The spacecraft is scheduled to be decommissioned - taken out of service - later this year.

The mission extensively mapped large portions of the sky with sharp ultraviolet vision, cataloguing millions of galaxies spanning 10 billion years of cosmic time.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched into space from a Pegasus XL rocket in April of 2003. Since completing its prime mission in the fall of 2007, the mission was extended to continue its census of stars and galaxies.

The mission's science highlights include the discovery of a gigantic comet-like tail behind a speeding star, rings of new stars around old galaxies, and "teenager" galaxies, which help to explain how galaxies evolve.

The observatory also helped confirm the existence of the mysterious substance or force known as dark energy, and even caught a black hole devouring a star.

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Boston MA (SPX) Feb 09, 2012 - The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a similar barred spiral, and the study of galaxies such as NGC 1073 helps astronomers learn more about our celestial home.

Most spiral galaxies in the Universe have a bar structure in their centre, and Hubble's image of NGC 1073 offers a particularly clear view of one of these.

Galaxies' star-filled bars are thought to emerge as gravitational density waves funnel gas toward the galactic centre, supplying the material to create new stars. The transport of gas can also feed the supermassive black holes that lurk in the centres of almost every galaxy.

Some astronomers have suggested that the formation of a central bar-like structure might signal a spiral galaxy's passage from intense star-formation into adulthood, as the bars turn up more often in galaxies full of older, red stars than younger, blue stars.

This storyline would also account for the observation that in the early Universe, only around a fifth of spiral galaxies contained bars, while more than two thirds do in the more modern cosmos.

While Hubble's image of NGC 1073 is in some respects an archetypal portrait of a barred spiral, there are a couple of quirks worth pointing out.

One, ironically, is almost - but not quite - invisible to optical telescopes like Hubble. In the upper left part of the image, a rough ring-like structure of recent star formation hides a bright source of X-rays. Called IXO 5, this X-ray source is likely to be a binary system featuring a black hole and a star orbiting each other.

Comparing X-ray observations from the Chandra spacecraft with this Hubble image, astronomers have narrowed the position of IXO 5 down to one of two faint stars visible here. However, X-ray observations with current instruments are not precise enough to conclusively determine which of the two it is.

Hubble's image does not only tell us about a galaxy in our own cosmic neighbourhood, however. We can also discern glimpses of objects much further away, whose light tells us about earlier eras in cosmic history.

Right across Hubble's field of view, more distant galaxies are peering through NGC 1073, with several reddish examples appearing clearly in the top left part of the frame.

More intriguing still, three of the bright points of light in this image are neither foreground stars from the Milky Way, nor even distant stars in NGC 1073. In fact they are not stars at all.

They are quasars, incredibly bright sources of light caused by matter heating up and falling into supermassive black holes in galaxies literally billions of light-years from us. The chance alignment through NGC 1073, and their incredible brightness, might make them look like they are part of the galaxy, but they are in fact some of the most distant objects observable in the Universe.

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Santiago (AFP) Feb 9, 2012 - Astronomers in Chile said this week they had created the world's largest virtual optical telescope by using a special technique to combine images from the four most powerful devices as if they were a single device.

"This weekend we managed to finish the process (of merging the images) after almost a year," said Jean-Philippe Berger, a scientist at the European Southern Observatory which operates the Very Large Telescope array (VLT) in Chile's high northern desert

"For the first time, we made scientific observations through this new instrument, and we can say that it can be used."

The VLT complex in Paranal includes four large optical telescopes, each of which are about 30 meters (100 feet) high and have mirrors eight meters (25 feet) in diameter.

The astronomers brought together the signals received by the four telescopes thanks to a technique known as interferometry, which combines the images from the four to achieve a higher resolution image.

This creates a virtual mirror which is the equivalent of 130 meters (400 feet) in diameter and, according to Berger, improves the resolution and the ability to "zoom" in on the cosmos.

"We see the surface of stars, including objects that have never been observed before, such as some very young stars or galaxies," Berger explained.

"It is very difficult to build large optical telescopes, so interferometry was used," he added. "We have been working on this for a long time and are very excited to start doing science" with it.

The complex is operated by the ESO, created in 1962 and which has support from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Boston MA (SPX) Feb 03, 2012 - Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope got a uniquely close-up look at the brightest "magnified" galaxy yet discovered. This observation provides a unique opportunity to study the physical properties of a galaxy vigorously forming stars when the universe was only one-third its present age.

A so-called gravitational lens is produced when space is warped by a massive foreground object, whether it is the sun, a black hole or an entire cluster of galaxies. The light from more-distant background objects is distorted, brightened and magnified as it passes through this gravitationally disturbed region.

A team of astronomers led by Jane Rigby of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., aimed Hubble at one of the most striking examples of gravitational lensing, a nearly 90-degree arc of light in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. Hubble's view of the distant background galaxy is significantly more detailed than could ever be achieved without the help of the gravitational lens.

The results have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, in a paper led by Keren Sharon of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. Professor Michael Gladders and graduate student Eva Wuyts of the University of Chicago were also key team members.

The presence of the lens helps show how galaxies evolved from 10 billion years ago to today. While nearby galaxies are fully mature and are at the tail end of their star-formation histories, distant galaxies tell us about the universe's formative years.

The light from those early events is just now arriving at Earth. Very distant galaxies are not only faint but also appear small on the sky. Astronomers would like to see how star formation progressed deep within these galaxies. Such details would be beyond the reach of Hubble's vision were it not for the magnification made possible by gravity in the intervening lens region.

In 2006 a team of astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile measured the arc's distance and calculated that the galaxy appears more than three times brighter than previously discovered lensed galaxies. In 2011 astronomers used Hubble to image and analyze the lensed galaxy with the observatory's Wide Field Camera 3.

The distorted image of the galaxy is repeated several times in the foreground lensing cluster, as is typical of gravitational lenses. The challenge for astronomers was to reconstruct what the galaxy really looked like, were it not distorted by the cluster's funhouse-mirror effect.

Hubble's sharp vision allowed astronomers to remove the distortions and reconstruct the galaxy image as it would normally look. The reconstruction revealed regions of star formation glowing like bright Christmas tree bulbs. These are much brighter than any star-formation region in our Milky Way galaxy.

Through spectroscopy, the spreading out of the light into its constituent colors, the team plans to analyze these star-forming regions from the inside out to better understand why they are forming so many stars.

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 31, 2012 - NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this morning after a cross-country trip by truck from the Orbital Sciences Corporation's manufacturing plant in Dulles, Va.

The mission is scheduled to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on March 14.

Once the observatory is offloaded at Vandenberg, it will be moved into a processing hangar, joining the Pegasus XL rocket that is set to carry it to space. Over the weekend, technicians will remove its shipping container so that checkout and other processing activities can begin next week.

Once the observatory is integrated with the rocket in mid-February, technicians will encapsulate it in the vehicle fairing, which is also scheduled to arrive at Vandenberg.

After processing is completed, the rocket and spacecraft will be flown on Orbital's L-1011 carrier aircraft to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll for launch in March.

NuSTAR is a small-explorer mission managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation.

Its instrument was built by a consortium including the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; JPL; Columbia University, New York, N.Y.; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; the University of California, Berkeley; and ATK, Goleta, Calif.

NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Baltimore MD (SPX) Jan 16, 2012 - Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have solved a longstanding mystery on the type of star, or so-called progenitor, which caused a supernova seen in a nearby galaxy. The finding yields new observational data for pinpointing one of several scenarios that trigger such outbursts.

Based on previous observations from ground-based telescopes, astronomers knew the supernova class, called a Type Ia, created a remnant named SNR 0509-67.5, which lies 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.

Theoretically, this kind of supernova explosion is caused by a star spilling material onto a white dwarf companion, the compact remnant of a normal star, until it sets off one of the most powerful explosions in the universe.

Astronomers failed to find any remnant of the companion star, however, and concluded that the common scenario did not apply in this case, although it is still a viable theory for other Type Ia supernovae.

"We know Hubble has the sensitivity necessary to detect the faintest white dwarf remnants that could have caused such explosions," said lead investigator Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. "The logic here is the same as the famous quote from Sherlock Holmes: 'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"

The cause of SNR 0509-67.5 can be explained best by two tightly orbiting white dwarf stars spiraling closer and closer until they collided and exploded.

For four decades, the search for Type Ia supernovae progenitors has been a key question in astrophysics. The problem has taken on special importance during the last decade with Type Ia supernovae being the premier tools for measuring the accelerating universe.

Type Ia supernovae release tremendous energy, in which the light produced is often brighter than an entire galaxy of stars. The problem has been to identify the type of star system that pushes the white dwarf's mass over the edge and triggers this type of explosion. Many possibilities have been suggested, but most require that a companion star near the exploding white dwarf be left behind after the explosion.

Therefore, a possible way to distinguish between the various progenitor models has been to look deep in the center of an old supernova remnant to search for the ex-companion star.

In 2010, Schaefer and Ashley Pagnotta of LSU were preparing a proposal to look for any faint ex-companion stars in the center of four supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud when they discovered the Hubble Space Telescope already had taken the desired image of one of their target remnants, SNR 0509-67.5, for the Hubble Heritage program, which collects images of especially photogenic astronomical targets.

In analyzing the central region, they found it to be completely empty of stars down to the limit of the faintest objects Hubble can detect in the photos. Schaefer suggests the best explanation left is the so-called "double degenerate model" in which two white dwarfs collide.

The results are being reported at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. A paper on the results will be published in the the journal Nature.

There are no recorded observations of the star exploding. However, researchers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. have identified light from the supernova that was reflected off of interstellar dust, delaying its arrival at Earth by 400 years. This delay, called a light echo of the supernova explosion also allowed the astronomers to measure the spectral signature of the light from the explosion. By virtue of the color signature, astronomers were able to deduce it was a Type Ia supernova.

Because the remnant appears as a nice symmetric shell or bubble, the geometric center can be determined accurately. These properties make SNR 0509-67.5 an ideal target to search for ex-companions. The young age also means that any surviving stars have not moved far from the site of the explosion.

The team plans to look at other supernova remnants in the Large Magellenic Cloud to further test their observations.

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

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Austin TX (SPX) Jan 13, 2012 - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has looked deep into the distant universe and detected the feeble glow from a star that exploded more than 9 billion years ago.

This isn't just any dying star. It belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae, which are bright beacons used as distance markers for studying the expansion rate of the universe. Type Ia supernovae most likely arise when white dwarf stars - the burned-out cores of normal stars - siphon too much material from their companion stars and explode.

The stellar explosion, given the nickname SN Primo, will help astronomers place better constraints on the nature of dark energy - a mysterious repulsive force that is causing the universe to fly apart ever faster.

SN Primo is the farthest Type Ia supernova whose distance has been confirmed through spectroscopic observations. Spectroscopy is the "gold standard" for measuring supernova distances.

A spectrum splits the light from a supernova into its constituent colors. By analyzing those colors, astronomers can confirm its distance by measuring how much the supernova's light has been stretched, or reddened, into near-infrared wavelengths due to the expansion of the universe.

The sighting is the first result from a three-year Hubble program to survey faraway Type Ia supernovae, opening a new distance realm for searching for this special class of stellar explosion. The remote supernovae will help astronomers determine whether the exploding stars remain dependable cosmic yardsticks across vast distances of space in an epoch when the cosmos was only one-third its current age of 13.7 billion years.

Called the CANDELS+CLASH Supernova Project, the census is using the sharpness and versatility of Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to help astronomers search for supernovae in near-infrared light and verify their distance with spectroscopy.

WFC3 is looking in regions targeted by two large Hubble programs called the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) and the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH).

"In our search for supernovae, we had gone as far as we could go in optical light," said the project's lead investigator, Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.

"But it's only the beginning of what we can do in infrared light. This discovery demonstrates that we can use the Wide Field Camera 3 to search for supernovae in the distant universe."

The new results are being presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. A paper describing the study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

The supernova team's search technique involved taking multiple near-infrared images over several months, looking for a supernova's faint glow.

Once the team spotted the stellar blast in October 2010, they used WFC3's spectrograph to verify SN Primo's distance and to decode its light, finding the unique signature of a Type Ia supernova. The team then re- imaged SN Primo periodically for eight months, measuring the slow dimming of its light.

By taking the census, the astronomers hope to determine the frequency of Type Ia supernovae during the early universe and glean insights into the mechanisms that detonated them.

"If we look into the early universe and measure a drop in the number of supernovae, then it could be that it takes a long time to make a Type Ia supernova," said Steve Rodney of The Johns Hopkins University, the science paper's first author.

"Like corn kernels in a pan waiting for the oil to heat up, the stars haven't had enough time at that epoch to evolve to the point of explosion. However, if supernovae form very quickly, like microwave popcorn, then they will be immediately visible, and we'll find many of them, even when the universe was very young. But each supernova is unique. It's possible that there are multiple ways to make a supernova."

If astronomers discover that Type Ia supernovae begin to depart from how they expect them to look, they might be able to gauge those changes and make the measurements of dark energy more precise, Riess explained. Riess and two other astronomers shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering dark energy 13 years ago, using Type Ia supernovae to plot the universe's expansion rate.

After extending the frontier for supernova discoveries with Hubble, a full scrutiny of this new territory will have to wait for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Scheduled to launch later this decade, JWST will probe exploding stars at much farther distances than Hubble can reach.

JWST will be able to see farther into the infrared than Hubble does. This capability will push back the frontier by probing more than 11 billion years back in time, when the universe was only 2 billion years old.

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Tempe AZ (SPX) Jan 11, 2012 - On January 14, 2012, the second 8.4-meter (27.6 ft) diameter mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be cast inside a rotating furnace at the UA's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab underneath the campus football stadium. The Mirror Lab will host a special event to highlight this milestone in the creation of the optics for the Giant Magellan Telescope.

The GMT features an innovative design utilizing seven mirrors, each 8.4 meters in diameter, arranged as segments of a single mirror 24.5 meters (80 feet) in diameter, to bring starlight to a common focus via a set of adaptive secondary mirrors configured in a similar seven-fold pattern.

"In this design the outer six mirrors are off-axis paraboloids and represent the greatest optics challenge ever undertaken in astronomical optics by a large factor" said Roger Angel, Director of the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab (SOML).

The GMT will allow astronomers to answer some of the most pressing questions about the cosmos including the detection, imaging, and characterization of planets orbiting other stars, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the physics of black holes, and how stars and galaxies evolved during the earliest phases of the universe.

"Astronomical discovery has always been paced by the power of available telescopes and imaging technology. The GMT allows another major step forward in both sensitivity and image sharpness" said Peter Strittmatter, Director of Steward Observatory.

"In fact the GMT will be able to acquire images 10 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope and will provide a powerful complement not only to NASA's 6.5-meter James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) but also to the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), both located in the southern hemisphere."

Patrick McCarthy, GMT Project Director, added "This second GMT casting is going forward now because the primary optics are on the critical path for the project and because the polishing of the first off-axis 8.4-meter GMT mirror is very close to completion, with an optical surface accuracy within about 25 nanometers, or about one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair."

Like other mirrors produced by the SOML, the GMT mirrors are designed to be spun cast, thereby achieving the basic front surface in the shape of a paraboloid. A paraboloid is the shape taken on by water in a bucket when the bucket is spun around its axis; the water rises up the walls of the bucket while a depression forms in the center.

Some 21 tons of borosilicate glass, made by the Ohara Corporation, flow into a pre-assembled mold to create a lightweight honeycomb glass structure that is very stiff and quickly adjusts to changes in nighttime air temperature, each resulting in sharper images.

The Mirror Lab has already produced the world's four largest astronomical mirrors, each 8.4 meters in diameter.

Two are in operation in the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) - currently the largest telescope in the world, one is for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), and the fourth is the first off-axis mirror for GMT. The Mirror Lab has also produced five 6.5-meter mirrors, two of which are in the twin Magellan telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

"The novel technology developed at the Mirror Lab is creating a whole new generation of large telescopes with unsurpassed image sharpness and light collecting power," said Wendy Freedman, Director of the Carnegie Observatories and Chair of the GMTO Board. "The SOML mirrors in the twin Magellan Telescopes at our Las Campanas Observatory site are performing superbly and led to our adoption of this technology for the GMT."

The GMT is set to begin science operations in 2020 at the Las Campanas Observatory, exploiting the clear dark skies of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

"With funding commitments in hand for close to half of the $700 million required to complete the project, with one mirror essentially finished and the second about to be cast, and with the planned groundbreaking at Las Campanas in February of this year, the project is on track to meet this schedule goal," said Matthew Colless, Director of the Australian Astronomical Observatory.

"The giant mirrors being spun cast for the GMT at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab are like the sails of the great ships of exploration ca. 1500, except here the discoveries are not lands across the ocean, but rather the nature of whole new worlds and island universes, spanning all of space and time," said Joaquin Ruiz, Dean of the College of Science, University of Arizona.

"We at Arizona are proud to participate in such an exciting international scientific project as the GMT."

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Munich, Germany (SPX) Jan 10, 2012 - On 1 January 2012, European radio astronomy entered a new era with the implementation of RadioNet3, the third iteration of RadioNet, the European radio astronomy collaboration.

As the recognised European body for radio astronomy, RadioNet aims at facilitating access to leading radio astronomy facilities around the world for European radio astronomers.

The European Commission recently secured the project by granting it 9.5 million euros for the period 2012-2015. The Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) will work with 24 European partner institutions, as well as South Korea, Australia and South Africa, to offer access to all 18 existing radio astronomy facilities in Europe.

The project will also take full advantage of the APEX telescope operated by ESO, as well as the recently opened Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of which ESO is a partner, both located in Chile.

By promoting cooperation and making use of state-of-the-art facilities around the world, RadioNet3 will thus ensure European radio facilities remain competitive, and prepare European scientists and engineers for the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), scheduled to start early operations in 2019.

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Paris, France (SPX) Jan 06, 2012 - RadioNet3, a four-year, 9.5M euro project offering unprecedented access to 18 state-of-the-art European radio telescopes, including the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) in Chile and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, has been launched.

The project, in which the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is playing a key role, will ensure that European radio astronomy facilities remain globally competitive by increasing expertise in the research community and developing new instruments for current and proposed telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array.

The funding from the European Commission builds on the success of previous radio astronomy projects, RadioNet1 and 2. RadioNet3 began on New Years' Day and is a collaboration of 27 world class European organizations including STFC.

Led by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), it is combining the best equipment available with the top radio astronomical expertise to ultimately improve our knowledge of our Universe.

The new program will stimulate new activities in research and development of both the existing radio infrastructures as well as telescopes of the future, including the largest radio telescope in the world - the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) - due to be completed within the next decade.

Prof. Gary Davis, Director of STFC's Joint Astronomy Centre in Hawaii and STFC's representative on the RadioNet3 Board, said: "The outcomes of RadioNet3 will be fundamental in the development of telescopes such as SKA, both in terms of instruments and expertise. STFC will be contributing its world-leading expertise in developing technologies for a new generation of astronomical radio receivers."

The networking activities of RadioNet3 will provide a natural forum for developing further European collaborations, sharing both ideas and results, and engaging researchers. This is particularly important with the emergence of new research opportunities through SKA.

"Our aim is to establish a long-term strategy for structuring radio astronomy in Europe", says Prof. Anton Zensus, Director at MPIfR and coordinator of the RadioNet3 project.

"We will make sure the results are available to the outside world, and that the next generation of scientists and engineers are prepared for the advent of the new generation radio telescopes."

]]> Tue, 21 FEB 2012 08:48:24 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D