Hubblecast

Born in 1868, Henrietta Leavitt was an astronomer ahead of her time, whose work helped to revolutionise our understanding of the Universe. While working at Harvard Observatory, she began to study stars of fluctuating brightness. She made a crucial observation about these objects, which gave astronomers a new way to measure distances, ultimately leading to such impactful discoveries as the expansion of the Universe.

Measurements from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the ESA Gaia mission have been combined to improve he estimate of the mass of our home galaxy the Milky Way: 1.5 trillion solar masses.

Right after the Universe started with the Big Bang, the cosmos was dark. Only the first stars created millions of years later brought light. These first stars and their radiation drastically changed the Universe during what is known as the epoch of reionisation. This Hubblecasts talks about this important time, what Hubble has shown us so far, the open questions and what we can expect from future missions.

On 18 April 2019 Hubble is celebrating its 29th year in space. For this anniversary NASA and ESA dedicated a small amount of its precious observation time to take a look at the beautiful Southern Crab Nebula. This beautiful nebula is created by the ejected material of a red giant, which is in close interaction with a white dwarf star.

Measurements of today's expansion rate do not match the rate that was expected based on how the Universe appeared shortly after the Big Bang over 13 billion years ago. Using new data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have significantly lowered the possibility that this discrepancy is a fluke.

This new Hubblecast episode explores what we can learn through the transits of exoplanets. It also tells us what we have learned from these transits with the help of Hubble and which discoveries we can expect with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

This Hubblecast explores the various observations the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made of the Eta Carinae in various wavelengths.

This video highlights Jupiter’s trademark spot and observations made of the feature by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope that demonstrate that the spot has shrunk over time.

This Hubblecast Light highlights the exciting discovery of the first water detected on a potentially habitable planet. With data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, water vapour has been detected in the atmosphere of a super-Earth with habitable temperatures by University College Longon (UCL) researchers.

New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have investigated the nature of the powerful gamma-ray burst GRB 190114C by studying its environment. Hubble’s observations suggest that this particular burst displayed such powerful emission because the collapsing star was sitting in a very dense environment, right in the middle of a bright galaxy 5 billion light years away.