In this week’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week, we are introduced to a stunning view of one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors – the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). A dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away, the SMC resides primarily in the constellation Tucana, with a small part extending into the constellation Hydrus. Because of its proximity, the SMC is one of the few galaxies visible to the naked eye from Earth, without the need for a telescope or binoculars. For stargazers in the southern hemisphere and certain northern latitudes, the SMC appears as a faint fragment of the Milky Way itself, though in reality, it is far removed from our galaxy. Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope's advanced 2.4-meter ‘eye’ and highly sensitive instruments, the view of the SMC is much more detailed and vivid than what is visible to the human eye. The Wide Field Camera 3 on Hubble captured this breathtaking scene using four different filters that observe distinc...
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the clearest infrared images yet of the HR 8799 system, showcasing the intrinsic differences of its planets. HR 8799 e orbits 1.5 billion miles from its star, while HR 8799 b orbits 6.3 billion miles away. The image uses colors applied to Webb’s NIRCam filters—blue for 4.1 microns, green for 4.3 microns, and red for 4.6 microns—to reveal the planets' unique characteristics. The host star’s light is blocked by the coronagraph. Webb’s NIRCam captured this image of 51 Eridani b, a cool, young exoplanet orbiting 890 million miles from its star, similar to Saturn’s orbit. The 51 Eridani system is located 97 light-years from Earth. The image uses a 4.1-micron light filter, with the red background resulting from light subtraction during processing, not from other planets. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured groundbreaking images of multiple gas giant planets within the HR 8799 system, located 130 light-years away. This...