Author Topic: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates  (Read 239647 times)

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #220 on: 07/25/2017 06:51 pm »
NASA's Hubble Sees Martian Moon Orbiting the Red Planet

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The Tiny Moon Phobos Is Photographed During Its Quick Trip Around Mars

While photographing Mars, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a cameo appearance of the tiny moon Phobos on its trek around the Red Planet. Discovered in 1877, the diminutive, potato-shaped moon is so small that it appears star-like in the Hubble pictures. Phobos orbits Mars in just 7 hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates. The moon’s orbit is very slowly shrinking, meaning it will eventually shatter under Mars’ gravitational pull, or crash into the planet. Hubble took 13 separate exposures over 22 minutes to create a time-lapse video showing the moon’s orbital path.

Pictures & video on link.

http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-29

Offline bolun

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #221 on: 10/18/2017 01:23 pm »
Hubble observes source of gravitational waves for the first time [heic1717]

16 October 2017

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed for the first time the source of a gravitational wave, created by the merger of two neutron stars. This merger created a kilonova – an object predicted by theory decades ago – that ejects heavy elements such as gold and platinum into space. This event also provides the strongest evidence yet that short duration gamma-ray bursts are caused by mergers of neutron stars. This discovery is the first glimpse of multi-messenger astronomy, bringing together both gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation.

http://sci.esa.int/hubble/59672-hubble-observes-source-of-gravitational-waves-for-the-first-time-heic1717/

Image credit: NASA and ESA. Acknowledgment: A.J. Levan (U. Warwick), N.R. Tanvir (U. Leicester), and A. Fruchter and O. Fox (STScI)

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #222 on: 02/16/2018 08:04 pm »
Hubble Sees Neptune's Mysterious Shrinking Storm

Three billion miles away on the farthest known major planet in our solar system, an ominous, dark storm – once big enough to stretch across the Atlantic Ocean from Boston to Portugal – is shrinking out of existence as seen in pictures of Neptune taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Immense dark storms on Neptune were first discovered in the late 1980s by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft. Since then, only Hubble has had the sharpness in blue light to track these elusive features that have played a game of peek-a-boo over the years. Hubble found two dark storms that appeared in the mid-1990s and then vanished. This latest storm was first seen in 2015, but is now shrinking.



Like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS), the storm swirls in an anti-cyclonic direction and is dredging up material from deep inside the ice giant planet’s atmosphere. The elusive feature gives astronomers a unique opportunity to study Neptune’s deep winds, which can’t be directly measured.

The dark spot material may be hydrogen sulfide, with the pungent smell of rotten eggs. Joshua Tollefson from the University of California at Berkeley explained, “The particles themselves are still highly reflective; they are just slightly darker than the particles in the surrounding atmosphere.”

Unlike Jupiter’s GRS, which has been visible for at least 200 years, Neptune’s dark vortices only last a few years. This is the first one that actually has been photographed as it is dying.

“We have no evidence of how these vortices are formed or how fast they rotate,” said Agustín Sánchez-Lavega from the University of the Basque Country in Spain. “It is most likely that they arise from an instability in the sheared eastward and westward winds.”

The dark vortex is behaving differently from what planet-watchers predicted. “It looks like we’re capturing the demise of this dark vortex, and it’s different from what well-known studies led us to expect,” said Michael H. Wong of the University of California at Berkeley, referring to work by Ray LeBeau (now at St. Louis University) and Tim Dowling’s team at the University of Louisville. “Their dynamical simulations said that anticyclones under Neptune’s wind shear would probably drift toward the equator. We thought that once the vortex got too close to the equator, it would break up and perhaps create a spectacular outburst of cloud activity.”

But the dark spot, which was first seen at mid-southern latitudes, has apparently faded away rather than going out with a bang. That may be related to the surprising direction of its measured drift: toward the south pole, instead of northward toward the equator. Unlike Jupiter’s GRS, the Neptune spot is not as tightly constrained by numerous alternating wind jets (seen as bands in Jupiter’s atmosphere). Neptune seems to only have three broad jets: a westward one at the equator, and eastward ones around the north and south poles. The vortex should be free to change traffic lanes and cruise anywhere in between the jets.

“No facilities other than Hubble and Voyager have observed these vortices. For now, only Hubble can provide the data we need to understand how common or rare these fascinating neptunian weather systems may be,” said Wong.

The first images of the dark vortex are from the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, a long-term Hubble project that annually captures global maps of our solar system’s four outer planets. Only Hubble has the unique capability to probe these worlds in ultraviolet light, which yields important information not available to other present-day telescopes. Additional data, from a Hubble program targeting the dark vortex, are from an international team including Wong, Tollefson, Sánchez-Lavega, Andrew Hsu, Imke de Pater, Amy Simon, Ricardo Hueso, Lawrence Sromovsky, Patrick Fry, Statia Luszcz-Cook, Heidi Hammel, Marc Delcroix, Katherine de Kleer, Glenn Orton, and Christoph Baranec.

Wong’s paper appears online in the Astronomical Journal on Feb. 15, 2018.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

For additional imagery, visit: http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-08

For NASA’s Hubble web page, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #223 on: 04/02/2018 07:34 pm »
heic1807 — Science Release

Hubble uses cosmic lens to discover most distant star ever observed

2 April 2018

The international team, led by Patrick Kelly (University of Minnesota, USA), Jose Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain) and Steven Rodney (University of South Carolina, USA), discovered the distant star in the galaxy cluster MACS J1149-2223 in April 2016. The observations with Hubble were actually performed in order to detect and follow the latest appearance of the gravitationally lensed supernova explosion nicknamed “Refsdal” (heic1525)[1], when an unexpected point source brightened in the same galaxy that hosted the supernova.

“Like the Refsdal supernova explosion the light of this distant star got magnified, making it visible for Hubble,” says Patrick Kelly. “This star is at least 100 times farther away than the next individual star we can study, except for supernova explosions.”

The observed light from the newly discovered star, called Lensed Star 1 (LS1) was emitted when the Universe was only about 30 percent of its current age — about 4.4 billion years after the Big Bang. The detection of the star through Hubble was only possible because the light from the star was magnified 2000 times.

“The star became bright enough to be visible for Hubble thanks to a process called gravitational lensing,” explains Jose Diego. The light from LS1 was magnified not only by the huge total mass of the galaxy cluster, but also by another compact object of about three times the mass of the Sun within the galaxy cluster itself; an effect known as gravitational microlensing [2].

“The discovery of LS1 allows us to gather new insights into the constituents of the galaxy cluster. We know that the microlensing was caused by either a star, a neutron star, or a stellar-mass black hole,” explains Steven Rodney. LS1 therefore allows astronomers to study neutron stars and black holes, which are otherwise invisible and they can estimate how many of these dark objects exist within this galaxy cluster.

As galaxy clusters are among the largest and most massive structures in the Universe, learning about their constituents also increases our knowledge about the composition of the Universe overall. This includes additional information about the mysterious dark matter.

“If dark matter is at least partially made up of comparatively low-mass black holes, as it was recently proposed, we should be able to see this in the light curve of LS1. Our observations do not favour the possibility that a high fraction of dark matter is made of these primordial black holes with about 30 times the mass of the Sun”, highlights Kelly.

After the discovery the researchers used Hubble again to measure a spectrum of LS1. Based on their analysis, the astronomers think that LS1 is a B-type supergiant star. These stars are extremely luminous and blue in colour, with a surface temperature between 11 000 and 14 000 degrees Celsius; making them more than twice as hot as the Sun.

But this was not the end of the story. Observations made in October 2016 suddenly showed a second image of the star. “We were actually surprised to not have seen this second image in earlier observations, as also the galaxy the star is located in can be seen twice,” comments Diego. “We assume that the light from the second image has been deflected by another moving massive object for a long time — basically hiding the image from us. And only when the massive object moved out of the line of sight the second image of the star became visible.” This second image and the blocking object add another piece of the puzzle to reveal the makeup of galaxy clusters.

With more research and the arrival of new, more powerful telescopes like the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, the astronomers suggest that with microlensing, it will be possible to study the evolution of the earliest stars in the Universe in greater detail than ever expected.

Notes
[1] Observations of this supernova, nicknamed Refsdal in honour of the Norwegian astronomer Sjur Refsdal, were made as part of Hubble’s Frontier Fields project.

[2] Gravitational lensing magnifies the light from fainter, background objects, allowing Hubble to see objects it would otherwise not be able to detect. The process was first predicted by Albert Einstein and is now used to find some of the most distant objects in the Universe. Usually the lensing object is a galaxy or a galaxy cluster, but in some cases it can also be a star or even a planet. When it involves these smaller objects the process is called microlensing.

https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1807/

Offline missinglink

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #224 on: 04/02/2018 11:06 pm »
It's the most distant star, but they won't tell us how far away from Earth it is?

Nevermind, the NASA press release is more forthcoming with the information:

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The star, harbored in a very distant spiral galaxy, is so far away that its light has taken 9 billion years to reach Earth.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/hubble-uncovers-the-farthest-star-ever-seen
« Last Edit: 04/02/2018 11:35 pm by missinglink »

Offline bolun

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #225 on: 04/04/2018 03:29 pm »
HUBBLE USES COSMIC LENS TO DISCOVER MOST DISTANT STAR EVER OBSERVED [HEIC1807]

http://sci.esa.int/hubble/60140-hubble-uses-cosmic-lens-to-discover-most-distant-star-ever-observed-heic1807/

Image credit: NASA & ESA and P. Kelly (University of California, Berkeley)

Offline speedevil

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #226 on: 04/08/2018 07:06 am »
Somewhat older, but on checking the thread I couldn't see mention of it.
http://www.stsci.edu/hst/proposing/panel/Cycle25-HST-status.pdf

This is the status of Hubble as of June 2017.

Highlights:
Gyro life estimate is till 2023, with three gyros, and reduced operation on one gyro out to 2036. (if of course it remains working and funded, it gets rather less useful with less than three gyros).
40 PHds generated per year.
$100M budget.
6:1 more demand for telescope time than there is.

There seems to be some degradation of certain instruments that gets worse over time, but it seems likely that if a gyros does fail in 2023, the telescope would otherwise be mostly healthy and still doing science until then.

Something to bookmark for June, to look at changes.

Offline Archibald

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #227 on: 04/08/2018 02:14 pm »
Dang, it will never die. Most productive telescope & science instrument & telescope ever ? Maybe not, but one hell of a story whatever happens.

Hey, the most time it stays in orbit, the best the chances somebody recovers it and bring it the Smithsonian.

Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #228 on: 04/20/2018 08:27 pm »
Hubble peers into the heart of the Lagoon Nebula

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Marking the Hubble Space Telescope’s 28th anniversary in orbit, the observatory peered into the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, a favourite target for amateur astronomers, generating this spectacular view of a vast, chaotic stellar nursery some 4,000 light-years away. At the centre of the photo is a giant star 200,000 times brighter, and 32 times more massive, than the sun, blasting out powerful stellar winds and torrents of ultraviolet radiation.

https://astronomynow.com/2018/04/19/hubble-peers-into-the-lagoon-nebula/

Offline bolun

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #229 on: 04/21/2018 03:20 pm »
HUBBLE CELEBRATES 28TH ANNIVERSARY WITH A TRIP THROUGH THE LAGOON NEBULA [HEIC1808]

19 April 2018

This colourful cloud of glowing interstellar gas is just a tiny part of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery. This nebula is a region full of intense activity, with fierce winds from hot stars, swirling chimneys of gas, and energetic star formation all embedded within a hazy labyrinth of gas and dust. Hubble used both its optical and infrared instruments to study the nebula, which was observed to celebrate Hubble's 28th anniversary.

http://sci.esa.int/hubble/60177-hubble-celebrates-28th-anniversary-with-a-trip-through-the-lagoon-nebula-heic1808/

Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI

Offline SM4_Engineer

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #230 on: 04/27/2018 03:08 pm »
At 6:44 a.m. on April 21, it was reported that a gyroscope (gyro) on the Hubble Space Telescope had stopped working. Gyros help keep the spacecraft oriented and pointed in a precise direction. Built for multiple redundancies, Hubble has a total of six gyros; it usually uses three gyros and can continue to make scientific observations with even just one. This is the second gyro to stop working since Hubble’s last servicing mission in 2009. Current and planned observations will continue unaffected. Hubble continues to be in excellent health, and we expect the 28-year-old Great Observatory to continue bringing us groundbreaking science for years to come.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/hubble-spacecraft-update

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #231 on: 04/27/2018 08:53 pm »
Stellar Thief Is the Surviving Companion to a Supernova

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Seventeen years ago, astronomers witnessed a supernova go off 40 million light-years away in the galaxy called NGC 7424, located in the southern constellation Grus, the Crane. Now, in the fading afterglow of that explosion, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first image of a surviving companion to a supernova. This picture is the most compelling evidence that some supernovas originate in double-star systems.

“We know that the majority of massive stars are in binary pairs,” said Stuart Ryder from the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) in Sydney, Australia, and lead author of the study. “Many of these binary pairs will interact and transfer gas from one star to the other when their orbits bring them close together.”

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/stellar-thief-is-the-surviving-companion-to-a-supernova/

Offline eeergo

Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #232 on: 05/03/2018 06:57 am »
HUBBLE DETECTS HELIUM IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF AN EXOPLANET FOR THE FIRST TIME [HEIC1809]


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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have detected helium in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b. This is the first time this element has been detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside the Solar System. The discovery demonstrates the ability to use infrared spectra to study exoplanet extended atmospheres.

http://sci.esa.int/hubble/60245-hubble-detects-helium-in-the-atmosphere-of-an-exoplanet-for-the-first-time-heic1809/
-DaviD-

Online catdlr

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #233 on: 05/04/2018 08:43 pm »
Historic video.

Hubble Space Telescope (archival video)


NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
Published on May 4, 2018

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) provides a detailed view of the unimagined complexity and diversity of the universe, as well as its startling beauty. It has yielded numerous surprises and raised new questions. The unique power of the HST derives from its combination of extremely sharp images covering relatively wide fields of view in the sky with the ability to record very faint and very bright objects together in one image, the freedom from atmospheric distortions, and the sensitivity to different types of light from ultraviolet to near-infrared. This archival video provides an overview of the telescope during its development.



Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #234 on: 05/25/2018 07:53 pm »
Hubble’s Galaxy Cluster Cornucopia

At first glance, this image is dominated by the vibrant glow of the swirling spiral to the lower left of the frame. However, this galaxy is far from the most interesting spectacle here — behind it sits a galaxy cluster.

Galaxies are not randomly distributed in space; they swarm together, gathered up by the unyielding hand of gravity, to form groups and clusters. The Milky Way is a member of the Local Group, which is part of the Virgo Cluster, which in turn is part of the 100,000-galaxy-strong Laniakea Supercluster.

The galaxy cluster seen in this image is known as SDSS J0333+0651. Clusters such as this can help astronomers understand the distant — and therefore early — universe. SDSS J0333+0651 was imaged as part of a study of star formation in far-flung galaxies. Star-forming regions are typically not very large, stretching out for a few hundred light-years at most, so it is difficult for telescopes to resolve them at a distance. Even using its most sensitive and highest-resolution cameras, Hubble can’t resolve very distant star-forming regions, so astronomers use a cosmic trick: they search instead for galaxy clusters, which have a gravitational influence so immense that they warp the space-time around them. This distortion acts like a lens, magnifying the light of galaxies (and their star-forming regions) sitting far behind the cluster and producing elongated arcs like the one seen in the upper left part of this image.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/potw1821a.jpg

Offline bolun

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #235 on: 06/24/2018 07:49 pm »
HUBBLE PROVES EINSTEIN CORRECT ON GALACTIC SCALES (HEIC1812)

21 June 2018

An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has made the most precise test of general relativity yet outside our Milky Way. The nearby galaxy ESO 325-G004 acts as a strong gravitational lens, distorting light from a distant galaxy behind it to create an Einstein ring around its centre. By comparing the mass of ESO 325-G004 with the curvature of space around it, the astronomers found that gravity on these astronomical length-scales behaves as predicted by general relativity. This rules out some alternative theories of gravity.

http://sci.esa.int/hubble/60441-hubble-proves-einstein-correct-on-galactic-scales-heic1812/

Image credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, NASA

Offline eeergo

Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #236 on: 07/19/2018 12:05 pm »
Not a Hubble update per se (the news are from the VLT array)... but it's getting surpassed by ground-based telescopes, thanks to new adaptive optics techniques like laser tomography!

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1824/


Check out the jaw-dropping high-resolution picture of Neptune taken from Chilean grounds.



Quote
Supersharp Images from New VLT Adaptive Optics


ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved first light with a new adaptive optics mode called laser tomography — and has captured remarkably sharp test images of the planet Neptune, star clusters and other objects. The pioneering MUSE instrument in Narrow-Field Mode, working with the GALACSI adaptive optics module, can now use this new technique to correct for turbulence at different altitudes in the atmosphere. It is now possible to capture images from the ground at visible wavelengths that are sharper than those from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The combination of exquisite image sharpness and the spectroscopic capabilities of MUSE will enable astronomers to study the properties of astronomical objects in much greater detail than was possible before.
-DaviD-

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #237 on: 07/19/2018 01:58 pm »
I am going to re-post this in the astronomy thread as its not really a Hubble update.
« Last Edit: 07/19/2018 02:06 pm by Star One »

Offline Targeteer

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #238 on: 07/28/2018 04:50 pm »
https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1814/

heic1814 — Photo Release
New family photos of Mars and Saturn from Hubble

26 July 2018

In summer 2018 the planets Mars and Saturn are, one after the other, in opposition to Earth. During this event the planets are relatively close to Earth, allowing astronomers to observe them in greater detail. Hubble took advantage of this preferred configuration and imaged both planets to continue its long-standing observation of the outer planets in the Solar System.

Since the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was launched, its goal has always been to study not only distant astronomical objects, but also the planets within our Solar System. Hubble’s high-resolution images of our planetary neighbours can only be surpassed by pictures taken from spacecraft that actually visit these bodies. However, Hubble has one advantage over space probes: it can look at these objects periodically and observe them over much longer periods than any passing probe could.

In the last months the planets Mars and Saturn have each been in opposition to Earth — Saturn on 27 June and Mars on 27 July. An opposition occurs when the Sun, Earth and an outer planet are lined up, with Earth sitting in between the Sun and the outer planet. During an opposition, a planet is fully lit by the Sun as seen from Earth, and it also marks the time when the planet is closest to Earth, allowing astronomers to see features on the planet’s surface in greater detail [1].

A month before Saturn’s opposition — on 6 June — Hubble was used to observe the ringed planet [2]. At this time Saturn was approximately 1.4 billion kilometres from Earth. The taken images show Saturn’s magnificent ring system near its maximum tilt toward Earth, allowing a spectacular view of the rings and the gaps between them. Though all of the gas giants boast rings, Saturn’s are the largest and most spectacular, stretching out to eight times the radius of the planet.

Alongside a beautiful view of the ring system, Hubble’s new image reveals a hexagonal pattern around the north pole — a stable and persistent wind feature discovered during the flyby of the Voyager 1 space probe in 1981. To the south of this feature a string of bright clouds is visible: remnants of a disintegrating storm.

While observing the planet Hubble also managed to capture images of six of Saturn’s 62 currently known moons: Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas. Scientists hypothesise that a small, wayward moon like one of these disintegrated 200 million years ago to form Saturn’s ring system.

Hubble shot the second portrait, of the planet Mars, on 18 July, just 13 days before Mars reached its closest approach to Earth. This year Mars will get as close as 57.6 million kilometres from Earth. This makes it the closest approach since 2003, when the red planet made its way closer to us than at any other time in almost 60 000 years (opo0322).

While previous images showed detailed surface features of the planet, this new image is dominated by a gigantic sandstorm enshrouding the entire planet. Still visible are the white polar caps, Terra Meridiani, the Schiaparelli Crater, and Hellas Basin — but all of these features are slightly blurred by the dust in the atmosphere.

Comparing these new images of Mars and Saturn with older data gathered by Hubble, other telescopes and even space probes allows astronomers to study how cloud patterns and large-scale structures on other planets in our Solar System change over time.
Notes

[1] The dates of opposition and closest approach differ slightly. This difference is caused by the elliptical orbit of the planets and the fact that the orbits are not in exactly the same plane.

[2] The observations of Saturn were made as part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project. OPAL is helping astronomers understand the atmospheric dynamics and evolution of the gas giant planets in our Solar System. Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have already been observed several times as part of this project, but this is the first time Saturn was observed as part of OPAL.
More information

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, M. Mutchler (STScI), A. Simon (GSFC) and the OPAL Team, J. DePasquale (STScI)
Best quote heard during an inspection, "I was unaware that I was the only one who was aware."

Online Blackstar

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Re: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates
« Reply #239 on: 07/28/2018 08:27 pm »
A few weeks back I had dinner with Robert Picardo (nice guy) and he was heading up to the Space Telescope Science Institute to film some promos with them. They were getting ready for doing some Mars observations. I wondered when the photos would come out. Unfortunately, they were happening during the dust storm.

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