The Hubble Space Telescope celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. On this occasion, NASA released recently processed images of the telescope.
The published photos of outer space were taken by the Hubble telescope during various stages of its work. They were used by scientists, but NASA has just published them.
All images of space objects are included in the Caldwell catalog. This means they are bright enough to be observed by amateur astronomers as well.
In the 1980s, an English astronomer named Sir Patrick Caldwell-Moore created a photo album in order to highlight “cosmic wonders” for amateur astronomers. He named it the Caldwell Catalog and was inspired by that of the French Charles Messier made catalog during the 18th century.
While the catalog of the French astronomer Messier is limited to celestial objects that are visible from the northern hemisphere, Caldwell’s catalogue spans the entire sky.
NASA has now revealed dozens of these never-before-seen images processed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA AND R. SAHAI (JET PROPULSION LABORATORY)
Caldwell 99 is a dark nebula, a dense interstellar dust cloud that completely blocks the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it.
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA, R. GRIFFITHS (CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY);
S. CASERTANO (SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE), AND J. MACKENTY (SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE)
This image captures some of the bright stars outside the Caldwell 96 open cluster. Also known as NGC 2516 or the Southern Hive (for its similarity to the Northern Hemisphere Hive Cluster).
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA, G. PIOTTO (UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA) AND A. SARAJEDINI (FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY)
Caldwell 87, discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, is located about 50,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Horologium.
It has an apparent magnitude of 8.3 and it takes a small telescope to detect it in the night sky.
The cluster is best seen in late spring from the southern hemisphere (or late fall from southern latitudes in the northern hemisphere).
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA AND J. MAIZ APELLANIZ (CENTRO DE ASTROBIOLOGIA [CSIC / INTA]) : CALDWELL 82
30 new images for the 30 years that the Hubble Telescope has been in orbit.
This is the homage that NASA pays to one of its Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA, G. FAHLMAN (DOMINION ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY), R. IBATA (UNIVERSITÉ DE STRASBOURG), AND F. FERRARO (UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA)
The new 30 images join Hubble’s existing gallery of Caldwell objects, first published in December 2019. What’s great about this post is that it means that any hobbyist with a telescope can search and find on their own the items they’ve been looking for. published NASA.
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA, J. LEE (CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY), AND A. FILIPPENKO (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – BERKELEY)
Among them, you can find from 30 dazzling galaxies to bright star clusters and ethereal nebulae.
These images have been taken by the Hubble telescope since its launch in April 1990 and since then, they have only been used for scientific research or engineering tests.
NASA had not fully processed the images for public release until now.
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA, AND P. ERWIN (MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL PHYSICS)
Of the 109 elements in the Caldwell Catalog, the Hubble Telescope has imaged a total of 87 elements.
Currently, the 30 new images are available in the NASA gallery along with the rest of the images in the science communicator catalog, which was released by NASA in 2019.
© PHOTO:
NASA, ESA, AND L. HO (PEKING UNIVERSITY)
Caldwell’s Catalog was first published in 1995 in Sky & Telescope magazine and it showed a series of 109 cosmic elements that are bright enough to be observed by amateurs with a telescope on Earth.
