hubble space telescope images north star

Globular clusters are clumps of tens of thousands to millions of tightly packed stars, many of which are among the most ancient to have ever formed in our universe. To look for signs of a lurking intermediate-mass black hole, the authors of the new study pointed the Hubble Space Telescope toward the globular star cluster Messier 4. If black holes grow from stellar to supermassive size by gorging themselves in an endless feeding frenzy, the lack of confirmed sightings of black holes in their awkward teenage phases points to an even bigger hole in our understanding of the cosmic monsters. While there have been several promising candidates, no intermediate-mass black holes have been definitively confirmed to exist. The Institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington.Intermediate-mass black holes - which, theoretically, range from 100 to 100,000 times the sun's mass - are the most elusive black holes in the universe. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. The researchers presented their data today during the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington. The movement of the small companion during its 30-year orbit around the primary should be detectable. The researchers plan to continue observing the Polaris system for several years.

Knowing their mass is the most important ingredient in this understanding. It is essential to understand their intrinsic physics makeup and evolution. Cepheids' brightness variations are used to measure the distances of galaxies and the expansion rate of the universe. Astronomers want to determine the mass of Polaris, because it is the nearest Cepheid variable star. 'To do that, the next milestone is to measure the motion of the companion in its orbit,' she added. 'Our ultimate goal is to get the accurate mass for Polaris,' Evans said. 'With Hubble, we've pulled the North Star's companion out of the shadows and into the spotlight,' he said. Polaris is a super-giant more than two thousand times brighter than the sun, while its companion is a dwarf star. 'The brightness difference between the two stars made it even more difficult to resolve them,' said astronomer Howard Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore. At the system's distance of 430 light-years from Earth, that translates into a separation of about 2 billion miles. That is an incredibly tiny angle equivalent to the apparent diameter of a quarter located 19 miles away. The companion proved to be less than two-tenths of an arcsecond from Polaris. 'The star we observed is so close to Polaris that we needed every available bit of Hubble's resolution to see it,' said astronomer Nancy Evans of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. While one companion is easily viewed with small telescopes, the other hugs Polaris so tightly that it has never been seen until now. The North Star is actually a triple star system. The North Star is thought to be a steady, solitary point of light that guided sailors for ages, but there is more to this star than meets the eye.

'It is that clear vision that makes these types of images possible,' he added. 'Hubble's exceptional pointing capabilities combined with the wonderful performance of its instruments allow scientists to see the universe in finer detail than ever before,' said Michael Moore, NASA's Hubble program executive. By stretching the capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to the limit, astronomers photographed the close companion to Polaris, known also as the North Star, for the first time.

Hubble space telescope images north star