24/7 Space News  
Get Our Free Newsletters Via Email
  
Search All Our Sites - Powered By Bing
SPACE SCOPES
Perfect 10 Image From Repaired Hubble Telescope

Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty. The two galaxies happen to be oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI)
by Staff Writers
 Baltimore MD (SPX) Oct 31, 2008
 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.

The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty.

The two galaxies happen to be oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight.

It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.

The blue ring was most probably formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates an outwardly moving circular wave, a propagating density wave was generated at the point of impact and spread outward.

As this density wave collided with material in the target galaxy that was moving inward due to the gravitational pull of the two galaxies, shocks and dense gas were produced, stimulating star formation.

The dusty reddish knot at the lower left of the blue ring probably marks the location of the original nucleus of the galaxy that was hit.

Arp 147 appears in the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp in the 1960s and published in 1966. This picture was assembled from WFPC2 images taken with three separate filters. The blue, visible-light, and infrared filters are represented by the colors blue, green, and red, respectively.

The galaxy pair was photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, and it is more than 400 million light-years away from Earth.

Community
 Email This Article
 Comment On This Article
Share This Article With Planet Earth
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit
YahooMyWebYahooMyWeb GoogleGoogle FacebookFacebook



Related Links
 Hubble Space Telescope
 Space Telescope News and Technology at Skynightly.com

SPACE SCOPES
NASA Facing Make Or Break Decision For Hubble Future
 Washington (UPI) Oct 24, 2008
U.S. space officials reactivated the Hubble space telescope's instrument panel Thursday in an effort to get the telescope transmitting again.
.




.




Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS
 Solar Energy Solutions   ::   
Shop for telescopes online   ::   Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison
Myspace Layouts Editor

Newsletters :: SpaceDaily Express :: SpaceWar Express :: TerraDaily Express :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News
SPACE TRAVEL
  • NASA, South Korea sign mutual statement
  • Do We Need Oil From Outer Space
  • Harris' OS/COMET Product Chosen For Constellation Launch Control Program
  • Astronauts To Vote From Space

    • MARSDAILY
  • Phoenix Goes Quiet
  • Phoenix Enters Safe Mode
  • Strange Martian Landforms Are Paleo Climate Clues
  • NASA's Phoenix Mission Faces Survival Challenges

    • LAUNCH PAD
  • New ASTRA 1M Satellite Ready For Launch On 6 November
  • SPACEHAB Sees Opportunity In Space Florida's Launch Complex
  • First Ariane 5 For 2009 Arrives At The Spaceport
  • GOCE Launch Delayed Until 2009

    • EARTH OBSERVATION
  • Arctic Sea Ice Thinning At Record Rate
  • NASA-Enhanced Dust Storm Predictions To Aid Health Community
  • GeoEye Releases First Image Collected By GeoEye-1
  • Maps Shed Light On CO2's Global Nature

    • OUTER PLANETS
  • Nine Mementos Headed To The Ninth Planet
  • 1,000 Days On The Road To Pluto
  • Outer Solar System Not So Crowded
  • NASA Spacecraft Ready To Explore Outer Solar System

    • STELLAR CHEMISTRY
  • Searching For Primordial Antimatter
  • New Gamma-Ray Detector To Search For Fundamental Structure Of Matter
  • The Great Cosmic Challenge
  • The Case Of The Missing Gamma-Ray Bursts

    • MOON DAILY
  • Chandrayaan-1 Gets Closer To Moon
  • NASA Ames Collaborates To Develop Robotic Lunar Lander
  • ESA's Lunar Robotics Challenge
  • NASA Tests Rover Concepts In Arizona

    • GPS NEWS
  • NCC Display New Lines Of Goodyear-Branded GPS Navigation Systems
  • Rocky Mountain Tracking Integrates Axonn's Satellite Tracking System
  • Sprint Customers Use GPS To Locate Loved Ones
  • Consumer Reports Test Latest GPS Navigators

    • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2007 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement