2008

• 12/18/2008 STScI-2008-42 1. Hubble Catches Jupiter's Largest Moon Going to the 'Dark Side' NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede... (More)
• 12/9/2008 STScI-2008-41 2. Hubble Finds Carbon Dioxide on an Extrasolar Planet NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This is an important step along the trail of finding... (More)
• 12/4/2008 STScI-2008-40 3. A Celestial Snow Globe of Stars Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope catches an instantaneous glimpse of many hundreds of thousands... (More)
• 11/20/2008 STScI-2008-38 4. Hubble Resolves Puzzle about Loner Starburst Galaxy Astronomers have long puzzled over why a small, nearby, isolated galaxy is pumping out new stars faster than any galaxy in our local neighborhood. (More)
• 11/13/2008 STScI-2008-39 5. Hubble Directly Observes Planet Orbiting Fomalhaut Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet orbiting another star. The images show the planet, named Fomalhaut... (More)
• 10/30/2008 STScI-2008-37 6. Hubble Scores a Perfect Ten 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... (More)
• 10/2/2008 STScI-2008-34 7. A Celestial Landscape in Celebration of 10 Years of Stunning Hubble Heritage Images The landmark 10th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's Hubble Heritage Project is being celebrated with a 'landscape'... (More)
• 9/30/2008 STScI-2008-35 8. When It Comes to Galaxies, Diversity Is Everywhere There's an old saying in astronomy: "Galaxies are like people. They're only normal until you get to know them." That view is supported by a group of astronomers... (More)
• 9/23/2008 STScI-2008-36 9. STScI Astrophysicist Adam Riess Receives MacArthur Fellowship The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the Johns Hopkins University among 25 new MacArthur... (More)
• 9/16/2008 STScI-2008-33 10. Galaxy Silhouettes NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a rare alignment between two spiral galaxies. The outer rim of a small, foreground galaxy is silhouetted in front of a larger background galaxy. Skeletal... (More)
• 8/27/2008 STScI-2008-32 11. A Clash of Clusters Provides New Clue to Dark Matter A powerful collision of galaxy clusters has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The observations of the cluster... (More)
• 8/20/2008 STScI-2008-28 12. Hubble Sees Magnetic Monster in Erupting Galaxy NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found an answer to a long-standing puzzle by resolving giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic... (More)
• 8/11/2008 STScI-2008-31 13. Hubble Unveils Colorful and Turbulent Star-Birth Region on 100,000th Orbit Milestone In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists... (More)
• 8/5/2008 STScI-2008-30 14. Globular Clusters Tell Tale of Star Formation in Nearby Galaxy Metropolis Globular star clusters, dense bunches of hundreds of thousands of stars, have some of the oldest surviving stars in the universe. (More)
• 7/29/2008 STScI-2008-29 15. Barred Spiral Galaxies Are Latecomers to the Universe In a landmark study of more than 2,000 spiral galaxies from the largest galaxy census conducted by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers found that so-called... (More)
• 7/17/2008 STScI-2008-27 16. Three Red Spots Mix it Up on Jupiter This sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere. (More)
• 7/10/2008 STScI-2008-25 17. What's My Age? Mystery Star Cluster Has 3 Different Birthdays Imagine having three clocks in your house, each chiming at a different time. Astronomers have found the equivalent of three out-of-sync "clocks" in the ancient... (More)
• 7/8/2008 STScI-2008-26 18. Iain Neill Reid Appointed as Head of STScI Science Mission Office The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has appointed Dr. Iain Neill Reid as Head of the STScI's Science Mission Office (SMO). (More)
• 7/1/2008 STScI-2008-22 19. Hubble Sees Stars and a Stripe in Celestial Fireworks A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually... (More)
• 6/10/2008 STScI-2008-24 20. Hubble's Sweeping View of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures the magnificent starry population of the Coma Cluster of galaxies, one of the densest known galaxy collections... (More)
• 6/3/2008 STScI-2008-21 21. White Dwarf Lost in Planetary Nebula Call it the case of the missing dwarf. A team of stellar astronomers is engaged in an interstellar CSI (crime scene investigation). They have two suspects, traces of assault... (More)
• 5/22/2008 STScI-2008-23 22. New Red Spot Appears on Jupiter In what's beginning to look like a case of planetary measles, a third red spot has appeared alongside its cousins — the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. — in the turbulent... (More)
• 5/20/2008 STScI-2008-20 23. Hubble Survey Finds Missing Matter, Probes Intergalactic Web In the May 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, Charles Danforth and Mike Shull (University of Colorado, Boulder) report on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope... (More)
• 5/1/2008 STScI-2008-19 24. Riccardo Giacconi to Receive National Inventors Hall of Fame's Lifetime Achievement Award Riccardo Giacconi, founding director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., will receive the 2008 Lifetime... (More)
• 4/29/2008 STScI-2008-15 25. Compact Galaxies in Early Universe Pack a Big Punch Imagine receiving an announcement touting the birth of a baby 20 inches long and weighing 180 pounds. After reading this puzzling message, you would immediately... (More)
• 4/28/2008 STScI-2008-18 26. STScI and JHU Astronomer Adam Riess Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) astronomer and professor... (More)
• 4/24/2008 STScI-2008-16 27. Cosmic Collisions Galore! Astronomy textbooks typically present galaxies as staid, solitary, and majestic island worlds of glittering stars. But galaxies have a dynamical side. They have close encounters that sometimes... (More)
• 4/10/2008 STScI-2008-17 28. Hubble Pinpoints Record-Breaking Explosion Peering across 7.5 billion light-years and halfway back to the Big Bang, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the fading optical counterpart of a powerful... (More)
• 4/2/2008 STScI-2008-14 29. Astronomers Find Suspected Medium-Size Black Hole in Omega Centauri The core of the spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri glitters with the combined light of 2 million stars. The entire cluster contains 10 million... (More)
• 3/19/2008 STScI-2008-11 30. Hubble Finds First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough... (More)
• 3/10/2008 STScI-2008-10 31. The Aesthetics of Hubble Images Showcased at Walters Art Museum Just as the early explorers ventured ever further into the oceans, recording the wonders they encountered, today's astronomers are probing farther... (More)
• 3/4/2008 STScI-2008-13 32. The Last Confessions of a Dying Star Probing a glowing bubble of gas and dust encircling a dying Sun-like star, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a wealth of previously unseen structures in planetary... (More)
• 2/19/2008 STScI-2008-09 33. Hubble Discovers 67 New Gravitationally Lensed Galaxies in the Distant Universe Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have compiled a large catalog of gravitational lenses in the distant universe. The catalog contains... (More)
• 2/15/2008 STScI-2008-12 34. STScI Astronomers to Head Two Studies of Next Generation Astronomy Missions Two astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., Dr. Marc Postman and Dr. Ken Sembach, have been selected... (More)
• 2/12/2008 STScI-2008-08 35. Astronomers Find One of the Youngest and Brightest Galaxies in the Early Universe NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, with a boost from a natural "zoom lens," have uncovered what may be one of the youngest... (More)
• 2/5/2008 STScI-2008-07 36. Isolated Galaxy or Corporate Merger? Hubble Spies NGC 1132 The elliptical galaxy NGC 1132 reveals the final result of what may have been a group of galaxies that merged together in the recent past. Another possibility... (More)
• 1/23/2008 STScI-2008-06 37. Internal Heat Drives Jupiter's Giant Storm Eruption Detailed analysis of two continent-sized storms that erupted in Jupiter's atmosphere in March 2007 shows that Jupiter's internal heat plays a significant role in generating... (More)
• 1/15/2008 STScI-2008-05 38. NASA Unveils Cosmic Images Book in Braille for Blind Readers At a ceremony today at the National Federation of the Blind, NASA unveiled a new book that brings majestic images taken by its Great Observatories... (More)
• 1/10/2008 STScI-2008-01 39. Circumstellar Dust Takes Flight in 'The Moth' What superficially resembles a giant moth floating in space is giving astronomers new insight into the formation and evolution of planetary systems. This is not your typical... (More)
• 1/10/2008 STScI-2008-03 40. The Violent Lives of Galaxies: Caught in the Cosmic Dark Matter Web Astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to dissect one of the largest structures in the universe as part of a quest to understand... (More)
• 1/10/2008 STScI-2008-04 41. Hubble Finds Double Einstein Ring The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring... (More)
• 1/8/2008 STScI-2008-02 42. Hubble Finds that "Blue Blobs" in Space Are Orphaned Clusters of Stars Hubble Space Telescope's powerful vision has resolved strange objects nicknamed "blue blobs" and found them to be brilliant blue clusters... (More)