1998 Images

1998 Spacepics: Please note that images are chronicled by date - most recent listed first.

Caption
(298KB JPEG)

FAR-FLUNG GALAXY CLUSTERS MAY REVEAL FATE OF UNIVERSE

A selection of NASA Hubble Space Telescope snapshots of huge galaxy clusters that lie far away and far back in time. These are selected froma catalog of 92 new clusters uncovered during a six-year Hubble observing program known as the Medium Deep Survey.

27 August 1998

Check these links for further details:
Goddard Press Release
Space Telescope Science Institute Links:
Related Links
Additional Photo Formats

NGST Inflatable Sunshield

The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) Project recently completed an engineering model test deployment of an inflatable sunshield at ILC Dover on June 30.

The NGST reference architecture requirements dictate passive cooling of an 8-meter telescope to an operating temperature of 30-50 deg K.  At this time, an inflatable boom deployed sunshield is being evaluated to enable the NGST to achieve this requirement.

Inflatable and rigidizable structures potentially offer distinct advantages over existing mechanical structures; they are less mechanically complicated (10's of parts vs. 100's) lighter, less costly, allow conformal stowage, and potentially offer a faster development cycle.  Goddard, Langley, and JPL are investigating this technology due to the advantages it offers for future missions.

Other sunshield movies

27 July 1998

This image is a diagram illustrating a recently developed theory to account for the source of heavy elements in cosmic rays.  Press Release

11 June 1998

Caption

An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals clusters of infant stars that formed in a ring around the core of the barred-spiral galaxy NGC 4314. This stellar nursery, whose inhabitants were created within the past 5 million years, is the only place in the entire galaxy where new stars are being born. The Hubble image was presented June 11 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, Calif.

Credits: G. Fritz Benedict, Andrew Howell, Inger Jorgensen, David Chapell (University of Texas), Jeffery Kenney (Yale University), and Beverly J. Smith (CASA, University of Colorado), and NASA
STScI-PRC98-21 June 10, 1998

10 June 1998

NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft recorded a bright but extremely short-lived explosion in the atmosphere of the Sun. The explosion, called a flare, was observed on May 31, 1998 in extreme ultraviolet light using the telescope on board TRACE.

"TRACE is demonstrating that large scale events can happen very rapidly on the Sun," said Dr. Alan Title, the TRACE Principal Investigator from the Stanford Lockheed Institute for Scientific Research (SLISR) in Palo Alto, Calif. "Although less than 200 miles wide, the flare was about 55,000 miles long. It appeared and vanished in just a few minutes. TRACE was able to detect this explosion because it can maintain high cadence, high resolution imagings for long durations. At the time of the explosion, TRACE was taking images at a cadence of a frame every 86 seconds and an exposure time of 28 seconds."

For more details check these links: 
Press Release 98-082
TRACE

08 June 1998

In a rare celestial spectacle, two comets have been observed plunging into the Sun's atmosphere in close succession, on June 1 and 2. This unusual event on Earth's own star was followed on June 2 by a likely unrelated but also dramatic ejection of solar gas and magnetic fields on the southwest (or lower right) limb of the Sun.

For more details check these links: 
Release N98-38
Press Release 98-081

Quicktime movie

03 June 1998

April 25, 1998 Image (278 KB JPEG)

April 26, 1998 Image (318 KB JPEG)

April 26, 1998 Image (199 KB JPEG)

For more details check these links: 
Release 98-068 
Release 98-064P
Release 98-065P
Release 98-066P

29 May 1998

Scientists have shown for the first time that solar flares produce seismic waves in the Sun's interior that resemble those created by earthquakes: They observed a flare-generated solar quake that contained about 40,000 times the energy released in the great 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco. (The amount of energy released was enough to power the United States for 20 years at its current level of consumption, and was equivalent to an 11.3 magnitude earthquake.)

For more details check these links: 
Release 98-070 

27  May 1998

HTML Version
PDF Version
ISTP Homepage

(JPEG 561 KB)

(JPEG 1,110 KB)

(JPEG 448 KB)

A recently detected cosmic gamma ray burst released a hundred times more energy than previously theorized, making it the most powerful explosion since the creation of the universe in the Big Bang.

"For about one or two seconds, this burst was as luminous as all the rest of the entire universe," said Caltech professor George Djorgovski, one of the two principal investigators on the team from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.

For more details check these links:
Release 98-052

Cobe's Infrared View Of The Universe
(180 KB JPEG)

Astronomers have assembled the first definitive detection of a background infrared glow across the sky produced by dust warmed by all the stars that have existed since the beginning of time.

For scientists, the discovery of this "fossil radiation" is akin to turning out all the lights in a bedroom only to find the walls, floor and ceiling aglow with an eerie luminescence.

For more details check these links:
Release H98-3
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/1998/01.html
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/gif/dirbe.gif
Cobe Homepage
09 January 1998

This image is a composite of images made using the German/U.S./U.K. Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Starting from the left are two ROSAT images of X-rays from a cloud of hot gas surrounding Eta Carinae. The leftmost image was made in June of 1992, while the adjacent image was taken in August of 1994.

(Photo Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.)

For more detail check this link:
Release 98-003P
Release 98-001
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/96/23.html

07 January 1998

These images are taken from a computer animation sequence that depicts the periodic disruption of a disk of matter surrounding a black hole in our galaxy. In the first image, the black hole, called GRS 1915+105, is orbiting a massive "companion" star, depicted as a red sphere on the left. The black hole’s powerful gravity pulls hot gas from the surface of the companion star. This hot gas forms a disk as it orbits the black hole, much like soap suds swirling down a bathtub drain. Called an accretion disk, it is represented by a multi-colored disk to the right of the companion star. As gas falls into the black hole, it is compressed and heated to millions of degrees, emitting light of various colors, which correspond to different temperatures. The hottest material, depicted as a blue/white area in the center of the multi-colored disk, is closest to the black hole and emits ultraviolet light and X-rays. Light of these types is actually not visible to the human eye.

In the second image, a disruption of some kind, which is not well understood at this time, is transmitted through the gas in the disk. Eventually, the disruptions become so severe that they cause the gas in the disk to be ejected in opposite directions from the black hole, in jets at nearly the speed of light (approximately 650 million miles per hour). This process is shown in the third image. After the ejection, the center of the disk is empty, and the black hole, represented here by a marble-like object in the center of the disk, begins to draw more gas toward itself again (image four). The entire process repeats every half hour, forming jet-like structures when seen from a distance (image five).

(Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.)

For more detail check this link:
Release 98-004P

07 January 1998

CLOSEST LOOK YET AT BETA PICTORIS SUPPORTS PLANETARY FORMATION THEORY

A team of astronomers using the newly installed Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument on board the Hubble Space Telescope have achieved the most detailed close-up to date of a disk of gas and dust surrounding the young star Beta Pictoris. Analysis of the visible light images reveals new details regarding warps in the disk, supporting the theory that nascent planets may be forming inside and perturbing the disk through their gravitational influence. The team, led by Dr. Sally Heap of the Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will discuss its observations at a press conference beginning 9:30 a.m. EST Thursday, January 8 in Washington, D.C. during the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The close-up view of the disk promises to shed light on the evolution of young stars and the nature of planet formation.

For more detail check these links:
Release 98-002

07 January 1998

The end of a sun-like star's life was once thought to be simple: the star gracefully casting off a shell of glowing gas and then settling into a long retirement as a burned-out white dwarf.

Now, a dazzling collection of detailed views released today by several teams of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals surprisingly intricate glowing patterns spun into space by aging stars: pinwheels, lawn sprinkler style jets, elegant goblet shapes, and even some that look like a rocket engine's exhaust.

Release 97-183
97-183.txt (text only)
Images also are available at:

http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/97/38.html   and via links in http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/latest.html   or http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html

17 December 1997