ISS Giant Earth Observation Satellite

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) photographed this striking view of Pavlof Volcano on May 18, 2013. 

The oblique perspective from the ISS reveals the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which is often obscured by the top-down view of most remote sensing satellites.

The International Space Station has been called a stepping stone to other worlds.

NASA hasn't forgotten, however, that the behemoth space station is also on the doorstep of Earth.

"We're seeing the space station come into its own as an Earth-observing platform," says Julie Robinson, chief scientist for the International Space Station Program.

"It has a different orbit than other Earth-observing satellites. It's closer to Earth, and it sees Earth at different times of day with a different schedule."

In short, the space station offers something unique to the study of our home planet.

Sometimes astronauts in low Earth orbit to see what regular satellites do not. In May 2013 for example, astronauts on board the International Space Station photographed a fresh eruption of the Pavlof Volcano in the Aleutian Islands.

Their oblique perspective revealed the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which was only 20,000 feet high, but many times longer. Down-looking satellites could not get the same kind of 3D information.

Low Earth orbit turns out to be a great place to study the planet below. In recent years astronauts trained to photograph Earth have gathered data on desert dust, coral reefs, urban growth, pollution, glaciers, hurricanes, lightning, river deltas, volcanic plumes, Northern and Southern Lights and much more.

Now, however, NASA is taking the space station's Earth-observing capabilities to a whole new level.

Before the end of the decade, six NASA Earth science instruments will be mounted to the station to help scientists study our changing planet.

The upgrades began this month: On Sept. 20th, a SpaceX resupply rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral carrying the first NASA Earth-observing instrument to be mounted on the exterior of the space station: ISS-RapidScat will monitor ocean winds for climate research, weather predictions and hurricane science.

Next up is the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) a laser radar that can measure clouds along with airborne particles such as pollution, mineral dust, and smoke. CATS will follow ISS-RapidScat on another SpaceX flight targeted for December.

Two more Earth science instruments are slated to launch in 2016.

First, SAGE III will measure ozone and other gases in the upper atmosphere to help scientists assess how the ozone layer is recovering.

Second, the Lightning Imaging Sensor will monitor thunderstorm activity around the globe.

Those instruments are already built and ready to fly. In July, NASA selected proposals for two new instruments: The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI), and the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS), will give scientists new ways to observe how forests and ecosystems are affected by climate change. Both will be completed before the end of the decade.

Japan plans giant Gundam robot

This file picture taken on July 10, 2009 shows an 18-metre tall statue of the Gundam robot in Tokyo park

A team of Japanese animators and engineers on Wednesday unveiled plans to build a moving 18-metre (60-foot) tall Gundam robot, in a nod to millions of science fiction fans.

The "Mobile Suit Gundam" anime series first aired in Japan in 1979, and spin-offs featuring robots locked in intergalactic battles have won legions of enthusiastic fans in Asia, Europe and elsewhere.

In 2009, the 30th anniversary of the show saw an 18-metre-tall Gundam statue erected in a Tokyo park.

"When I created Gundam 35 years ago, I used my imagination freely because it wasn't real," Yoshiyuki Tomino told reporters in Tokyo Wednesday.

"That is what creativity is for, when you dream of something. Four decades later, Gundam is growing into something new."

Now, the plan is to give a new giant Gundam some moves, and organisers are calling on the public for ideas about how to make it happen.

Plausible suggestions would be used in constructing the robot by 2019, the series' 40th anniversary and a year before Tokyo hosts the Olympic Games.

Giant Sun Plasma Tendril: Solar Eruption - SDO Video

A massive formation on the sun made of super-hot magnetic plasma erupted this week in an explosive solar storm captured on video by NASA's SDO spacecraft.

The huge plasma tendril, known as a solar filament, erupted on Wednesday (June 4), blowing part of itself out into space in what astronomers call a coronal mass ejection (CME).

NASA's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a video of the solar filament eruption while the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) tracked the subsequent CME.

Astronomer Tony Phillips of Spaceweather.com, a website that tracks solar flare events, wrote in a post Thursday (June 5) that amateur and professional astronomers had watched the filament for more than a week to see how it would meet its end.

"Astronomers had been bracing for the possibility that the filament would collapse, causing a Hyder flare when it landed on the solar surface," Phillips wrote in the June 5 post. "Instead, it erupted and hurled part of itself into space."

Phillips added that the solar eruption was not aimed directly at Earth, but could deal a "glancing blow" to the planet's magnetic field on Saturday (June 7), possibly amplifying northern lights displays.

A giant solar plasma filament on the sun rising up off the star's surface on June 4, 2014 in this full-disk view from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. 

The filament ultimately triggered a solar eruption known as a coronal mass ejection.

Credit: NASA/SDO

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and SOHO, a joint mission by NASA and the European Space Agency, are part of a fleet of space observatories regularly watching the sun for signs of solar storms, eruptions and flares.

The most powerful solar eruptions can pose a danger to astronauts and spacecraft in space, as well as interrupt satellite navigation and communications systems. They can also interfere with ground-based power and communications systems.

Strong and moderate solar storms can also supercharge the Earth's auroras, triggering dazzling northern lights shows.

MRO HiRISE: Giant Sandy Draa Landform on Mars

Sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms, are classified by the wavelength--or length--between crests. 

Image Credit: NASA /JPL /University of Arizona

On Mars, we can observe four classes of bedforms (in order of increasing wavelengths): ripples, transverse aeolian ridges (known as TARs), dunes, and what are called “draa.” All of these are visible in this Juventae Chasma image.

Ripples are the smallest bedforms (less than 20 meters) and can only be observed in high-resolution images commonly superposed on many surfaces.

TARs are slightly larger bedforms (wavelengths approximately 20 to 70 meters), which are often light in tone relative to their surroundings.

Dark-toned dunes (wavelengths 100 meters to 1 kilometer) are a common landform and many are active today.

What geologists call “draa” is the highest-order bedform with largest wavelengths (greater than 1 kilometer), and is relatively uncommon on Mars.

Here, this giant draa possesses steep faces or slip faces several hundreds of meters tall and has lower-order superposed bedforms, such as ripples and dunes.

A bedform this size likely formed over thousands of Mars years, probably longer.

This image was acquired by the HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 6, 2014.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

NASA SDO: Giant Solar 'Tornado' Whirl Off the Sun - Video

A NASA spacecraft has captured spectacular video of an enormous plasma "tornado" spinning off the sun.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory probe (SDO), watched the dark-hued twister churn and ultimately erupt over the course of one day, from April 29 to 30.

Mission scientists used the spacecraft's imagery to create an 18-second-long video of the dramatic solar tornado.

"The suspended plasma is being pulled and stretched by competing magnetic forces until something triggers the breakaway," NASA officials wrote on SDO's Facebook page, assuming the voice of the spacecraft.

"This kind of activity is fairly common on the sun, but we have only been able to view them at this level of detail since I began operations just four years ago."

The plasma appears dark in this ultraviolet-light view because it is cooler than the material surrounding it, NASA officials added.

The $850 million Solar Dynamics Observatory launched in February 2010 on a five-year mission to study the variations in solar activity that influence life on Earth.

The probe uses three different instruments to observe the sun, gathering data that is helping scientists better understand the solar magnetic field and space weather.

Over the course of its operational life, SDO has recorded many stunning images of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and other sun phenomena.

CERN Future Circular Collider (FCC): Europe's new giant particle collider

Europe's physics lab CERN said Thursday it was eyeing plans for a circular particle collider that would be seven times more powerful than the facility which discovered the famous "God particle."

"The time has come to look even further ahead," the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced.

In 2012, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—a giant lab housed in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border—identified what is believed to be the Higgs boson, the long-sought maker of mass theorised in the 1960s.

The facility flushed out the so-called God particle by crashing proton beams at velocities near the speed of light. It went offline a year ago for an 18-month overhaul.

The LHC, completed in 2008, has "at least 20 more years" of life in it, the agency said.

However, the long time needed to build its successor—the LHC took a quarter of a century—means that planning should start now.

It will launch a feasibility study next week for a so-called Future Circular Collider (FCC) with a circumference of 80 to 100 kilometres (50 to 60 miles).

The FCC would probably be located in the same area and may incorporate the LHC tunnel in its infrastructure, CERN said in a statement.

The LHC after its overhaul will see collision energies reach 14 teraelectron volts (TeV) but the FCC should be capable of reaching unprecedented smashups of around 100 TeV, CERN said.

The FCC study will run in parallel with an ongoing probe into an alternative design—an 80-kilometre (50-mile) straight collider dubbed the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC).

The two studies will examine the feasibility and costs and produce conceptual designs by 2018/2019, when the European-wide strategy on particle physics research is set to be updated.

The winner will be "a worthy successor to the LHC," CERN said.

"Such an accelerator would allow particle physics to push back the boundaries of knowledge even further," it claimed.

Targets could include supersymmetry, the notion that there are novel particles which mirror each known particle.

It could also help shed light on dark matter, which comprises most of the cosmos and whose existence is inferred from their impact on ordinary matter.

Some 300 scientists will meet at the University of Geneva from February 12-15 to kick off the five-year feasibility study for the FCC.

ALMA probes mysteries of jets from giant black holes

This detailed view shows the central parts of the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433. 

The dim blue background image, showing the central dust lanes of this galaxy, comes from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. 

The coloured structures near the centre are from recent ALMA observations that have revealed a spiral shape, as well as an unexpected outflow, for the first time. 

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/NASA/ESA/F. Combes

Two international teams of astronomers have used the power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to focus on jets from the huge black holes at the centers of galaxies and observe how they affect their surroundings.

They have respectively obtained the best view yet of the molecular gas around a nearby, quiet black hole and caught an unexpected glimpse of the base of a powerful jet close to a distant black hole.

There are supermassive black holes—with masses up to several billion solar masses—at the hearts of almost all galaxies in the Universe, including our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

In the remote past, these bizarre objects were very active, swallowing enormous quantities of matter from their surroundings, shining with dazzling brilliance, and expelling tiny fractions of this matter through extremely powerful jets.

In the current Universe, most supermassive black holes are much less active than they were in their youth, but the interplay between jets and their surroundings is still shaping galaxy evolution.

Two new studies, both published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, used ALMA to probe black hole jets at very different scales: a nearby and relatively quiet black hole in the galaxy NGC 1433 and a very distant and active object called PKS 1830-211.

Françoise Combes

"ALMA has revealed a surprising spiral structure in the molecular gas close to the centre of NGC 1433," says Françoise Combes (Observatoire de Paris, France), who is the lead author of the first paper.

"This explains how the material is flowing in to fuel the black hole. With the sharp new observations from ALMA, we have discovered a jet of material flowing away from the black hole, extending for only 150 light-years. This is the smallest such molecular outflow ever observed in an external galaxy."

The discovery of this outflow, which is being dragged along by the jet from the central black hole, shows how such jets can stop star formation and regulate the growth of the central bulges of galaxies.

Ivan Marti-Vidal

In PKS 1830-211, Ivan Marti-Vidal (Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden) and his team also observed a supermassive black hole with a jet, but a much brighter and more active one in the early Universe.

It is unusual because its brilliant light passes a massive intervening galaxy on its way to Earth, and is split into two images by gravitational lensing.

From time to time, supermassive black holes suddenly swallow a huge amount of mass, which increases the power of the jet and boosts the radiation up to the very highest energies.

Now ALMA has, by chance, caught one of these events as it happens in PKS 1830-211.

More information: These research projects are presented in two papers, "ALMA observations of feeding and feedback in nearby Seyfert galaxies: an AGN-driven outflow in NGC1433", by F. Combes et al. and "Probing the jet base of the blazar PKS 1830−211 from the chromatic variability of its lensed images: Serendipitous ALMA observations of a strong gamma-ray flare, by I. Marti-Vidal et al. Both papers are appeared in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

HD 189733b: A Giant Blue Alien Planet where it Rains Molten Glass

This illustration shows HD 189733b, a huge gas giant that orbits very close to its host star HD 189733. 

The planet's atmosphere is scorching with a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometer-per-hour winds.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Kornmesser

There's a "blue marble" alien planet just 63 light-years from Earth, but the world is anything but friendly to life.

Researchers say the blue colour in the atmosphere likely comes from a rain of molten glass.

This super-hot glass rain is just one consequence of the close proximity between the gas giant alien planet HD189733b and its sun, which causes daytime temperatures to soar as high as 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (930 degrees Celsius), scientists said.

A fresh set of observations of the planet in X-rays also suggest HD189733b has an outer atmosphere that is far larger than expected.

These surprise finds are all signals that so-called hot Jupiter alien planets are worthy of study on their own, even though they are hostile planets to life, researchers said.



Hot Jupiters are large, roughly Jupiter-sized planets that become very hot by circling tight around their stars.

These worlds have been described as planetary daredevils because they orbit so close to their parent stars that they risk being consumed.

Often, one side of the planet is tidally locked to the star, exposing that side to scorching hot temperatures, while leaving the other side permanently turned away.

Hot Jupiters are easy to spot from a distance because as they pass in front of a star, their disc blots out a large portion of the star's light; HD189733b causes a three per cent drop in its star's light, for example.

The planets' gravitational pull often causes their parent stars to wobble, too.

While common in the universe, however, Hot Jupiters are totally different than what denizens of Earth's solar system encounter.

In our case, small, rocky planets orbit close to the star and the gas giants are much farther out.

The latest observations of HD189733b are challenging some theories of planetary formation and are just one of the reasons Hot Jupiters are earning more attention from astronomers these days.

"At first considered to be the 'chaff' researchers would have to wade through to get to the fainter Earth-like worlds, hot Jupiters are now attracting their own attention," NASA scientists wrote in a recent Science@NASA post.

Solar Photographer Spots Giant Snake-Like Tendril on the Sun

Astrophotographer John Chumack took this photo of a solar filament. 

The image was taken from his backyard in Dayton, Ohio on Aug. 11, 2013.

Credit: John Chumack | www.galacticimages.com

A photographer and die-hard solar observer has captured absolutely stunning views of a colossal filament of super-hot plasma snaking its way across the surface of the sun.

Veteran astrophotographer John Chumack took the new sun photos on Aug. 11 despite cloudy weather from his backyard in Dayton, Ohio, using a DMK 21 and DMK 31 Cameras and Lunt Hydrogen Alpha Solar Scope.

The close-up image is 1/77-second exposures and the full disk shots 1/436-second exposure.

What looks like a snake-like cloud in the new sun photos is actually a solar filament made of primarily charged hydrogen gas.

The sun’s magnetic field holds the gas in the atmosphere giving it the shape seen in these images.

The filament appears dark because it is cooler than its surroundings. These filaments might remain over the sun’s surface for months.

ESA EADS Astrium Alphasat: Deploys Massive 11m Antenna

ESA's Alphasat, Europe's largest-ever telecom satellite, reached a temporary position in the geostationary ring last weekend, where it deployed its 11 m-diameter main antenna over the course of a day - marking ten days in orbit and completing one of the final steps towards starting services.

It will stay in this slot for several weeks while Inmarsat together with ESA continue testing the telecom payload, the backup units on the Alphabus platform and ESA's four hosted payloads.

Several major milestones have been met over the past few days, including rising to geostationary altitude after separation from its Ariane 5 launcher, and deploying its twin four-panel solar wings, spanning 40 m.

The panels rotate automatically, following the Sun, while Alphasat's sophisticated attitude control system tracks its position above Earth.

All of these milestones were assured by a team from EADS Astrium, the Alphasat prime contractor, managed by Inmarsat.

In a cooperative effort unprecedented in Europe, the team was supported by ESA and France's CNES space agency, as well as Thales Alenia Space for Alphabus platform operations.

Alphasat uses the first flight model of the new platform. The Alphabus line, developed by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space, under a joint contract to ESA and CNES, is Europe's response to market demand for increased broadcasting services.

It accommodates missions with up to 22 kW of payload power and mass up to two tonnes. As a high-power multipurpose platform, it gives European industry an unprecedented and unique position in the global telecom market.

Jena-Optonik's Astro APS startracker was the first hosted payload to be switched on, measuring the satellite's attitude.

Alphasat joins Inmarsat's award-winning I-4 satellite fleet, which has been powering global broadband connectivity for government and commercial customers in the L-band since 2009.

The new satellite with its new-generation advanced payload will provide additional mobile satellite communications capacity over Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

South Africa's New Radio Telescope SKA Reveals Giant Outbursts from Binary Star System

An artist's impression of the Circinus X-1 system showing the binary (double) star system. 

Two stars orbit each other every 16.5 days in an elliptical orbit. 

The small white sphere is the neutron star - an extremely dense and compact remnant of an exploded star, only about 20 km in diameter. 

The red sphere is an ordinary star - the companion star in this system. 

When the two stars are at their closest, the neutron star pulls material from its companion star. 

An accretion disk (the blue disk) forms around the neutron star, containing the matter that is sucked from the ordinary star. 

Powerful jets of material (the orange rays) then blast out from the neutron star at close to the speed of light, causing powerful flares in radio frequencies. 

Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southampton /SKA South Africa

An international team of astronomers have reported the first scientific results from the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) in South Africa, the pathfinder radio telescope for the $3 billion global Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.

The results appear in the latest issue of the international astronomical journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

Using the seven-dish KAT-7 telescope and the 26 m radio telescope at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), astronomers have observed a neutron star system known as Circinus X-1 as it fires energetic matter from its core into the surrounding system in extensive, compact `jets' that flare brightly, details of which are visible only in radio waves.

Journal Reference: 
R. P. Armstrong, R.P. Fender, G.D. Nicolson, S. Ratcliffe, M. Linares, J.Horrell, L. Richter, M. P. E. Schurch, M. Coriat, P. Woudt, J. Jonas, R. Booth, B. Fanaroff. A return to strong radio flaring by Circinus X-1 observed with the Karoo Array Telescope test array KAT-7. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2013

NASA SDO Captures Giant Solar Wave Eruption on Video

The sun celebrated May Day with a spectacular solar eruption Wednesday, unleashing a colossal wave of super-hot plasma captured on camera by a NASA spacecraft.

The solar eruption occurred over a 2.5-hour period Wednesday (May 1) and appeared as a "gigantic rolling wave" on the sun in a video recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, agency officials said in an image description.

The solar eruption is what scientists call a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a type of sun storm that can fire off billions of tons of solar material at more than a million miles per hour, they added.

When aimed directly at Earth, the most powerful CME events can pose a risk to satellites and astronauts in orbit, as well as interfere with communications and navigation networks. They can even damage ground-based power infrastructure.

But the May Day solar eruption occurred on the side of the sun and was not aimed at Earth, NASA officials said.

It produced a dazzlingly bright wave of plasma that expanded from the sun's surface and then erupted from the sun's side, or limb, into open space.

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity this year.

Russia Proposes Giant Solar Power Station in orbit Earth

Russia is planning to build a giant solar power station capable of collecting energy and beaming it to Earth.

This idea was put forward by Central Scientific Research institute for Engineering, a subsidiary of the Russian Space Agency, Roskosmos.

The concept of such a power station was formulated by Peter Glasier in the US in 1968.

It is aimed at beaming energy to Earth using giant solar panels.

To generate necessary power, the panels should have an area of several square kilometers.

The power would be converted to electricity on board the spacecraft and sent to wherever it is needed on Earth by a large microwave-transmitting antenna, and then fed into a power grid.

The scientific research institute suggests using lasers instead of microwaves because radio beams are difficult to focus, and an area of several square kilometers will be needed for the receiving antenna.

In case of a laser beam this area would be ten times smaller. However, at present, there are no such powerful lasers, although many infrared lasers distributed over the panel could be used instead.

Their radiation would be focused or combined and beamed down to Earth.

The US, Japan, Europe and China plan to build solar power stations between 2030 and 2040. It is not surprising that Russia will join them, says Academician Alexander Zheleznyakov.

"Russia should study this problem. If energy from space is cheaper, it is beneficial because Earth has been experiencing an energy deficit. There is a need to think of the future. We are building power plants on Earth, and if we can build a solar power station in space, we should not miss this opportunity," Alexander Zheleznyakov said.

However, deputy editor-in-chief of the Novosti Kosmonavtiki" magazine Igor Lisov insists that this is a beautiful idea but it needs huge investment and consequently, it is not feasible.

"There is a need to watch the situation with open eyes without indulging in wishful thinking. None of the countries is conducting serious work that could shift to experimental studies of supplying energy from space," Igor Lisov said.

The project is based on the myth that mankind will exhaust energy in the near future. This will be true if the only sources of energy remain oil and gas. But mankind will probably develop other sources of energy including thermonuclear energy.

With the appearance of such power plants, there will be no need to build space solar power stations, says Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics Andrei Ionin.

"It will be very expensive to place a power station in orbit and exploit it. It may also have a negative impact on ecology. We do not know what could happen to Earth if a laser beam turns the wrong way. Perhaps, it may burn the ozone layer. If this happens, the consequences will cost a hundred times more than the price of the power generated. I believe that the Scientific Research Institute for Engineering should study reports by ecologists," Andrei Ionin said.

This project will not be implemented in the near future. However, it's necessary to study the problem, experts say. This may breed new technical solutions, such as more effective lasers or solar batteries.

NSF VLA Image: Microquasar Makes a Giant Manatee Nebula

W50 supernova remnant in radio (green) against the infrared background of stars and dust (red). Credits: NRAO/AUI/NSF, K. Golap, M. Goss; NASA's Wide Field Survey Explorer (WISE).

A new view of a 20,000-year old supernova remnant demonstrates the upgraded imaging power of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and provides more clues to the history of this giant cloud that resembles a beloved endangered species, the Florida Manatee.

W50 is one of the largest supernova remnants ever viewed by the VLA. At nearly 700 light years across, it covers two degrees on the sky - that's the span of four full Moons!

Aquila, exploded as a supernova around twenty thousand years ago, sending its outer gases flying outward in an expanding bubble.

The remaining, gravitationally-crushed relic of that giant star, most likely a black hole, feeds on gas from a very close, companion star. The cannibalized gas collects in a disk around the black hole.

The disk and black hole's network of powerful magnetic field lines acts like an enormous railroad system to snag charged particles out of the disk and channel them outward in powerful jets traveling at nearly the speed of light.

This system of a black hole and its feeder star shines brightly in both radio waves and X-rays and is known collectively as the SS433 microquasar.

Over time, the micro quasar's jets have forced their way through the expanding gases of the W50 bubble, eventually punching bulges outward on either side.

The jets also wobble, like an unstable spinning top, and blaze vivid corkscrew patterns across the inflating bulges.

ESA Hubble: Elusive Giant Dark Matter Filament in MACS J0717 - 3D Video

This enormous image shows Hubble’s view of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.

The large field of view is a combination of 18 separate Hubble images.

The location of the dark matter is revealed in a map of the mass in the cluster and surrounding region, shown here in blue.

The filament visibly extends out and to the left of the cluster core.

CREDIT: NASA, ESA, Harald Ebeling (University of Hawaii at Manoa) & Jean-Paul Kneib (LAM)

Astronomers have taken their first 3D look at a gigantic filament of dark matter, an invisible cosmic structure that can only be detected by its gravitational effects it has on its surroundings.

The universe is thought to be structured like a tangled web, with long strings of mostly dark matter intersecting at giant galaxy clusters.

Since dark matter cannot be seen directly, these filaments are difficult to observe. But using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have managed to probe one of the elusive cosmic strands in 3D.

The researchers sought out a 60 million light-year strand of dark matter around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717. The galaxy cluster is one of the largest yet seen and is about 5.4 billion light-years from Earth.

"From our earlier work on MACS J0717, we knew that this cluster is actively growing, and thus a prime target for a detailed study of the cosmic web," study researcher Harald Ebeling, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said in a statement Tuesday (Oct. 16).

 [Hubble's Dark Matter Strand View in 3D (Video)]