Hubble – Astronomy Now

Cosmic Crash

5 July 2022 Keith Cooper

The galaxy NGC 3256 is seen here in the aftermath of a major galaxy merger.

The magic of gravity

28 June 2022 Keith Cooper

The great sculptor of the Universe is gravity. It is gravity’s force that assembles the galaxies into arrays of cartwheeling spirals, flocculant sunflowers and immense ellipticals.

NGC 2217, is a galaxy in transition

23 June 2022 Keith Cooper

NGC 2217, in the constellation of Canis Major and located about 65 million light years away, is a galaxy in transition.

NGC 1792: A beautiful tapestry of contrasting colour

16 June 2022 Keith Cooper

This dense, swirling spiral galaxy is NGC 1792, located 34.6 million light years away in the constellation of Columba, the Dove.

The largest comet ever seen has been measured – and it’s a whopper

14 April 2022 Keith Cooper

The nucleus of the largest known comet in the Solar System, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein), has been measured by the Hubble Space Telescope to be 129 kilometres across.

Amid flame and smoke, the Hubble Space Telescope blasted off the launch pad aboard the space shuttle Discovery 30 years ago today, ushering in a new era for astronomy that has transformed our understanding of the Universe around us.

IAU recommends renaming Hubble’s law to include Lemaître

29 October 2018 Astronomy Now

The International Astronomical Union has voted to recommend renaming Hubble’s law to the Hubble-Lemaître law to honour the cosmological contributions of Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre.

The brilliant core of a starburst galaxy

8 December 2015 Astronomy Now

This image taken by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases the brilliant core of NGC 1569 in the constellation Camelopardalis, one of the most active galaxies in our local neighbourhood. The entire core is 5000 light-years wide.

Massive galaxies died from the inside out

16 April 2015 Keith Cooper

Some of the biggest galaxies in the Universe started to shut down their star-formation from the inside-out ten billion years ago, according to new observations made using the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Celebrating Hubble: A raging star

15 April 2015 Astronomy Now

As we celebrate 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope, here’s another gem from the archives. The binary star system known as eta Carinae, part of the Trumpler 16 open cluster in the Carina Nebula.