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Latest News
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Three Red Spots Mix it Up on Jupiter |
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This sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere. The time series shows the passage of the "Red Spot Jr." in a band of clouds below (south) of the Great Red Spot (GRS). "Red Spot Jr." first appeared on Jupiter in early 2006 when a previously white storm turned red. This is the second time, since turning red, it has skirted past its big brother apparently unscathed. But this is not the fate of "baby red spot," which is in the same latitudinal band as the GRS. This new red spot first appeared earlier this year. The baby red spot gets ever closer to the GRS in this picture sequence until it is caught up in the anticyclonic spin of the GRS. In the final image the baby spot is deformed and pale in color and has been spun to the right (east) of the GRS. These three natural-color Jupiter images were made from data acquired on May 15, June 28, and July 8, 2008, by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). |
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Around The Institute
IAU Symposium 258: The Ages of Stars
How old is that star? That is one of the most difficult questions to answer in galactic astrophysics. Stellar ages
lie at the heart of astrophysics, and stellar evolution is all about time and how stars change with time. Stellar
and galactic evolution cannot be understood without some knowledge of ages. Now is an appropriate time to examine
the problem of stellar ages in detail. IAU Symposium 258 will bring together astronomers from the around the world to discuss
the current state of the problem of estimating ages of individual stars and of populations, where the advances are now being made,
and what the near future offers. Read more...
Hubble Servicing Mission 4
Hubble precisely measured the age of the universe. It found evidence of dark energy. It brought you images of distant
galaxies in the young universe. And now, with the state-of-the-art instruments delivered by Servicing Mission 4 (SM4),
the Hubble Space Telescope will look onto the universe with new eyes, surpassing even its previous vision. Hubble was
designed to be repaired and upgraded by astronauts, and these servicing missions have occurred several times since
Hubble’s launch in 1990. NASA has selected a crew for the upcoming servicing, and the astronauts have begun
training. Read more...
Hubble Legacy Archive
We are pleased to announce that the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA) has entered
the Data Release 1 (DR1) phase of operation. The HLA is an augmentation of
the Hubble Space Telescope data archive service. The goal of the archive is to
optimize the science derived from the telescope by providing improved browsing
capabilities and easy access to both standard and enhanced Hubble data
products. The Hubble Legacy Archive currently contains data from the ACS, WFPC2,
NICMOS, STIS, FOS, and GHRS instruments. The HLA project is a collaboration
between the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Space Telescope European
Coordinating Facility, and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.
Read more...
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated for NASA
by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.