The latest scoop on 'scopes
The Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes continue to send impressive images back to Earth, uncovering cosmic secrets that could teach us more about our place in the universe.
NGC 7456, a spiral galaxy like ours, was recently photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The image captured the formation of stars in brilliant pink reservoirs of gas from 51 million light-years away. These spots appear on the backdrop of the galaxy’s mottled spiral arms.
While Hubble has limited range past the visible light spectrum, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite has collected follow-up data on the galaxy’s X-rays. It revealed unusually powerful clusters and information about the black hole at the center of NGC 7456.
Seth Mayo, the curator of science and planetarium director Lohman Planetarium at Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences explained that these X-rays can help us understand other galaxies, including our own.
“What's observed in this galaxy in particular is a very bright galactic central region. And like many galaxies, including ours, there's a super massive black hole in the center, and it influences a lot of what's going on inside and around the galaxy. And so, X-ray sources commonly come from these galactic centers, but if we're finding them, pop up around a galaxy, and they're kind of unusually powerful in this particular galaxy, we're not totally sure why.” Mayo said.
The James Webb Space Telescope delivered a stunning image of a massive star cluster much closer to Earth than NGC 7456. Attempting to brand this as a semi-regular segment as "scoop on 'scopes"
Pismis 24 is located in the Lobster Nebula some 5,500 light-years away. The mountain-like structures pictured cradle the births of new stars. The scale of the image is massive. From the top of the spire to the bottom of the picture is 5.5 light-years long.
"What's happening is you're seeing these denser knots, especially near the top of the spire. And these denser knots are resisting some of the flow, the outward kind of radiation from those stars, the stellar winds from those stars, creating these little dense pockets. What's really cool about those dense areas, we think star births happening inside of them,” Mayo said.
These telescopes observe objects and formations of all sizes. 3I/Atlas is the fastest comet ever observed, and much smaller in comparison to Pismis 24.
Discovered in July by the Atlas survey telescope in Chile, the comet has been a point of interest for both Hubble and JWST. It could be up to 3.5 miles in diameter.
Hubble captured an image of the comet not long after its discovery. It displayed the comet’s dusty coma and the first hint of a tail.
“We see these features on 3I/Atlas. We see a [cometary] coma now. We see a tail, just like a comet we would find in our sky, right?” Mayo said. “But this one is visiting from elsewhere. And what it's going to help us do, and what it already is doing, is telling us about other objects from beyond the solar system; what they're like, what they're made of, how they behave, right? And that will help us to better understand these other locations out there.”
SpaceX fandom
Some SpaceX fans struggle to be excited. Elon Musk may be the problem.
Space historian and author Emily Carney in a recent op-ed on Space News.com explored the divide between space enthusiasts: those who are fans of SpaceX and those who aren’t.
It was difficult for Carney to be excited about the 10th launch of Starship, which is set to take astronauts back to the moon. She attributed that to Musk, the CEO of SpaceX.
“Whether people want to say it or not, a CEO at any organization, they define the tone of the company. So, I found it really hard to be enthusiastic about SpaceX launches and Starship,” Carney said. “The last Starship launch, I went on, I think, Facebook, and I put in a thing like, you know, is anybody having trouble getting excited over this? And I got a lot of responses like yes, absolutely, I feel the same way.
Musk has been a controversial figure in recent years. He was a strong supporter of the Trump campaign and even spoke at the President’s inauguration. There, he made an inflammatory gesture he dubbed a “roman salute.” He later went on to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he made massive cuts to many federal programs.
This led Carney and many others in the SpaceX fandom to feel isolated. She said that politics have always had a lot to do with spaceflight.
“A couple of years ago, I was talking to an Apollo and space shuttle astronaut, and he was basically explaining how, in the 70s, you know, there was a lot of concern that President Carter would ax the space shuttle if the enterprise flights didn't go well, you know,” Carney said. “So really, politics has always had a lot to do with spaceflight. Nowadays, it's just like you said, it's very divisive. It's more black and white.”
Despite political divides, Carney had no issue with SpaceX fans’ excitement over the launch, even if she wasn’t exactly over the moon about it.
“You know, just because I wrote that piece, it doesn't mean I'm saying, you know, people shouldn't like this or anything like that,” Carney said. “I think people absolutely should get into spaceflight. If a Starship launch causes a child to become interested in spaceflight or a young person to get into spaceflight, I think that's awesome. That's wonderful.”
