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After more than three months of calibration and testing, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is re-opening its rejuvenated eyes to begin probing the Universe once again. Dr. J reveals the stunning new images and the fascinating science behind them.

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Credit:
• ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser, Colleen Sharkey & Lars Lindberg Christensen)
• Visual Design & Editing: Martin Kornmesser
• Animations: Martin Kornmesser & Greg Bacon (STScI)
• Web Technical Support: Lars Holm Nielsen, Raquel Yumi Shida
• Written by: Colleen Sharkey & Ivana Horvat
• Host: Dr. J (Joe Liske)
• Narration: Gaitee Hussain
• Cinematography: Peter Rixner
• Script: Lars Lindberg Christensen, Will Gater
• Music: movetwo & John Dyson from the CD Darklight
• STS-125 Footage: NASA
• Executive Producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen
• Directed by: Colleen Sharkey
• Acknowledgement: Ray Villard, Cheryl Gundy, Lisa Frattare, Zolt Levay and Donna Weaver

Dr. J is a German astronomer at the ESO. His scientific interests are in cosmology, particularly on galaxy evolution and quasars. Dr. J’s real name is Joe Liske and he has a PhD in astronomy.

Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre
Garching/Munich, Germany
• http://www.eso.org
• http://www.spacetelescope.org
• http://hubblesite.org
.

Duration : 0:10:33

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Scientists and Astronomers have long worried about the potential devastation that an impact from space could cause, but recently Engineers have been designing realistic missions to stop these natural disasters.

In this documentary, International Experts give their opinions on how to plan, pay for, build and safely execute a mission to stop an Asteroid or Comet.

The complete documentary playlist is here –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-68yuWYNztM&feature=PlayList&p=DC5F91F6EAD53191&index=0&playnext=1

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All the views expressed by the interviewees are their own opinions and not necessarily that of their organisations.

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Directed by Andrew Bacon
Edited by Gavin Childs
Narrated by Ryan Anderson

Interviews conducted by Andrew Bacon and Tejal Thakore at 2009 Planetary Defence Conference

Animations by
Shiblee Imtiaz Hasan
and Jeffrey Rivera

Korean Translation by
Yeongju Kim

Music by DoKashiteru
http://ccmixter.org/people/DoKashiteru

All original content published under the Creative Commons 3.0 Share-Alike License

Content that must not be adapted or republished without permission from the copyright holder:
Space Generation Advisory Council Logo
Spaceworks Engineering Ltd Images

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FURTHER INFORMATION

SGAC Projects on Near Earth Objects
http://www.spacegeneration.org/node/1138

B612 Foundation
http://www.b612foundation.org

Secure World Foundation
http://www.secureworldfoundation.org

The Planetary Society
http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/near_earth_objects/

NASA/JPL Near Earth Object Program
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov

Duration : 0:8:57

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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered an extrasolar planet, for the first time using direct visible-light imaging. The strange world is far-flung from its parent star, is surrounded by a colossal belt of gas and dust, and may even have rings more impressive than Saturn’s.

HUBBLE DIRECTLY OBSERVES A PLANET ORBITING ANOTHER STAR

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the “Southern Fish.”

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA’s Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring’s inner edge.

Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble’s confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally “shepherds” ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring’s inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

“Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off,” Kalas says.

“Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring’s shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is ‘follow the dust,’” said team member Mark Clampin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys’ coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.

The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring’s estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut’s starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet’s orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013 will be able to make coronagraphic observations of Fomalhaut in the near- and mid-infrared. Webb will be able to hunt for other planets in the system and probe the region interior to the dust ring for structures such as an inner asteroid belt. For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/39

-end-

Duration : 0:5:2

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These recent observations have allowed researchers to monitor the behaviour of both Saturn’s poles in the same shot over a sustained period of time and to study the planet’s northern and southern aurorae simultaneously. Given the rarity of such an event, this new footage will likely be the last and best equinox movie that Hubble captures of our planetary neighbour. Besides the double aurora show, the movie also features an added bonus, as some of Saturn’s moons, or satellites, are seen passing the disc of their parent planet.

credit: NASA, ESA and Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester)

source: http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/html/heic1003b.html

Duration : 0:0:25

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In this fourth episode of the Science@ESA vodcast series Rebecca Barnes will identify some of the key discoveries achieved with the famous Hubble Space Telescope, look at the concept of redshift, and meet a new telescope that will be used to uncover the early Universe.

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Named in 2002 in honour of NASA’s administrator during the Apollo programme, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission is a collaborative project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

JWST will address many of the outstanding issues of modern astronomy related to the ‘Early Universe’ and is expected to yield scientific breakthroughs as did its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST will be a general-purpose observatory with a suite of astronomical infrared-sensitive instruments.

Compared to existing or planned observatories, JWST will have the unique advantage of combining superb image quality throughout a wide wavelength range, a wide field of view and unparalleled photon sensitivity due to its 6.5-metre diameter telescope primary mirror.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=29

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a planned infrared space observatory, the partial successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST will not be a complete successor, because it will not be sensitive to all of the light wavelengths that Hubble can see.

The main scientific goal is to observe the most distant objects in the universe, those beyond the reach of either ground based instruments or the Hubble. The JWST project is a NASA-led international collaboration with contributors in fifteen nations, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Originally called the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), it was renamed in 2002 after NASA’s second administrator, James E. Webb (1906-1992). Webb had headed NASA from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the Johnson administration (1961-68), thus overseeing all the manned launches in the Mercury through Gemini programs, until just before the first manned Apollo flight.

Current plans call for the telescope to be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in June 2014, on a five-year mission (10 year goal). The JWST will reside in solar orbit near the Sun-Earth L2 point, which is on a line passing from the Sun to the Earth, but about 1.5 million km farther away from the Sun than is the Earth.

This position, which moves around the Sun in exact orbital synchrony with the Earth, will allow JWST to shield itself from infrared from both Sun and Earth, by using a single radiation shield positioned between the telescope and the Sun-Earth direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
.

Duration : 0:6:42

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Visible to the naked eye, only 1500 light-years from Earth, the great Orion Nebula has been known and revered since ancient times.

A popular target of Hubble, researchers have now identified 42 new discs within it that could be the beginnings of new planetary systems like our own.

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• http://www.youtube.com/FFreeThinker
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—

14-Dec-2009: A collection of 30 never-before-released images of embryonic planetary systems in the Orion Nebula are the highlight of the longest single Hubble Space Telescope project ever dedicated to the topic of star and planet formation.

Also known as proplyds, or protoplanetary discs, these modest blobs surrounding baby stars are shedding light on the mechanism behind planet formation. Only the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with its high resolution and sensitivity, can take such detailed pictures of circumstellar discs at optical wavelengths.

Looking like a graceful watercolour painting, the Orion Nebula is one of the most photogenic objects in space and one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s favourite targets. As newborn stars emerge from the nebula’s mixture of gas and dust, protoplanetary discs, also known as proplyds, form around them: the centre of the spinning disc heats up and becomes a new star, but remnants around the outskirts of the disc attract other bits of dust and clump together.

Proplyds are thought to be young planetary systems in the making. In an ambitious survey of the familiar nebula using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), researchers have discovered 42 protoplanetary discs.

Visible to the naked eye, the Orion Nebula has been known since ancient times, but was first described in the early 17th century by the French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc — who is given credit for discovering it. At 1500 light-years away, the nebula, also known as Messier 42, is the closest star-forming region to Earth with stars massive enough to heat up the surrounding gas, setting it ablaze with colour, and making the region stand out to stargazers.

Learn more: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0917.html

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Hubblecast features news and Images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

The space-based observatory is a collaboration between NASA and ESA. The observations are carried out in visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. In many ways Hubble has revolutionised modern astronomy.

The Hubble Space Telescope has made some of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of astronomy. From its vantage point 600 km above the Earth, Hubble can detect light with “eyes” five times sharper than the best ground-based telescopes and looks deep into space where some of the most profound mysteries are still buried in the mists of time.

Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre
Garching/Munich, Germany
• http://www.eso.org
• http://www.spacetelescope.org
• http://hubblesite.org

Dr. J is a German astronomer at the ESO. His scientific interests are in cosmology, particularly on galaxy evolution and quasars. Dr. J’s real name is Joe Liske and he has a PhD in astronomy.

• http://www.eso.org/~jliske/
.

Duration : 0:6:15

[youtube AXqbef_kUeE]

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered an extrasolar planet, for the first time using direct visible-light imaging. The strange world is far-flung from its parent star, is surrounded by a colossal belt of gas and dust, and may even have rings more impressive than Saturn’s.

—
Subscribe to Science & Reason:
• http://www.YouTube.com/Best0fScience
• http://www.YouTube.com/SagansCosmos
• http://www.YouTube.com/FFreeThinker
—

Credit:
- ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)
- Visual design & Editing: Martin Kornmesser
- Animations: Martin Kornmesser & Luis Calçada
- Web Hosting: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (LRZ)
- Web Technical Support: Lars Holm Nielsen & Raquel Yumi Shida
- Written by: Lee Pullen & Lars Lindberg Christensen
- Host: Dr. J
- Narration: Bob Fosbury
- Cinematography: Peter Rixner
- Music: movetwo
- Footage and photos: A. Fujii, Digitized Sky Survey 2, NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley). Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)
- Directed by: Lars Lindberg Christensen

Dr. J is a German astronomer at the ESO. His scientific interests are in cosmology, particularly on galaxy evolution and quasars. Dr. J’s real name is Joe Liske and he has a PhD in astronomy.

Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre
Garching/Munich, Germany
• http://www.eso.org
• http://www.spacetelescope.org
• http://hubblesite.org
.

Duration : 0:5:2

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This video is Copyright Free material with some restrictions.

Find out more at: http://www.spacetelescope.org

Duration : 0:6:48

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This video is Copyright Free material with some restrictions.

Find out more at: http://www.spacetelescope.org

Duration : 0:9:50

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This video is Copyright Free material with some restrictions.

Find out more at: http://www.spacetelescope.org

Duration : 0:8:8

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