EYE ON THE SKY
Still amazing after all these years
It may now be in the twilight of its life, but Hubble continues to bring us stunning visions of the Universe
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 19 APRIL 2022
Thirty-two years since its launch atop Space Shuttle Discovery on 24 April 1990, countless extraordinary insights and well over a million mind-blowing images later, the Hubble Space Telescope is still delivering the goods.
This photo shows the Hickson Compact Group 40, with five prominent galaxies – three spirals, an elliptical and a lenticular – in the constellation of Hydra, squashed together in an area less than twice the width of our galaxy (hence the name ‘compact’). Released to mark Hubble’s 32nd birthday, it’s a perfect example of the kind of beauty the venerable telescope still routinely reveals from its unobstructed vantage point 547km above Earth.
It may be ailing now, spending several weeks offline recently and physically unrepairable since the end of the Space Shuttle programme, but Hubble – originally on a 15-year mission – remains funded until 2026. The James Webb Space Telescope will release its first proper images any day now and the bigger and far more powerful space observatory promises unimaginable new revelations about the Universe. But it’s going to be a sad day indeed when one of Hubble’s 1980s components finally gives up the ghost and we lose its eye on the sky.
Phobos crossing
PERSEVERANCE, 2 APRIL 2022
With 23 cameras, Perseverance has eyes in the back of its head, so as it trundled within Jezero Crater it was also able to capture this: Phobos, one of Mars’s two moons, crossing the Sun. The highest-frame-rate video ever taken of Phobos from the Martian surface, it shows the moon transiting from right to left in 40 seconds.
Black hole diet tips
CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY, HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 20 APRIL 2022
Puny black holes may bulk up and put on weight by obliterating loads of stars. The four galaxies here are among 29 in which stellar carnage has been observed around black holes. It’s thought the small stellar-mass singularities grow into intermediate-mass ones in a process triggered by stars clustering in high densities.
Baffling bubble
NICHOLAS U MAYALL 4-METRE TELESCOPE, 13 APRIL 2022
Ancient, large and extremely faint planetary nebula EGB 6, near Regulus in Leo, the Lion, continues to puzzle researchers. Discovered in 1978 and catalogued in 1984 by Glenn Ellis, Earl Grayson and Howard Bond (EGB), it’s the cast-off shell of a star that collapsed 20,000 years ago, a blink of an eye in cosmic terms. For a star in its death throes, it has unexpectedly dense knots of nebulosity and a curiously dust-shrouded companion star, whose connection to the white dwarf core is so far unknown.
Martian sunrise
INSIGHT, 10 APRIL 2022
This composite shows the Sun rising on Martian sol 1,198, as captured by NASA’s InSight lander. Unlike the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, InSight doesn’t roam the Red Planet, but conducts its mission from the spot where it landed in November 2018, relying on the power of the Sun to charge its two 2.2m-wide solar panels. This brief look at the Sun aside, the lander’s main focus is the ground, measuring subsurface temperature in the planet’s crust, mantle and core; marsquakes; and meteorite strikes.
The Angel Wing, two merging galaxies in the VV689 system – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 18 April 2022 – CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel. Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt 
Spiral galaxy NGC 7172 – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 28 MARCH 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. J. Rosario, A. Barth; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz 
Earth – METEOSAT-2, 23 March 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: EUMETSAT/ESA 
Ultra-diffuse galaxy GAMA 526784 – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 25 April 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. van der Burg Acknowledgement: L. Shatz 
Spiral galaxy NGC 5921 – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 4 APRIL 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Walsh Acknowledgement: R. Colombari