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Hubble, the Reliable Explorer

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Three columns, each with a photo with a black background and a bright blue spot is at center. At left, noted as 22 minutes after impact, the center bright spot only has a small amount of dusty haze and only a few spikes closely surrounding it. In the middle, noted as 5 hours after impact, the haze around the blue dot has expanded wider out with additional spikes and haze. At right, noted as 8.2 hours after impact, the haze around the blue dot spreads even further, with wisps expanding to the bottom left of the image.

The telescope continued to release highly prized observations in 2022.

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This year, the legendary Hubble Space Telescope welcomed the James Webb Space Telescope into the fold. The two telescopes began to collaborate almost immediately after Webb’s commissioning was complete, both capturing the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact. They acted as space-based “photographers,” capturing the moment when a small NASA spacecraft collided with an asteroid. The event was the first of its kind and crucial for learning about ways to defend Earth from potential asteroid impacts. Seeing the results in Hubble and Webb’s images was indispensable. They proved DART accurately hit its target and then detailed the aftermath.

Tracking an asteroid moving across the sky almost as fast as a rocket taking off was a challenge, particularly due to its distance. The asteroid, Dimorphos, was 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) away at impact and is one of the closest objects Hubble has ever observed. To succeed, engineers had to push Hubble’s limits, demonstrating yet again that it is still capable of executing challenging observations.

Hubble’s observations with Webb in 2022 are only a taste of what’s to come. Beginning in 2023, astronomers can submit proposals to observe with both telescopes. The upcoming observations may lead to data from ultraviolet through mid-infrared light, helping us learn an incredible amount about a range of celestial objects. 

Highlighting Ultraviolet Light

Hubble’s unique ultraviolet capabilities are vital to pressing astronomical questions, particularly with regard to temperature and chemistry. In fact, the recent decadal survey panel on galaxies posed a question, “How do gas, metals, and dust flow into, through, and out of galaxies?” Hubble’s ultraviolet capabilities will help to address this in two ways—through observations of exoplanets and young stars.

Observations of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, make up approximately 20% of Hubble’s exploration time, due to the observatory’s capacity to characterize exoplanets and their atmospheres with ultraviolet spectroscopy and imaging. Several of these observations are part of the Panchromatic Comparative Exoplanet Treasure (PanCET) program, which is the first large-scale, comparative study of exoplanets in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light. This library, built with observations from Hubble, will provide a lasting legacy in the study of exoplanets.

Impact from the DART spacecraft on Dimorphos system. A bright blue spot is left of center. It appears over a black background. The central bright spot has 3 diffraction spikes extending from its core at the 1 o’clock, 7 o’clock, and 10 o’clock positions. There is a small amount of dusty haze just below the southern pole of the center dot. Two tails of ejecta that appear as white streams of material extend out from the center at the 2 o’clock and 3 o’clock positions.
Hubble took multiple observations of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact on September 26, 2022 (seen at the top of the page). The ejected material expanded and faded in brightness as time went on, largely as expected. The twin tail it observed in October was a surprise, leading to continued research.
The right side is various shades of light blue, illumination from two large white stars at the top center, which each have four diffraction spikes. The left side of the frame shows very dark gray gas and dust in irregular shapes, taking up most of the top left side. Throughout the background are tiny dots or stars of various sizes. Most are yellow. Overlaid on the graphic are light purple circles that show which stars were targeted by Hubble for the ULLYSES program. There is one at bottom left, but the majority, nine targets, are circled within the top right.
In November, additional ultraviolet data for Hubble’s ULLYSES program were released, including targets in the star-forming region Lupus 3. (Seventeen stars Hubble observed are circled in the image above.) These data, which only Hubble is capable of observing, help astronomers learn how stars form and what their compositions are just after forming. Learn more about the program. Image credit: ESO/R. Colombari.

 

Youthful stars surveyed by Hubble are already changing our understanding of the earliest stages of their evolution. In 2022, the Ultraviolet Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards (ULLYSES) program team implemented some of the last observations in this 1,000-orbit program, and released updated high-level science products to support astronomers analyzing ULLYSES data. The team also published the code behind these products to enable astronomers to tweak it for their own needs.

Capabilities for Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph were also improved again this year. Although it still operates in several of its five previous lifetime position, a sixth lifetime position was enabled, and plans are underway for its seventh and eighth positions. These continuous improvements ensure the instrument will continue to collect sensitive far-ultraviolet spectroscopy through 2030.

Building on an Extraordinary Legacy

Hubble is expected to continue to operate at the forefront of scientific discoveries into the 2030s, a testament to both its long-lasting engineering, regular software updates, and being in such high demand by the global astronomical community. This year, NASA advisory groups, who looked into the effectiveness of the Hubble mission, ranked it as one of the top missions to continue operating, especially since its observations complement those from other ground- and space-based facilities so well.

To date, Hubble data have been cited in more than 20,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and this number will increase as the telescope continues to gather new observations, both on its own and in collaboration with other missions. In fact, over the last year, demand for time observing with Hubble consistently exceeded the available time by five to one.

Hubble’s popularity isn’t only in its active use, but also in the study of data from its archives. For example, the Hubble Spectroscopic Legacy Archive, Hubble’s archive for spectroscopic data held in the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, is currently undergoing development to generate new high-level data products automatically and to enhance its user interface. Efforts like these improve accessibility of the mission’s data and will ultimately maximize Hubble’s impact, both now and in the years to come.

The first and largest panel of this 5-panel graphic appears on the left side of the screen. It is double the size of the other four panels. At the bottom left corner is the label “Galaxy Cluster Abell 370.” The image is a field of many dozens of white, yellow, red, and blue galaxies of various sizes and shapes. Some of the galaxies appear as streaks or arcs. A box in the top, left corner of this image highlights the portion of the galaxy cluster where the supernova was multiply imaged. To its left are four smaller panels, stacked two by two on top of each other. Each of the four panels is a version of the field contained in the small box within the first, large panel to the left. Click the link in the caption above to read the complete Text Description.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured three different moments in the explosion of a very far-off supernova—all in one snapshot! In this case, the immense gravity of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 acted as a cosmic lens, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster. The warping also produced multiple images of the explosion over different time periods, which all arrived at Hubble simultaneously. They show the unfolding supernova over the course of a week. This is the first detailed look at a supernova so early in the universe’s history. Also, it’s rare to capture a supernova in the opening days of its explosion. This research will help scientists learn more about the formation of stars and galaxies in the early universe. Read the release.

 

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