Tag Archives: "STScI"

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Head and shoulders photo of Jennifer Lotz smiling

Jennifer Lotz

Director, Space Telescope Science Institute Dr. Lotz returned to STScI from NOIRLab where she was the Director of the International ...
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About 5,000 years ago a comet swept within 23 million miles of the sun, closer than the innermost planet Mercury. The comet must have been a spectacular sight to those young civilizations across Eurasia and North Africa that were arising at the end of the Stone Age. However, this nameless space visitor is not recorded in any known historical account. So how do astronomers know that there was such an interplanetary intruder? Enter comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4), which first appeared near the beginning of 2020. ATLAS quickly met an untimely death in mid-2020 when it disintegrated into a cascade of small icy pieces. Such a comet’s self-destruction happens once or twice a decade. Astronomer Quanzhi Ye of the University of Maryland reports that ATLAS is a broken-off piece of that ancient visitor from 5,000 years ago. Why? Because ATLAS follows the same orbital “railroad track” as that of a comet seen in 1844. This means the two comets are siblings from the parent comet that broke apart very long ago. The link between the two comets was first noted by amateur astronomer Maik Meyer. Such comet families are common. The most dramatic visual example was in 1994 when the doomed comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) was pulled into a string of pieces by Jupiter’s gravitational pull. This “comet train” was short-lived. It fell piece by piece into Jupiter in July 1994. But comet ATLAS is just “weird,” says Ye, who observed it with Hubble about the time of the breakup. Unlike its hypothesized parent comet, ATLAS disintegrated while it was farther from the Sun than Earth, at a distance of over 100 million miles. This was much farther than the distance where its parent passed the Sun. “This emphasizes its strangeness,” said Ye. “If it broke up this far from the sun, how did it survive the last passage around the sun 5,000 years ago? This is the big question,” said Ye. “It’s very unusual because we wouldn’t expect it. This is the first time a long-period comet f

STScI: Comet ATLAS May Have Been a Blast from the Past

In a new study using observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomer Quanzhi Ye of the University of Maryland in ...
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STScI: Hubble Finds First Evidence of Water Vapor at Jupiter's Moon Ganymede

STScI: Hubble Finds First Evidence of Water Vapor at Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

For the first time, astronomers have uncovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. This water ...
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STScI: Mystery of Galaxy's Missing Dark Matter Deepens

STScI: Mystery of Galaxy’s Missing Dark Matter Deepens

When astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered an oddball galaxy that looked like it didn't have much dark matter, ...
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An international team using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October, will study a portion of the radiated cloud called the Orion Bar to learn more about the influence massive stars have on their environments, and even on the formation of our own solar system.

STScI: Webb to Study How Massive Stars’ Blasts of Radiation Influence Their Environments

An international team using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October, will study a portion ...
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Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have traced the locations of five brief, powerful radio blasts to the spiral arms of five distant galaxies.

STScI: Hubble Tracks Down Fast Radio Bursts to Galaxies’ Spiral Arms

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have traced the locations of five brief, powerful radio blasts to the spiral arms ...
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Hubble image of bright star AG Carinae

STScI: Hubble Captures Giant Star on the Edge of Destruction

In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers aimed the renowned observatory at ...
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STScI: NASA's Webb to Study Young Exoplanets on the Edge

STScI: NASA’s Webb to Study Young Exoplanets on the Edge

This outer realm of exoplanetary systems is an ideal hunting ground for NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Webb will ...
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Photo of the STScI building

Space Telescope Science Institute Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary

As it celebrates its 40th anniversary STScI is looking forward to the future, including the October 2021 launch of NASA's ...
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NOIRLab: Black Hole Pairs Found in Distant Merging Galaxies

NOIRLab: Black Hole Pairs Found in Distant Merging Galaxies

Astronomers have found two close pairs of quasars in the distant Universe. Follow-up observations with Gemini North spectroscopically resolved one ...
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STScI: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope General Observer Scientific Programs Selected

STScI: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope General Observer Scientific Programs Selected

Mission officials for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have announced the selection of the General Observer programs for the telescope’s ...
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STScI: Comet Makes a Pit Stop Near Jupiter's Asteroids

STScI: Comet Makes a Pit Stop Near Jupiter’s Asteroids

After traveling several billion miles toward the Sun, a wayward young comet-like object orbiting among the giant planets has found ...
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