching gas), then the region in the center simultaneously records the enormous speeds of the gas both approaching and receding for orbits in the immediate vicinity of the black hole, and then an equivalent swing from the right, back to the center line.
STIS measures a velocity of 880,000 miles per hour (400 kilometers per second) within 26 light-years of the galaxy's center, where the black hole dwells. This motion allowed astronomers to calculate that the black hole contains at least 300 million solar masses. (Just as the mass of our Sun can be calculated from the orbital radii and speeds of the planets.)
This observation demonstrates a direct connection between a supermassive black hole and activity (such as radio emission) in the nucleus of an active galaxy. It also shows that STIS is ideally suited for efficiently conducting a survey of galaxies to determine the distribution of the black holes and their masses.
Each point on STIS's solid-state CCD (Charge Coupled Device) detector samples a square patch at the galaxy that is 12 light-years on a side. The detection of black holes at the centers of galaxies is about 40 times faster than the earlier Faint Object Spectrograph. STIS was configured to record five spectral features in red light from glowing hydrogen atoms as well as nitrogen and sulfur ions in orbit around the center of M84. At each sampled patch the velocity of the entrapped gas was measured. Because the patches are contiguous, the astronomers could map the change of velocity in detail.
M84 is located in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, 50 million light-years from Earth.
Credit:
Gary Bower, Richard Green (NOAO), the STIS Instrument Definition
Team, and NASA
PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC97-13
NICMOS CAPTURES THE HEART OF OMC-1
The infrared vision of the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) is providing a dramatic new look at the beautiful Orion Nebula which contains the nearest nursery for massive stars. For comparison, Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) image on the left shows a large part of the nebula as it appears in visible light. The heart of the giant Orion molecular cloud, OMC-1, is included in the relatively dim and featureless area inside the blue outline near the top of the image. Light from a few foreground stars seen in the WFPC2 image provides only a hint of the many other stars embedded in this dense cloud.
NICMOS's infrared vision reveals a chaotic, active star birth region (as seen in the right-hand image). Here, stars and glowing interstellar dust, heated by and scattering the intense starlight, appear yellow-orange. Emission by excited hydrogen molecules appears blue. The image is oriented with north up and east to the left. The diagonal extent of the image is about 0.4 light-years. Some details are as small as the size of our solar system.
The brightest object in the image is a massive young star called BN (Becklin-Neugebauer). Blue "fingers" of molecular hydrogen emission indicate the presence of violent outflows, probably produced by a young star or stars still embedded in dust (located to the lower left, southeast, of BN). The outflowing material may also produce the crescent-shaped "bow shock" on the edge of a dark feature north of BN and the two bright "arcs" south of BN. The detection of several sets of closely spaced double stars in these observations further demonstrates NICMOS's ability to see fine details not possible from ground-based telescopes.
Credits:
NICMOS image -- Rodger Thompson, Marcia Rieke, Glenn Schneider, Susan
Stolovy (University of Arizona); Edwin Erickson (SETI Institute/Ames
Research Center); David Axon (STScI); and NASA WFPC2 image -- C. Robert O'Dell, Shui Kwan Wong (Rice University) and NASA
PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC97-14
STIS CHEMICALLY ANALYZES THE RING AROUND SUPERNOVA 1987A
These images from the Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) provide a new and unprecedented look at one of the most unique and complex structures in the universe -- a light-year wide ring of glowing gas around supernova 1987A, the nearest stellar explosion in 400 years, which occurred in February 1987.
The STIS long-slit spectrograph viewed the entire ring system, dissecting its light and producing a detailed image of the ring in each of its component colors. Each color represents light from specific elements in the ring's gasses, including oxygen (single green ring), nitrogen and hydrogen (triple orange rings), and sulfur (double red rings).
The ratio of the ring's brightness in different colors, emanating from the same elements, gives a measure of the concentration of the gasses. The light from different elements also identifies gasses at different temperatures.
By dismantling the ring into its different puzzle pieces -- its component elements -- astronomers hope to put together a picture of stellar process and physics which created the ring.
The ring formed 30,000 years before the star exploded and so is a fossil record of the final stages of the star's existence. The light from the supernova heated the gas in the ring so that it now glows at temperatures from 5,000 to 25,000 degrees Kelvin.
Supernova 1987A is located 167,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Credit:
STIS images -- George Sonneborn (GSFC) and NASA
WFPC image -- Jason Pun (NOAO) and SINS Collaboration
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