Hubble Discovers Life Basics On Distant Sphere

A NASA developed rendering of HD 189733b, an extrasolar planet, is located more than 60 light years from Earth, which has the organic molecule methane in its atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

Hubble Discovers Life Basics On Distant Sphere

The upgraded Hubble telescope, with its perch circling above the Oblate Spheroid out in space, has discovered what is considered the basic evidence of the “signature” that life (as we understand it) could exist on another planet. The distant sphere is located 63 million light years away and is known as HD 189733b.

The process of the creation of life requires the existence of carbon based gasses and other chemicals on which bacteria and other life forms are composed. It is believed that without these signature compounds, life could and would not develop.

Stellar spectrography by a flame-cutting grid - Capella's Spectrum, order 1 spectral image taken by a Philips vesta webcam. Image Credit: lightfrominfinity.org

So the discovery of such signature evidence through spectrography with instruments on platforms like the Hubble Telescope, on spheres that exist in other solar systems, makes for a better understanding and pushes the envelop of current scientific techniques.

This excerpted from WIRED -

Molecular Basis of Life Discovered on Extrasolar Planet
By Alexis Madrigal, Wired - 03.19.08 6:15 PM

Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have for the first time found the telltale signature of methane, an organic molecule, in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.

Methane is one of the chemicals of life, an organic compound in the class of molecules containing carbon. However, no life is likely to exist on the large, gaseous planet known as HD 189733b. Its daily temperatures can reach 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit.

"These measurements are a dress rehearsal for future searches for life," said Mark Swain, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the lead author of a new study that appears in Nature tomorrow. "If we were able to detect [methane] on a more hospitable planet in the future, it would really be something exciting."
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Since the discovery of the first so-called exoplanet 13 years ago, scientists have been able to glean little about the 270-plus known extrasolar planets. Even rough sizes and masses have been calculated for a mere 30 of those planets. It is only in the last year that scientists have begun to characterize the conditions on these planets, like their surface temperatures, and as in this case, the chemical composition of their atmosphere. Such findings not only shed light on other solar systems, but also on our own.
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HD 189733b, a so-called "hot Jupiter," located 63 light years away, has proven a boon for scientists studying exoplanets. Its large size and proximity to its star mean that it dims the star's light more than any other known exoplanet. Combine that with its home star's high brightness, and scientists find that the system creates the best viewing conditions of any known extrasolar system.
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At different wavelengths, every atom and molecule has its own telltale footprint, so scientists can convert what are known as absorption spectra into the chemical composition of the object they're looking at.

The technique, known as spectrography, will remain the main scientific technique for learning about exoplanets into the future with planets that could support life.
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"Twenty years from now, we'll be able to do this for superearths," said Jonathan Fortney, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "We'll be able to see methane in the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet."

To do so, however, astronomers will need new tools. Swain's team used Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer to capture rough spectrographic data. They were forced to use the low-resolution tool because the dedicated instrument for spectrography -- the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph -- broke in 2003, Redfield said.

"The STIS spectrograph would get resolutions several orders of magnitude higher than the tool they used," said Seth Redfield, a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, who previously identified sodium in HD 189733b's atmosphere.

He said NASA was planning to try to fix the tool in late summer of this year, and that access to the tool could lead to new discoveries. In the meantime, scientists will keep plugging away, revealing the properties of planets dozens of light years away, molecule by molecule.

"We know so little observationally about these planetary atmospheres that any sort of measurement is tremendously exciting," Redfield said.
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The New “Times Ninety” Hubble Telescope

Spiral Galaxy M74 – Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

The New “Times Ninety” Hubble Telescope

The Hubble has proven to be a delicate but productive instrument. The information and confirmation of astronomical theories this instrument, placed in orbit, out in space, has produced have been invaluable.

Color Images of Quasar 1208+101Split by Gravitational Lenses – Image Credit: J. Bahcall/NASA

The Hubble needs to have another repair mission performed and NASA is planning to upgrade the platform with two new instruments that will make the instrument 90 times more powerful than ever. The repair mission is expected to take place this August, 2008.

Without the repair mission, Hubble would likely die by 2011, when its last functioning gyroscope is expected to fail. With new gyroscopes and batteries installed on the upcoming servicing mission, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) should last at least until 2013, and possibly into the 2020s.

This excerpted from the New Scientist -

Upgraded Hubble telescope to be 90 times as powerful
David Shiga, Austin / NewScientist.com news service / 17:58 08 January 2008

Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993.
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Now, the space agency says it will try something never attempted in the three previous Hubble servicing missions – a finicky electronics repair job in space, where astronauts have the challenge of doing everything while wearing bulky spacesuit gloves.
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Two powerful new instruments will be installed on the mission. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) will allow Hubble to see fainter and more distant galaxies than anything it has seen before, shedding light on the early universe.

This could allow Hubble to see galaxies so far away that we see them as they were just 400 million years after the big bang, says Sandra Faber of the University of California in Santa Cruz, US, a member of the panel that recommended that NASA carry out the final servicing mission.

Jupiter’s red spot as seen from the HST. Image Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA) and Amy Simon (Cornell U.)

To date, the most distant galaxies seen by Hubble appear to be from about 800 million years after the big bang, which occurred 13.7 billion years ago. "The universe evolves extremely rapidly at these early times, so a [time] difference like this makes a huge difference in the structure and size of galaxies [that exist in those eras]," Faber said at a press conference on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, US.

Another new instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), can obtain ultraviolet light spectra of very faint, distant objects such as quasars – huge black holes that are glowing as they gobble up surrounding gas. COS can measure much fainter objects than STIS, although STIS can get more detailed spectra of the objects it can see.

With its new instruments, Hubble will be 90 times as powerful as it was supposed to be when first launched – it will be like having 90 of the original Hubble Space Telescopes, astronomers say. The improvement comes from a combination of increased sensitivity and wider fields of view, allowing Hubble to see 900 galaxies where its original instruments would have revealed only 10. HST will be about 60% more powerful than it was right after the third servicing mission, before ACS and STIS failed.
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Both repairs involve astronauts unfastening dozens of tiny screws to replace some circuit boards on each of the instruments – all while wearing bulky spacesuit gloves. Such a feat has never been attempted before in space.

The astronauts will also have to cut through metal layers to reach the circuit boards, creating sharp edges that could be hazardous to spacesuits. In the case of ACS, Grunsfeld may not even be able to see the screws he is working with because of the way the instrument is angled inside HST.
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NASA science chief Alan Stern said although the mission is still scheduled for August 2008, it could slip because of the launch delays the space shuttle has been experiencing in its missions to assemble the International Space Station. "Our watchword in all of this is safety," he said, adding that if the servicing mission needed to wait until October or even later to make sure the shuttle is safe, then NASA would wait.
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