ESA Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes

The open cluster Westerlund 1 is an incomparable natural laboratory for the study of extreme stellar physics, helping astronomers discover how the most massive stars in our galaxy live and die. It is unique for its large, dense, diverse population of massive stars ✨ which has no counterpart in other known Milky Way galaxy clusters in terms of the number of stars and richness of spectral types and evolutionary phases. #WebbSeesFarther 📷 ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), M. G. Guarcello (INAF-OAPA) and the EWOCS team, N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb) 🎶 Stellardrone - Twilight

Our ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week features the spiral galaxy NGC 5248, which lies 42 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Boötes. 🔴 NGC 5248 is a ‘grand design’ spiral, with prominent spiral arms that reach from near the core through the disc, and a faint bar structure in the centre between the inner ends of the spiral arms. 🔴 Features like these have a huge influence on how matter moves through it – they feed gas from a galaxy’s outer reaches to inner star-forming regions and even to a galaxy’s central black hole. 🔴 These flows have shaped NGC 5248. It has many bright ‘starburst regions’ spread across its disc 🌟 and is dominated by a population of young stars. It even has two very active, ring-shaped starburst regions around its nucleus! Read more: https://ow.ly/VF6R50TFjn0 📷 ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

🆕 Our ESA/Webb Picture of the Month showcases the open cluster Westerlund 1 ✨ which resides roughly 12 000 light-years away, behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust. 🔴 In the past, the Milky Way galaxy produced many more stars. It likely hit its peak of churning out dozens or hundreds of stars per year about 10 billion years ago, and has been gradually declining ever since. 🔴 Most of this star formation is thought to have taken place in massive clusters of stars known as ‘super star clusters’. Only a few of these still exist – Westerlund 1 is one of them. 🔴 These super star clusters offer important clues about the earlier era when most of our galaxy’s stars formed. 🔴 As a nearby super star cluster containing a large, dense, diverse population of massive stars, Westerlund 1 provides astronomers with a unique perspective towards one of the most extreme environments in the Universe. Read more about it here: https://ow.ly/qIpW50TCUzt #WebbSeesFarther 📷 ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), M. G. Guarcello (INAF-OAPA) and the EWOCS team

🆕 The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has observed Centaur 29P, one of the most active objects in the outer solar system. Centaurs are ‘hybrid’ objects – they share characteristics with trans-Neptunian objects from the Kuiper Belt reservoir and short-period comets. Scientists used the #NIRSpec instrument on Webb to reveal details of Centaur 29P’s carbon monoxide (CO) gas jet, which points toward Earth, and detect multiple never-before-seen features: two carbon dioxide (CO2) jets and another CO jet. Read more about it here: https://ow.ly/aYGa50TBaEf #WebbSeesFarther 📷 NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI), S. Faggi (NASA-GSFC, American University)

🆕 The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has imaged a lensed supernova 🔎💥 and confirmed the Hubble tension! 🔴 Measuring the Hubble constant, the rate at which the Universe is expanding, is an active area of research among astronomers – earlier this year, Webb data were used to confirm previous measurements from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. 🔴 Now, the Hubble constant is being refined using an independent measurement method: gravitationally lensed supernovae. This follows Webb’s discovery of three points of light in the direction of a distant, densely populated galaxy cluster. 🔴 This image, from the #NIRCam on Webb, shows the supernova H0pe, triply imaged due to gravitational lensing. SN H0pe is a Type Ia supernova: a reliable distance marker often used to measure the Universe’s expansion. 🔴 The measured Hubble constant value matches other measurements in the local Universe, and is somewhat in tension with values obtained when the Universe was young. Read more about it here: https://ow.ly/fnZb50TzZSf #WebbSeesFarther 📷 NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Frye (University of Arizona), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), S. Cohen (Arizona State University), J. D’Silva (University of Western Australia, Perth), A. Koekemoer (Space Telescope Science Institute), J. Summers (Arizona State University).

Our ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week features a galaxy playing against type! 🔴 Most galaxies we are familiar with fall into one of two easily-identified types: spiral or elliptical. But other galaxies require in-depth study to understand 🕵️ such is the case with NGC 4694. 🔴 NGC 4694 has a smooth-looking, armless disc which – like an elliptical galaxy – is nearly devoid of star formation. But it is also suffused by the kinds of gas and dust normally seen in a young spiral galaxy. 🔴 Based on its peculiar shape and star-forming activity, NGC 4694 has been classified as a lenticular galaxy: lacking the arms of a spiral, not so bereft of gas as an elliptical galaxy, and still with a galactic bulge and disc. Read more: https://ow.ly/XatF50TyCbM 📷 ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker

Love our Pictures of the Month? You can find them all in the Picture of the Month section of our website! 🌟 Read more about it here: https://ow.ly/7hBL50TvVk4 #WebbSeesFarther 📷 ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak, M. Meixner

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that a blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole seems to cause stellar eruptions 💥 🔴 The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but near it – Hubble found twice as many novae going off near the jet as elsewhere in the galaxy, M87. 🔴 At the core of M87 is a 6.5-billion-solar-mass black hole 🕳️ surrounded by swirling matter. The black hole launches a 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma blazing through space at nearly the speed of light. 🔴 The finding of twice as many novae near the jet implies that there are twice as many nova-forming systems near the jet, or that these systems erupt twice as often as similar systems elsewhere. 🔴 The discovery, based on extensive data collected by Hubble over nine months, has confounded astronomers searching for an explanation – what is the jet doing to the star systems that wander into its neighbourhood? Read more: https://ow.ly/G7P350TuYul Artist's impression: NASA, ESA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

🆕 The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has found a potential missing link to the first stars! ✨ 🔴 Looking deep into the early Universe with Webb, astronomers discovered a galaxy approximately one billion years after the Big Bang, GS-NDG-9422 (9422), with an unusual light signature 🤔 🔴 They found that computer models of cosmic gas clouds heated by very hot, massive stars – to the extent that the gas shone brighter than the stars – was a near-perfect match to Webb’s unusual observations. 🔴 Galaxy 9422 could be undergoing a phase of intense star formation inside a cloud of gas producing stars much hotter and more massive than what we see in the local universe. The gas, struck by the light of these stars, is shining brightly. 🔴 Gas outshining stars is predicted by the environments of the Universe’s first stars. Galaxy 9422 does not have these stars, but could help us understand the evolution between the first stars and familiar, well-established galaxies. Read more about it here: https://ow.ly/YsyS50TuYrp #WebbSeesFarther 📷 NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Cameron (University of Oxford)

Our ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week stars the spiral galaxy IC 1954 🌌 located 45 million light-years away in the constellation Horologium. An image of this galaxy was released in 2021, but this new image includes H-alpha data. 🔴 The improved coverage of star-forming nebulae, which are prominent emitters of red H-alpha light, can be seen in the glowing pink spots around the disc of the galaxy. 🔴 These new data come from a programme involving multiple observatories. By surveying galaxies in radio, infrared, optical, and ultraviolet light, astronomers hope to trace the path matter takes through each galaxy. 🔴 The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is an important part of this survey – it can capture younger stars and star clusters when they are brightest at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths, and its H-alpha filter tracks emission from nebulae. Read more: https://ow.ly/6R4X50TsSNw 📷 ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team