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Explanation: What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy -- but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, the Spindle galaxy, pictured here, but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. A perhaps more familiar galaxy seen edge-on is our own Milky Way galaxy. Also cataloged as M102, the Spindle galaxy has numerous and complex dust lanes appearing dark and red, while many of the bright stars in the disk give it a more blue underlying hue. The blue disk of young stars can be seen in this...

The James Webb Telescope was successfully launched yesterday, Christmas Day. It is now on route to a point about a million miles from earth where it will be in orbit around the sun and pointed out beyond the solar system. Hopefully, setting up the Webb telescope will be as successful as its launch.Okay, so here is my question: What AMAZING discoveries do you think the Webb telescope will reveal? The Hubble telescope was able to take us back in time to very early after the creation of the universe but the Webb telescope, using infrared technology will take us back...

The Hubble Space Telescope, operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, has been flying high for almost three full decades. That’s a long time to be peering into space and the telescope has provided mankind with some incredible discoveries and a wealth of celestial eye candy. Over the course of almost 30 years, it’s amassed quite a collection of images and there’s at least one spectacular shot for every day of the calendar year. NASA knows this and to help celebrate the spacecraft’s upcoming 30th anniversary, the agency put together a handy little web tool that shows you what...

Our universe's rate of expansion keeps getting stranger. New data continues to show a discrepancy in how fast the universe expands in nearby realms and more distant locations.  The study's researchers said this "tension" could mean we need to revise our understanding of the physics structuring the universe, which could include exotic elements such as dark matter and dark energy. New measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia space telescope together showed that the rate of expansion nearby is 45.6 miles per second per megaparsec. This means that for every 3.3 million light-years a galaxy is farther away from...

Chalk up one more moon for Neptune. NASA announced the discovery of Neptune’s 14th moon Monday. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the moon as a white dot in photos of Neptune on the outskirts of our solar system. The new moon—Neptune’s tiniest at just 12 miles across—is designated S/2004 N 1. …

Here’s our first good look at Comet (C/2012 S1) ISON. The Hubble Space Telescope captured this shot on April 10, when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter’s orbit at a distance of 634 million kilometers (394 million miles) from Earth. Later this year, this comet could become a brilliant object in the sky, perhaps 10 times brighter than Venus. Astronomers say preliminary measurements from the Hubble images suggest that the nucleus of ISON is no larger than 4-6 km (3-4 miles) across. The astronomers said this is remarkably small considering the high level of activity observed in the comet...

A hundred million years ago, a triple-star system was traveling through the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy when it made a life-changing misstep. The trio wandered too close to the galaxy's giant black hole, which captured one of the stars and hurled the other two out of the Milky Way. Adding to the stellar game of musical chairs, the two outbound stars merged to form a super-hot, blue star. This story may seem like science fiction, but astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say it is the most likely scenario for a so-called hypervelocity star, known as HE...

Up on Drudge right now (7:40 pm CST):

Hubble Space Telescope From troubled beginnings nearly 18 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized astronomy and its stunning images have stirred the imaginations of people around the globe. But as the International Year of Astronomy dawns, the renowned telescope is preparing for its final chapter, starting with the scheduled May 12 launch of the space shuttle Atlantis for NASA's fifth and final service mission to the telescope. The repairs will provide Hubble with a future as bright, though perhaps not nearly as long, as its past, said Julianne Dalcanton, a University of Washington associate professor of astronomy who...

A tangle of spidery filaments stretches outward from the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1275 as if they were dendrites of an intergalactic nerve cell. NGC 1275, located 235 million light-years from Earth near the center of a clump of galaxies known as the Perseus cluster, has posed a puzzle: How have these filaments, which are made of gas much cooler than the surrounding intergalactic cloud, persisted for perhaps 100 million years? Why haven’t they warmed, dissipated or collapsed to form stars? Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with 10 times the resolution of earlier photographs, reveal that the filaments,...

The Hubble Space Telescope has a new, resonant date with destiny. NASA has set Sept. 11, 2008, as the target date for launching a mission intended to revitalize the telescope and keep it spaceworthy into the next decade, according to a planning document made public by nasawatch.com, an independent Web site. Three years ago, Sean O’Keefe, then the NASA administrator, decided to forgo Hubble telescope maintenance in the wake of the shuttle Columbia disaster, prompting a nationwide debate about the risks of shuttle flights and the value of the telescope. Michael D. Griffin, the current NASA administrator, reversed Mr. O’Keefe’s...

In 1995, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope produced "The Pillars of Creation," an image of stars emerging from biblical-looking clouds of dust that has become an icon of the space age. Now astronomers operating NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have made their own version. The new image, appropriately called "Mountains of Creation," shows star-forming pillars in a region known as W5 in the constellation Cassiopeia. These pillars, at heights up to 40 light-years, are 10 times as large as those in the famous Hubble image. The astronomers, led by Lori E. Allen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, say the...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The Hubble Space Telescope, which normally surveys the edges of the universe, has turned its attention to our nearby Moon and found mineral concentrations that might prove to be sources of oxygen for human visitors, researchers said Wednesday. In an unusual use of the Hubble, astronomers trained the large Earth-orbiting telescope on the Moon in August to take the first high-resolution ultraviolet images of certain geologically interesting areas. The images allow scientists to see areas of mineral variation within the crust and could help identify the most valuable sites for sending robotic and human missions. "This...

Astronomers think they know what goes into making a planetary system, namely dust - lots of it - swirling around a newly minted star. So it has been encouraging that astronomers have detected and even photographed dusty disks around many nearby stars, and they have inferred the presence of more than 100 planets around other stars. But until recently they had never seen dust and planets around the same stars. This month, astronomers said they had closed the loop. New observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope of dusty disks around nearby stars, they said, had...

The universe looked a little more familiar and friendlier yesterday. The roll call of planets beyond the solar system swelled significantly with the announcement of a trio of newly discovered worlds much smaller than any previously discovered around other stars. The masses of these new planets are comparable to those of Neptune or Uranus in our solar system, ranging from about 14 to 20 times the mass of Earth. The previous planets found around living stars other than the Sun have been giants like Jupiter or Saturn, at least 50 times the mass of Earth, composed of gas at crushing...

WASHINGTON, July 13 - An expert panel from the National Academy of Sciences said Tuesday that the Hubble Space Telescope was too valuable to be allowed to die in orbit and that NASA should commit itself to a servicing mission to extend its life, perhaps with astronauts in a space shuttle. "NASA should take no actions that would preclude a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope," the panel said in a letter to Sean O'Keefe, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The committee of outside experts urged the space agency to commit itself to replacing...

BALTIMORE - The Johns Hopkins campus here was in bloom in early May when 120 astronomers gathered at the Space Telescope Science Institute. But although spring was around the scientists, winter was on their minds. They were assembled to discuss the uncertain future of the Hubble Space Telescope. Many could remember the planning meetings for the telescope 20 years ago. Now some are gray, with potbellies, making jokes about their blood pressure and carrying pictures of grandchildren. Meanwhile, the end may be near for the telescope that has defined their era. "This is a particularly poignant time in Hubble's history,"...

MARINA DEL REY, Calif., Feb. 20 — A dark unseen energy is steadily pushing the universe apart, just as Einstein predicted, suggesting the universe may have a more peaceful end than recent theories envision, according to striking new measurements of distant exploding stars by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The energy, whose source remains unknown, was named the cosmological constant by Einstein. In a prediction in 1917 that he later called "my greatest blunder," Einstein posited a kind of antigravity force that was pushing galaxies apart with a strength that did not change over billions of years of cosmic history....

MARINA DEL REY, Calif., Feb. 20 — A dark, unseen energy permeating space is pushing the universe apart just as Einstein predicted it could in 1917, according to striking new measurements of distant exploding stars by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The energy, whose source remains unknown, was named the cosmological constant by Einstein. In a prediction he later called "my greatest blunder," but which received its most stringent test ever with the new measurements, Einstein posited a kind of antigravity force pushing galaxies apart with a strength that did not change over billions of years of cosmic history. Theorists...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 1 The Hubble Deep Field Credit: R. Williams, The HDF Team (STScI), NASA Explanation: Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Deep Field - one of humanity's most distant optical views of the Universe. The dimmest, some as faint as 30th magnitude (about four billion times fainter than stars visible to the unaided eye), are very distant galaxies and represent what the Universe looked...