ATLAST telescope: Science calls for a giant space telescope

An artist’s concept of the ATLAST telescope under construction in space. This design has a segmented mirror 20 metres across. Credit: NASA/STScI.

In the nearly 25 years since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers and the public alike have enjoyed ground-breaking views of the cosmos and the suite of scientific discoveries that followed.

The successor to HST, the James Webb Space Telescope should launch in 2018 but will have a comparatively short lifetime.

Now Prof Martin Barstow of the University of Leicester is looking to the future.

In his talk at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2014) in Portsmouth on Tuesday 24 June, he calls for governments and space agencies around the world to back the Advanced Technologies Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST), an instrument that would give scientists a good chance of detecting hints of life on planets around other stars.

ATLAST is currently a concept under development in the USA and Europe. Scientists and engineers envisage a telescope with a mirror as large as 20 m across that like HST would detect visible light and also operate from the far-ultraviolet to the infrared parts of the spectrum.

It would be capable of analysing the light from planets the size of the Earth in orbit around other nearby stars, searching for features in their spectra such as molecular oxygen, ozone, water and methane that could suggest the presence of life. It might also be able to see how the surfaces of planets change with the seasons.

Within the vision "Cosmic birth to living Earths", ATLAST would study star and galaxy formation in high definition, constructing the history of star birth in detail and establishing how intergalactic matter was and is assembled into galaxies over billions of years.

If it goes ahead, ATLAST could be launched around 2030. Before this can happen, there are technical challenges to overcome such as enhancing the sensitivities of detectors and increasing the efficiencies of the coatings on the mirror segments.

Such a large structure may also need to be assembled in space before deployment rather than launching on a single rocket.

All of this means that a decision to construct the telescope needs to happen soon for it to go ahead.

Prof Barstow is the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, but is speaking in a personal capacity. He sees ATLAST as an ambitious but extraordinary project.

He commented: "Since antiquity human beings have wondered whether we really are alone in the universe or whether there are other oases of life. This question is one of the fundamental goals of modern science and ATLAST could finally allow us to answer it.

'The time is right for scientific and space agencies around the world, including those in the UK, to take a bold step forward and to commit to this project."

NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) facing retirement

It's taken dazzling images of galaxies, stars, planets and other celestial sights, 38,000 in total.

Now beginning its 25th year orbiting Earth at 17,500 mph, the Hubble Space Telescope is getting near the end of its dazzling mission.

Continually upgraded and updated throughout its life, Hubble will now be left alone to slowly degrade and, eventually, drift back to Earth and burn-up in the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Hubble won't be the last space telescope. Far from it, Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will launch in October 2018 and be a stunning 100x times more powerful.

It's developers say that it will be able see back in time to the the very edge of the universe.

Within the 844GB of data per month sent back to Earth, and 100 terabytes in all, have been some ground-breaking images of planets and remote galaxies that have laid bare the very essence of space and time.

Perhaps the most important observation was the Hubble Deep Field, a long-exposure image taken in 1995 that captured the light of 4,000 galaxies near The Plough stretching 12 billion years back into time.

Hubble is a time machine; it captures light that's travelled since the beginning of time, and presents us photographs of things as they were just after the Big Bang.

The Hubble Deep Field image is fitting indeed; Hubble is named after astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who theorised in the 1920s that the universe is expanding.

Around 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus is the stunning Crab Nebula, also called M1. 

It's the remnants of a star than went supernova in the year 1054, an event recorded by astronomers in China, Japan and Korea as a new star in Taurus.

Taken back in 2008, this image is about 10 light years wide and shows what happens when a star explodes.

Hubble is able to pick-out the mysterious and incredibly intricate filaments of the explosion.

At the centre is the remnant of the supernova, a dense pulsar that rotates 30 times each second.

Hubble Study in spiral Galaxy M83 reveals new super-powered small black hole, MQ1

Nearby spiral galaxy M83 and the MQ1 system with jets, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The blue circle marks the position of the MQ1 system in the galaxy (shown inset). 

Image courtesy M83 - NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (WFC3/UVIS, STScI-PRC14-04a).MQ1 inset - W. P. Blair (Johns Hopkins University) and R. Soria (ICRAR-Curtin).

A team of Australian and American astronomers have been studying nearby galaxy M83 and have found a new superpowered small black hole, named MQ1, the first object of its kind to be studied in this much detail.

Astronomers have found a few compact objects that are as powerful as MQ1, but have not been able to work out the size of the black hole contained within them until now.

The team observed the MQ1 system with multiple telescopes and discovered that it is a standard-sized small black hole, rather than a slightly bigger version that was theorised to account for all its power.

Curtin University senior research fellow Dr Roberto Soria, who is part of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and led the team investigating MQ1, said it was important to understand how stars were formed, how they evolved and how they died, within a spiral shaped galaxy like M83.

"MQ1 is classed as a microquasar - a black hole surrounded by a bubble of hot gas, which is heated by two jets just outside the black hole, powerfully shooting out energy in opposite directions, acting like cosmic sandblasters pushing out on the surrounding gas," Dr Soria said.

"The significance of the huge jet power measured for MQ1 goes beyond this particular galaxy: it helps astronomers understand and quantify the strong effect that black hole jets have on the surrounding gas, which gets heated and swept away.

"This must have been a significant factor in the early stages of galaxy evolution, 12 billion years ago, because we have evidence that powerful black holes like MQ1, which are rare today, were much more common at the time."

"By studying microquasars such as MQ1, we get a glimpse of how the early universe evolved, how fast quasars grew and how much energy black holes provided to their environment."

As a comparison, the most powerful microquasar in our galaxy, known as SS433, is about 10 times less powerful than MQ1.

Although the black hole in MQ1 is only about 100 kilometres wide, the MQ1 structure, as identified by the Hubble Space Telescope, is much bigger than our Solar System, as the jets around it extend about 20 light years from either side of the black hole.

Black holes vary in size and are classed as either stellar mass (less than about 70 times the mass of our Sun) or supermassive (millions of times the mass of our Sun, like the giant black hole that is located in the middle of the Milky Way).

MQ1 is a stellar mass black hole and was likely formed when a star died, collapsing to leave behind a compact mass.

ESO ALMA: Supernova 1987A's super dust factory

This is a composite image of supernova 1987A. 

ALMA data (in red) shows newly formed dust in the center of the remnant. 

HST (in green) and Chandra (in blue) show the expanding shockwave. 

Credit: Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF); NASA Hubble; NASA Chandra

Galaxies can be remarkably dusty places and supernovas are thought to be a primary source of that dust, especially in the early Universe.

Direct evidence of a supernova's dust-making capabilities, however, has been slim and cannot account for the copious amount of dust detected in young, distant galaxies.

Striking new observations with the ESO Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope capture, for the first time, the remains of a recent supernova brimming with freshly formed dust.

If enough of this dust makes the perilous transition into interstellar space, it could explain how many galaxies acquired their dusty, dusky appearance.

Remy Indebetouw

"We have found a remarkably large dust mass concentrated in the central part of the ejecta from a relatively young and nearby supernova," said Remy Indebetouw, an astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the University of Virginia, both in Charlottesville.

"This is the first time we've been able to really image where the dust has formed, which is important in understanding the evolution of galaxies."

The results are being reported at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). They also are accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

An international team of astronomers used ALMA to observe the glowing remains of supernova 1987A, which is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way approximately 168,000 light-years from Earth.

Light from this supernova arrived at Earth in 1987, inspiring its name. This makes 1987A the closest observed supernova explosion since Johannes Kepler's observation of a supernova inside the Milky Way in 1604.

This artist's illustration of supernova 1987A reveals the cold, inner regions of the exploded star's remnants (in red) where tremendous amounts of dust were detected and imaged by ALMA.

This inner region is contrasted with the outer shell (lacy white and blue circles), where the energy from the supernova is colliding with the envelope of gas ejected from the star prior to its powerful detonation. 

Credit: Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Astronomers predicted that as the gas cooled after the explosion, large amounts of molecules and dust would form as atoms of oxygen, carbon, and silicon bonded together in the cold central regions of the remnant.

However, earlier observations of 1987A with infrared telescopes, made within the first 500 days after the explosion, detected only a small amount hot dust.

With ALMA's unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, the research team was able to image the far more abundant cold dust, which glows brightly in millimeter and submillimeter light.

The astronomers estimate that the remnant now contains about 25 percent the mass of our Sun in newly formed dust. They also found that significant amounts of carbon monoxide and silicon monoxide have formed.

More information: J. Kamenetzky et al. 2013 ApJ 773 L34. doi:10.1088/2041-8205/773/2/L34

Medium sized Kuiper belt object less dense than water

Observations of the 2002 UX25 system with HST/HRC and Keck LGS-AO/NIRC2. 

The northward orientation arrow is 0.25 arcseconds long, for scale. 

In the first column, we show the image of both 2002 UX25 and its satellite. 

Credit: arXiv:1311.0553 

Michael Brown, a planetary scientist with California Institute of Technology, has found a medium sized object in the Kuiper belt (dubbed 2002 UX25) that doesn't appear to conform to theories of how such objects came to exist.

Michael Brown

In his paper to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Brown notes that the mid-sized object appears to be less dense than it should be if it followed conventional thinking that suggests the larger the objects are in the belt, the more dense they should get.

The Kuiper belt, is of course, a group of rock-like objects (comets, dwarf planets, etc.) orbiting the sun that lie farther out than Neptune.

Such Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) are believed to have formed in ways similar to the way planets did, i.e. due to accretion of material over time.

Conventional theory suggests that small KBOs are less dense than water because of their porous nature—large KBOs grew more dense as they grew larger due to gravity causing them to compact.

If the theory is correct medium size KBOs should have medium density. But this new KBO that Brown has found doesn't conform to the theory at all, instead, its density is roughly the same as smaller KBOs, suggesting that it's not size that determines KBO density, but something else. And right now, Brown notes, nobody knows what that something else might be.

12 minute exposure of dwarf planet candidate (55637) 2002 UX25 with a 24" telescope.

2002 UX25 has a diameter of roughly 650 kilometers, putting it squarely in the mid-size KBO category, and it, like other KBOs, is believed to exist in very nearly the same state it's held since the formation of the solar system.

It's in studying such objects that scientists learn more about how everything in our solar system came to be the way it is.

Until now, most scientists agreed that KBOs of a size smaller than 350 kilometers across had a density less than that of water, whereas bigger ones had a greater density.

That theory might have to be changed however as 2002 UX25 is the first medium sized KBO to have its density measured and it clearly doesn't conform.

The discovery of 2002 UX25's density properties has already led to new theories, Brown notes, with some suggesting that scientists have been wrong to assume that KBOs and the planets formed at the same time.

Instead, they suggest, that it's possible that KBOs came first and afterwards as the planets were forming, eddies formed causing KBOs to knock into one another breaking them into different sized pieces.

More information: The density of mid-sized Kuiper belt object 2002 UX25 and the formation of the dwarf planets, arxiv.org/abs/1311.0553

NASA Chandra Spitzer Image: Spiral Galaxy NGC 3627

Credits: NASA/CXC/Ohio State Univ./C.Grier et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI, ESO/WFI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30 million light years from Earth.

This composite image includes X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European (ESA) ESO Very Large Telescope (yellow).

Chandra Flickr Image Gallery

The inset shows the central region, which contains a bright X-ray source that is likely powered by material falling onto a super-massive black hole.

A search using archival data from previous Chandra observations of a sample of 62 nearby galaxies has shown that 37 of the galaxies, including NGC 3627, contain X-ray sources in their centers.

Most of these sources are likely powered by central super-massive black holes. The survey, which also used data from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxy Survey (SINGS), found that seven of the 37 sources are new super-massive black hole candidates.

Confirming previous Chandra results, this study finds the fraction of galaxies found to be hosting supermassive black holes is much higher than found with optical searches.

This shows the ability of X-ray observations to find black holes in galaxies where relatively low-level black hole activity has either been hidden by obscuring material or washed out by the bright optical light of the galaxy.

The combined X-ray and infrared data suggest that the nuclear activity in a galaxy is not necessarily related to the amount of star-formation in the galaxy, contrary to some early claims.

In contrast, these new results suggest that the mass of the super-massive black hole and the rate at which the black hole accretes matter are both greater for galaxies with greater total masses.

ESA Nasa Hubble Space Telescope (HST): Hidden treasures

Astronomer Joe Liske (aka Dr J) presents the winners of the Hidden Treasures image processing competition, a 2012 contest that challenged the public to find spectacular Hubble Space Telescope images that were never released. See the results here. Credit: ESA/Hubble

NASA STScI Image: Giant Ring of Black Holes

Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a new image of a ring, not of jewels but of black holes.

This composite image is of a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, or STScI.

Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left.

This collision has produced an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars. These stars race through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes.

A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and may become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions. The nine X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are so bright that they must be black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the sun. 



An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image. Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy.

Infrared observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring. These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth's time frame. 

These results were published in the October 1st, 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The authors were Saul Rappaport and Alan Levine from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Pooley from Eureka Scientific and Benjamin Steinhorn, also from MIT.

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S .Rappaport et al., Optical: NASA/STScI

NASA HubbleSite: HST Images as Wallpaper

HubbleSite - Wallpaper

NASA Hubble Space Telescope - The Universe's Most Ancient Object

The farthest and one of the very earliest galaxies ever seen in the universe appears as a faint red blob in this ultra-deep–field exposure taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

This is the deepest infrared image taken of the universe. Based on the object's color, astronomers believe it is 13.2 billion light-years away.

The most distant objects in the universe appear extremely red because their light is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths by the expansion of the universe.

This object is at an extremely faint magnitude of 29, which is 500 million times fainter that the faintest stars seen by the human eye.

The dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang, only four percent of the universe's current age. It is tiny and considered a building block of today's giant galaxies. Over one hundred such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way galaxy.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field infrared exposures were taken in 2009 and 2010, and required a total of 111 orbits or 8 days of observing. The new Wide Field Camera 3 has the sharpness and near-infrared light sensitivity that matches the Advanced Camera for Surveys' optical images and allows for such a faint object to be selected from the thousands of other galaxies in the incredibly deep images of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz and Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team

NASA Hubble Space Telescope: Perseus Galaxy

This Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy NGC 1275 reveals the fine, thread-like filamentary structures in the gas surrounding the galaxy.


The red filaments are composed of cool gas being suspended by a magnetic field, and are surrounded by the 100-million-degree Fahrenheit hot gas in the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster.


The filaments are dramatic markers of the feedback process through which energy is transferred from the central massive black hole to the surrounding gas.


The filaments originate when cool gas is transported from the center of the galaxy by radio bubbles that rise in the hot interstellar gas.


At a distance of 230 million light-years, NGC 1275 is one of the closest giant elliptical galaxies and lies at the center of the Perseus cluster of galaxies.


The galaxy was photographed in July and August 2006 with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: A. Fabian (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK)

NASA HST Image: Pismis 24 in NGC 6357 Nebula, part of Scorpius

The small open star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the NGC 6357 nebula in Scorpius, about 8,000 light-years away from Earth.

The brightest object in the center of this image is designated Pismis 24-1 and was once thought to weigh as much as 200 to 300 solar masses.

This would not only have made it by far the most massive known star in the galaxy, but would have put it considerably above the currently believed upper mass limit of about 150 solar masses for individual stars.

However, Hubble Space Telescope high-resolution images of the star show that it is really two stars orbiting one another that are each estimated to be 100 solar masses.

In addition, spectroscopic observations with ground-based telescopes further reveal that one of the stars is actually a tight binary that is too compact to be resolved even by Hubble.

This divides the estimated mass for Pismis 24-1 among the three stars. Although the stars are still among the heaviest known, the mass limit has not been broken due to the multiplicity of the system.

The images of NGC 6357 were taken with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in April 2002.

ImageCredit: NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain)

NASA - Spiral Extraordinaire

Scientists have yet to discover what caused the strange spiral structure. Nor do they know why it glows.

The glow may be caused by light reflected from nearby stars. As for the spiral itself, current supposition is that this is the result of a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase, when its outer atmosphere is ejected.

Given the expansion rate of the spiral gas, a new layer must appear about every 800 years, a close match to the time it takes for the two stars to orbit each other. The above image was taken in near-infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, R. Sahai (JPL)

NASA HST Image: The heart of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8)

The heart of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8) is pictured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. Seen as a massive cloud of glowing dust and gas, bombarded by the energetic radiation of new stars, this placid name hides a dramatic reality.

Located 4,000 to 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), Messier 8 is a huge region of star birth that stretches across 100 light-years. Clouds of hydrogen gas are slowly collapsing to form new stars, whose bright ultraviolet rays then light up the surrounding gas in a distinctive shade of red
Picture: NASA / ESA / AFP

NASA HST Image: 'Island Universe' in the Coma Cluster

A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million light- years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices.

The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and gas near its centre.

These are silhouetted against glowing newborn star clusters and iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen, the existence of which indicates ongoing star formation.

Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of NGC 4911, along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes. The high resolution of Hubble's cameras, paired with considerably long exposures, made it possible to observe these faint details.

This natural-color Hubble image, which combines data obtained in 2006, 2007, and 2009 from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, required 28 hours of exposure time.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hubble captures Supersonic Star ejected from Milky Way

This Hubble Space Telescope photo shows the superfast star HE 0437-5439 (with arrow) as it is being booted from the MIlky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA/ESA/Z. Levay (STScI)/O. Gnedin/W.Brown

A super-hot blue star hurtling through space has been shot completely out of the Milky Way, new Hubble Space Telescope photos reveal.

The star is streaking across space at a blistering speed of 1.6 million mph (2.5 million kph) – three times faster than our sun's orbital velocity in the Milky Way. Hubble observations confirm that the stellar speedster hails from the Milky Way's core, settling some confusion over where it originally called home.

Astronomers think the star is a survivor from a triple-star system that traveled through the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy 100 million years ago, but made the perilous mistake of wandering too close to the galaxy's giant black hole, which captured one of the stars and flung the other two out of the Milky Way. The two ejected stars then merged to form a super-hot, blue star.

While it may seem a little farfetched, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say it is the most likely scenario for the so-called hypervelocity star, known as HE 0437-5439, one of the fastest ever detected.

"Using Hubble, we can for the first time trace back to where the star comes from by measuring the star's direction of motion on the sky," said astronomer Warren Brown of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., lead author of the study and a member of the Hubble team that observed the star.

"Its motion points directly from the Milky Way center. These exiled stars are rare in the Milky Way's population of 100 billion stars. For every 100 million stars in the galaxy lurks one hypervelocity star."

This illustration shows one possible mechanism for how the star HE 0437-5439 acquired enough energy to be ejected from our Milky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)/O. Gnedin/W. Brown

Hubble Images: Red Rectangle Nebula

The Red Rectangle nebula, which lies about 2,300 light years away towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros), is shown in unprecedented detail as captured recently by the Hubble Space Telescope.

At the nebula's centre is a young binary star system that surely powers the nebula but does not, as yet, explain its colours.

The unusual shape of the Red Rectangle is likely due to a thick dust torus which pinches the otherwise spherical outflow into tip-touching cone shapes.

Because we view the torus edge-on, the boundary edges of the cone shapes seem to form an X. The distinct rungs suggest the outflow occurs in fits and starts.

The unusual colours of the nebula are less well understood, however, and current speculation holds that they are partly provided by hydrocarbon molecules that may actually be building blocks for organic life.

In a few million years, as one of the central stars becomes further depleted of nuclear fuel, the Red Rectangle nebula will likely bloom into a planetary nebula

Picture: NASA

Nasa Hubble COS Image: Doradus Nebula and the Runaway Star

A heavy runaway star is rushing away from a nearby stellar nursery at more than 250,000 miles an hour, a speed at which one could travel to the our moon and back in two hours.

This is the most extreme case of a very massive star that has been kicked out of its home by a group of even heftier siblings.

The homeless star is on the outskirts of the 30 Doradus Nebula, a raucous stellar breeding ground in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. The stellar nusery is seen at the center of this image. The finding bolsters evidence that the most massive stars in the local universe reside in 30 Doradus, making it a unique laboratory for studying heavyweight stars. Also called the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus is roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth.

Tantalizing clues from three observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope's newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), and some old- fashioned detective work, suggest that the star may have traveled about 375 light-years from its suspected home, a giant star cluster called R136. Nestled in the core of 30 Doradus, R136 contains several stars topping 100 solar masses each.

Visit Hubble Catches Heavyweight Runaway Star for more information.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, C. Evans (Royal Observatory Edinburgh), N. Walbom (STScI), and ESO

NASA Hubble (HST) Image: Doradus Nebula and the Runaway Star

This image of the 30 Doradus nebula, a rambunctious stellar nursery, and the enlarged inset photo show a heavyweight star that may have been kicked out of its home by a pair of heftier siblings.

In the inset image at right, an arrow points to the stellar runaway and a dashed arrow to its presumed direction of motion.

Credit for Hubble Image: NASA, ESA, J. Walsh (ST-ECF), and ESO Acknowledgment: Processing by Z. Levay (STScI) Credit for wide-field Image: ESO Acknowledgement: J. Alves (Calar Alto, Spain), and B. Vandame and Y. Beletski (ESO). Processing by B. Fosbury (ST-ECF).

A heavy runaway star is rushing away from a nearby stellar nursery at more than 250,000 miles an hour, a speed that will get you to the Moon and back in two hours. The runaway is the most extreme case of a very massive star that has been kicked out of its home by a group of even heftier siblings.

The homeless star is on the outskirts of the 30 Doradus nebula, a raucous stellar breeding ground in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud.

The finding bolsters evidence that the most massive stars in the local universe reside in 30 Doradus, making it a unique laboratory for studying heavyweight stars. Also called the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus is roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth.

Tantalising clues from three observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope's newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), and some old- fashioned detective work, suggest that the star may have traveled about 375 light-years from its suspected home, a giant star cluster called R136. Nestled in the core of 30 Doradus, R136 contains several stars topping 100 solar masses each.

The observations offer insights into how massive star clusters behave.

"These results are of great interest because such dynamical processes in very dense, massive clusters have been predicted theoretically for some time, but this is the first direct observation of the process in such a region," says Nolan Walborn of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and a member of the COS team that observed the misfit star.

"Less massive runaway stars from the much smaller Orion Nebula Cluster were first found over half a century ago, but this is the first potential confirmation of more recent predictions applying to the most massive young clusters."

NASA Hubble IMAX Views

http://www.imax.com/hubble/