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Space News Update — January 24, 2017 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1: New U.S. weather satellite with improved camera sends back first images

Story 2: Cassini Spies Daphnis Making Waves

Story 3: Dwarf galaxies shed light on dark matter

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. New U.S. weather satellite with improved camera sends back first images

A new-generation weather satellite launched in November promising to deliver better images of hurricanes, storms and clouds than any mission before has returned its first tantalizing pictures from geostationary orbit.

NOAA released the first images from the GOES-16 weather satellite Monday in conjunction with the start of the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Seattle.

“Seeing these first images from GOES-16 is a foundational moment for the team of scientists and engineers who worked to bring the satellite to launch and are now poised to explore new weather forecasting possibilities with this data and imagery,” said Stephen Volz, NOAA’s assistant administrator for satellite and information services. “The incredibly sharp images are everything we hoped for based on our tests before launch. We look forward to exploiting these new images, along with our partners in the meteorology community, to make the most of this fantastic new satellite.”

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The GOES-16 satellite, previously known as GOES-R, launched Nov. 19 from Cape Canaveral on-board a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

The observatory is the first satellite in a series of at least four upgraded weather sentinels to be launched into geostationary orbit nearly 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) over the equator. At that altitude, the satellites move at the same speed of Earth’s rotation, allowing them to continuously watch over the same part of the planet.

The four-satellite program is costing the U.S. government about $11 billion, a figure that includes the construction of the spacecraft and their advanced instruments, launchers, and modernized ground systems.

The centerpiece of the new satellites is the Advanced Baseline Imager, a camera that can see in 16 different wavelengths to determine cloud type, distinguish between clouds, fog and volcanic ash, and track moisture movements inside clouds. Previous GOES-class satellite cameras could only see in five channels.

A full-disk image of Earth captured by GOES-16’s imaging camera Jan. 15 was among the pictures released by NOAA on Monday, showing a swath of the planet from Guam, across the Americas, to West Africa.

Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, GOES-16 is currently in a test location in geostationary orbit, and NOAA officials will announce in May whether the spacecraft will begin service over the Pacific or the Atlantic.

NOAA operates two active GOES weather satellites over the equator at 135 degrees and 75 degrees west longitude — the so-called GOES-West and GOES-East positions — to provide coverage from the Western Pacific to the West Coast of Africa.

That allows forecasters to track typhoons in the Pacific and storm fronts approaching the U.S. West Coast, while simultaneously observing developing tropical cyclones emerging off Africa.

NOAA said GOES-16, which is still undergoing post-launch checkouts, should be fully operational by November 2017.

Once officials decide if GOES-16 will head to the GOES-West or GOES-East positions, NOAA will deploy the follow-on GOES-S observatory to the other location when it launches in early 2018.

“This image is much more than a pretty picture, it is the future of weather observations and forecasting,” said Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. “High resolution imagery from GOES-16 will provide sharper and more detailed views of hazardous weather systems and reveal features that previous instruments might have missed, and the rapid-refresh of these images will allow us to monitor and predict the evolution of these systems more accurately. As a result, forecasters can issue more accurate, timely, and reliable watches and warnings, and provide better information to emergency managers and other decision makers.”

Along with the Advanced Baseline Imager, the new series of GOES weather satellites host lightning detectors and sensors to monitor solar activity and space weather.

Each ABI, built in Fort Wayne, Indiana, by Harris Corp., works by moving two mirrors to scan in the north-south and east-west directions, allowing the camera’s sensors to build up images of the full disk of Earth, or target specific locations where severe weather merits a closer look.

The imager aboard GOES-16 is similar to upgraded cameras, also built by Harris Corp., that debuted on two Japanese weather satellites launched in 2014 and 2016. The ABI on the NOAA’s new observatory is the first such instrument positioned over the United States.

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With the ABI cameras, the north-south mirror’s field-of-view is 60 times bigger than possible with the imager on NOAA’s current GOES satellites, according to Paul Griffith, chief engineer for the ABI instruments at Harris.

“It takes about 1,370 scans to collect the full disk right now, and ABI can do it in 22 scans,” Griffith said in an interview with Spaceflight Now before the launch of GOES-16.

“Because it takes far fewer scans, we can not only collect the image faster, but we can scan slower,” Griffith said. “Each scan is actually much slower than with the current imager, yet we can still do more rapid collection. Scanning slower means we can collect more light, which means we can deliver the finer resolution with the same radiometric accuracy.”

The instruments can also simultaneously capture wide-angle views of the entire disk of Earth while scanning across localized regions.

In the case of NOAA’s GOES satellites, that means shots zoomed in on the continental United States, hurricanes churning in the Atlantic Ocean, and tornado outbreaks in the Great Plains. The Himawari satellites can take quick-look imagery of the Japanese islands or typhoons approaching from the Pacific.

For comparison, NOAA’s current GOES satellites can take a full disk image — covering a region from Africa to the Pacific, and from the Arctic to Antarctica — about once every half-hour. The ABI-equipped GOES-R series can take the same type of image — with higher resolution and in more wavelengths — at least once every 15 minutes, and images spanning the continental United States every five minutes.

The GOES-R series will return pictures of hotspots like hurricanes at a cadence of once every 30 seconds, an improvement from the five-minute rapid scans available today.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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2. Cassini Spies Daphnis Making Waves It's not every day humanity gets a fresh look at a distant world. NASA's Cassini mission recently released a new image of the tiny moon Daphnis enmeshed in the rings of Saturn. Cassini took the image on January 16, 2017, while 17,000 miles (28,000 kilometers) away from the moon. Measuring 5 miles (8 kilometers) along its longest axis, irregular Daphnis resides in the 42-mile (26-kilometer) wide Keeler Gap in Saturn's outer A ring. The Keeler Gap seems narrower than it really is in this image because of foreshortening due to the spacecraft's viewing angle. You can just see grooves along the long axis of Daphnis in the image, as well as a few impact craters. For context, the range at which this image was taken is about 6,000 miles closer than

geosynchronous orbit (22,236 miles above Earth's surface). And for scale, Daphnis is slightly smaller than Mars' moon Deimos. At this distance, the image scale is 551 feet (168 meters) per pixel. This marks the closest flyby Cassini or any spacecraft has made past Daphnis to date. Making Waves in Saturn's Rings Despite its tiny size, the gravity of the diminutive moon raises ripples along the ring's edge in both the vertical and horizontal directions. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see that Cassini caught Daphnis in the act of drawing out a narrow tendril of ring material, which trails the moon in its orbit. Cassini also caught sight of Daphnis stirring things up back in 2009, during the Equinox phase of its mission. Soft-edged waves in Saturn's rings trail the moon's wake in this image too, in stark contrast to the otherwise sharp edges seen along the length of the Keeler Gap.

Daphnis (the tiny dot in the Keeler gap) kicks up waves and casts shadows in this 2009 Cassini image. NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

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The Daphnis flyby is part of Cassini's recent series of ring-grazing orbits, which will span November 2016 to April 2017. In addition to Daphnis, Cassini will also make close passes of other ring residents including Methone, Pandora, Atlas, Prometheus, Aegaeon, and Pan. The Cassini imaging team discovered Daphnis on May 6, 2005. The moon is named after the shepherd and friend of the satyr Pan in Greek mythology, appropriate as both Pan and Daphnis are "shepherd moonlets" tending to gaps in Saturn's rings. Daphnis orbits Saturn once every 14 hours. Not only does Daphnis appear “groovy” up close, but it also looks to be coated with ring material — features that are both typical of several of Saturn's inner moons. “That's No Moon” Except in this case, it is. Daphnis is only the latest in a series of moon cameos. On October 22, 2016, Cassini made one more flyby 115,000 miles (185,000 kilometers, about half the Earth-Moon distance) past Mimas, the moon that imitates Star Wars' Death Star in appearance. The flyby occurred just before the start of the ring-grazing orbits. The close-up shows Herschel Crater in stark profile along the terminator. The feature is testament to an ancient impact that may have nearly shattered the moon. Herschel Crater spans 86 miles (139 kilometers) in diameter, about one-third the diameter of Mimas itself. After this coming April, Cassini's final days begin as it completes it dramatic Grand Finale orbits and threads the 1,240-mile-wide (2,000-kilometer-wide) gap between innermost rings and Saturn itself for 22 final orbits. Then will come the bittersweet moment on September 15, 2017, when Cassini ends its spectacular career of planetary exploration, taking the plunge and burning up in Saturn's atmosphere. Though dramatic, the move is also practical as an effort to avoid any possibility of contamination on Titan or Enceladus in the far future. Enjoy these final views from an amazing mission. Human emissaries won't make their way to Saturn again for some time to come. Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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3. Dwarf galaxies shed light on dark matter

The first sighting of clustered dwarf galaxies bolsters a leading theory about how big galaxies such as our Milky Way are formed, and how dark matter binds them, researchers said Monday.

Theorised but never seen, the bundled galaxies were discovered using the largest optical survey of the night sky ever compiled, they reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Seven clusters of three-to-five galaxies are each 10 to 1,000 times smaller than the Milky Way.

Unlike our home galaxy, all have long-since stopped giving birth to new stars.

"We suspect these groups are gravitationally bound and thus will eventually merge to form one larger, intermediate-mass galaxy," said lead author Sabrina Stierwalt, an astrophysicist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlotteville, Virginia.

The findings shed light on several big questions about how structures such as galaxies formed in the early Universe, she told AFP.

A leading theory predicts that, after the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago, smaller things joined together to form bigger ones.

But there has been frustratingly little observational evidence of such mergers occurring on a scale as small as dwarf galaxies, Stierwalt explained.

One reason is that dwarf galaxies are hard to see. Only two—known at the Magellanic Clouds—are visible to the naked eye.

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As of a decade ago, no more than a dozen had been identified by astronomers.

And even as bigger telescopes made their discovery commonplace, those found were either isolated "field dwarfs," or "satellite dwarfs" being cannibalised by larger galaxies.

"Independent groups of only low-mass galaxies—like the ones we found—reveal a possible formation mechanism for larger ones such as our Milky Way," Stierwalt said.

Four of the dwarf galaxies Credit: Kelsey E Johnson, Sandra E Liss, and Sabrina Stierwalt

The clusters are between 200 million and 650 million light years away from Earth.

"That sounds like a lot, but it is relatively nearby given the vast size of the Universe," she said.

Hunting dark matter

The researchers spotted the galaxies by combing through a massive library of star maps compiled under a project known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, made public in 2008 and upgraded regularly since.

The team then used telescopes—including one at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, and the Walter Baade Telescope at the Los Campanas Observatory in Chile—to confirm their findings.

Dwarf clusters are also natural laboratories for better understanding the mysterious substance known as dark matter, thought to account for a quarter of the Universe, the study found.

Likely made up of unknown sub-atomic particles, dark matter can only be inferred through its gravitational pull on other objects in space.

Visible matter—everything we can touch and see—comprises about five percent of the Universe.

Dwarf galaxies are doubly interesting in the quest to understand dark matter.

Compared to larger galaxies, "they tend to have a lot more dark matter," explained Stierwalt.

Its gravitational force holds the clusters together.

And because they are older, these dwarf galaxies also have very little "debris" such as gas and dust, and thus are unobstructed hunting grounds for dark matter.

Some astronomers are searching for this elusive substance using gamma-ray detecting telescopes, on the theory that dark matter particles may produce gamma rays as they decay or annihilate each other in space.

Explore further: Reconciling dwarf galaxies with dark matter

Source: Phys.org Return to Contents

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The Night Sky Tuesday, January 24

• As dawn brightens on Wednesday morning the 25th, look very low in the southeast for the thin waning crescent Moon, as shown here. Saturn is about 14° to the upper right of it (for North America). Little Mercury is about 6° below the Moon. Binoculars will help, especially as dawn grows brighter.

Wednesday, January 25

• Sirius twinkles brightly after dinnertime below Orion in the southeast. Around 8 p.m., depending on your location, Sirius shines precisely below Betelgeuse in Orion's shoulder. How accurately can you time this event for your location, perhaps using a plumb bob or the vertical edge of a building? Of the two, Sirius leads early in the evening; Betelgeuse leads later.

Thursday, January 26

• Right after dark this week, face east and look very high, almost overhead. The bright star there is Capella, the Goat Star. To the right of it, by a couple of finger-widths at arm's length, is a small, narrow triangle of 3rd and 4th magnitude stars known as "the Kids." Although they're not exactly eye-grabbing, they form a never-forgotten asterism with Capella.

Friday, January 27

• The sky's biggest asterism (informal star pattern) — at least the biggest that's widely recognized — is the Winter Hexagon. It now fills the sky toward the east and south after dinnertime. Start with brilliant Sirius at its bottom. Going clockwise from there, march through Procyon, Pollux and Castor, Menkalinan and Capella very high, Aldebaran over to Capella's lower right, down to Rigel in Orion's foot, and back to Sirius.

Betelgeuse shines inside the Hexagon, off center.

• New Moon (exact at 7:07 p.m. EST).

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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ISS Sighting Opportunities

For Denver: Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Thu Jan 26, 7:14 PM 1 min 19° 11° above SSW 19° above SSW

Fri Jan 27, 6:23 PM 3 min 23° 11° above S 23° above SE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

• 2:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m., Tuesday, January 24 - NASA Television Special – Suit Up – 50 Years of Spacewalking Documentary (all channels)

• 3:30 p.m., 7 p.m., Tuesday, January 24 - NASA Pool Feed of the Funeral for Captain Eugene A. Cernan (all channels)

• 5:30 p.m., 9 p.m., Tuesday, January 24 - NASA Television Special – Apollo 17 on the Shoulders of Giants Documentary (all channels)

• 6 p.m., 10 p.m., Tuesday, January 24 - NASA Television Video File News Feed (all channels)

• 1 p.m., 5 p.m., 8 p.m., Wednesday, January 25 - NASM’S “STEM in 30” – The Biology of Long-Term Spaceflight (NTV-1 (Public))

• 2 p.m., Wednesday, January 25 - ISS Expedition 52-53 Crew News Conference (Ryazanskiy, Bresnik and Nespoli) (all channels)

• 7 p.m., 9 p.m., Wednesday, January 25 - Replay of the ISS Expedition 52-53 Crew News Conference (Ryazanskiy, Bresnik and Nespoli) (all channels)

• 10 a.m., 4 p.m., 8 p.m., Thursday, January 26 - Day of Remembrance Ceremony from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex (all channels)

• 10:30 a.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m., 11 p.m., Thursday, January 26 - ISS Expedition 50 In-Flight Educational Event with the Jenks Public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA (starts at 10:35 a.m.) (all channels)

• 10 a.m., Friday, January 27 - Coverage of the Departure of the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-6) from the International Space Station (Release scheduled at 10:30 a.m. ET) (all channels)

• 11 a.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m., Friday, January 27 - Apollo 1 Memorial Program (all channels)

Watch NASA TV on the Net by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar • Jan 24 - DSN-2 H-2A Launch • Jan 24 - Apollo Asteroid 2011 CO14 Near-Earth Flyby (0.059 AU) • Jan 24 - Asteroid 42776 Casablanca Closest Approach To Earth (2.175 AU) • Jan 24 - Michio Kaku's 70th Birthday (1947) • Jan 24 - Harold Babcock's 135th Birthday (1882) • Jan 25 - Comet 33P/Daniel Closest Approach To Earth (1.630 AU) • Jan 25 - Comet 328P/LONEOS-Tucker At Opposition (2.689 AU) • Jan 25 - Asteroid 133 Cyrene Occults HIP 81266 (2.8 Magnitude Star) • Jan 25 - [Jan 22] Apollo Asteroid 2017 BX Near-Earth Flyby (0.018 AU) • Jan 25 - Apollo Asteroid 7341 (1991 VK) Near-Earth Flyby (0.065 AU) • Jan 25 - Apollo Asteroid 3103 Eger Closest Approach To Earth (0.508 AU) • Jan 25 - Asteroid 6001 Thales Closest Approach To Earth (2.025 AU) • Jan 25 - Lecture: Future Histories and Forecasting, London, United Kingdom • Jan 25 - Colloquium: The Romance of Physics, Greenbelt, Maryland • Jan 26 - Echostar 23 Falcon 9 Launch • Jan 26 - Comet P/2016 G1 (PANSTARRS) Perihelion (2.041 AU) • Jan 26 - Comet 343P/NEAT-LONEOS Perihelion (2.277 AU) • Jan 26 - Comet 51P/Harrington At Opposition (3.203 AU) • Jan 26 - Comet 51P-A/Harrington At Opposition (3.203 AU) • Jan 26 - Comet C/2017 A3 (Elenin) Closest Approach To Earth (3.450 AU) • Jan 26 - Comet 193P/LINEAR-NEAT Closest Approach To Earth (3.549 AU) • Jan 26 - Apollo Asteroid 2017 AK3 Near-Earth Flyby (0.029 AU) • Jan 26 - Apollo Asteroid 2016 YP4 Near-Earth Flyby (0.033 AU) • Jan 26 - Asteroid 6336 Dodo Closest Approach To Earth (1.551 AU) • Jan 26 - Apollo Asteroid 3671 Dionysus Closest Approach To Earth (1.948 AU) • Jan 26 - Lecture: The Life-Cycle of Gas in Dying Galaxies, Ithaca, New York • Jan 26 - [Jan 19] 1st Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Portal User Demo -

Virtual Workshop • Jan 26 - 55th Anniversary (1962), Ranger 3 Launch (Moon Impact Mission) • Jan 26 - Bessie Coleman's 125th Birthday (1892)

• Jan 27 - [Jan 20] 50th Anniversary (1967), Apollo 1 Fire (Gus Grissom, Edward White & Roger Chaffee)

• Jan 27 - Comet 51P-D/Harrington At Opposition (3.210 AU) • Jan 27 - Comet C/2015 X5 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (6.177 AU) • Jan 27 - Apollo Asteroid 12711 Tukmit Closest Approach To Earth (0.778 AU) • Jan 27 - Asteroid 6779 Perrine Closest Approach To Earth (1.054 AU) • Jan 27 - Asteroid 2700 Baikonur Closest Approach To Earth (1.834 AU)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

Experiment resolves mystery about wind flows on Jupiter

One mystery has been whether the jets exist only in the planet's upper atmosphere -- much like the Earth's own jet streams -- or whether they plunge into Jupiter's gaseous interior. If the latter is true, it could reveal clues about the planet's interior structure and internal dynamics.

Now, UCLA geophysicist Jonathan Aurnou and collaborators in Marseille, France, have simulated Jupiter's jets in the laboratory for the first time. Their work demonstrates that the winds likely extend thousands of miles below Jupiter's visible atmosphere.

This research is published online today in Nature Physics.

"We can make these features in a computer, but we couldn't make them happen in a lab," said Aurnou, a UCLA professor of earth, planetary and space sciences, who has spent the past decade studying computer models of swirling winds. "If we have a theoretical understanding of a system, we should be able to create an analog model."

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The challenge to re-creating swirling winds in the lab was building a model of a planet with three key attributes believed to be necessary for jets to form: rapid rotation, turbulence and a "curvature effect" that mimics the spherical shape of a planet. Previous attempts to create jets in a lab often failed because researchers couldn't spin their models fast enough or create enough turbulence, Aurnou said.

The breakthrough for Aurnou's team was a new piece of laboratory equipment. The researchers used a table built on air bearings that can spin at 120 revolutions per minute and support a load of up to 1,000 kilograms (about 2,200 pounds), meaning that it could spin a large tank of fluid at high speed in a way that mimics Jupiter's rapid rotation.

The scientists filled an industrial-sized garbage with 400 liters (about 105 gallons) of water and placed it on the table. When the container spun, water was thrown against its sides, forming a parabola that approximated the curved surface of Jupiter.

"The faster it went, the better we mimicked the massively strong effects of rotation and curvature that exists on planets," Aurnou said. But the team found that 75 revolutions per minute was a practical limit: fast enough to force the liquid into a strongly curved shape but slow enough to keep water from spilling out.

While the can was spinning, scientists used a pump below its false floor to circulate water through a series of inlet and outlet holes, which created turbulence -- one of the three critical conditions for the experiment. That turbulent energy was channeled into making jets, and within minutes the water flow had changed to six concentric flows moving in alternating directions.

"This is the first time that anyone has demonstrated that strong jets that look like those on Jupiter can develop in a real fluid," Aurnou said.

The researchers inferred that the jets were deep because they could see them on the surface of the water, even though they had injected turbulence at the bottom.

The researchers are looking forward to testing their predictions with real data from Jupiter, and they won't have to wait long: NASA's Juno space probe is orbiting Jupiter right now, collecting data about its atmosphere, magnetic field and interior. Initial results from the Juno mission were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in December in San Francisco, and Aurnou was there.

"The Juno data from the very first flyby of Jupiter showed that structures of ammonia gas extended over 60 miles into Jupiter's interior, which was a big shock to the Juno science team," Aurnou said. "UCLA researchers will be playing an important role in explaining the data."

This year, Aurnou and his team will use supercomputers at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois, to simulate the dynamics of Jupiter's interior and atmosphere. They'll also continue their work at the laboratory in Marseilles to make the spinning table simulation more complex and more realistic.

One goal is to add a thin, stable layer of fluid on top of the spinning water, which would function like the thin outer layer of Jupiter's atmosphere that's responsible for the planet's weather. The researchers believe this will help them simulate features like Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot.

Source: EurekAlert Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Hubble's Slice of Sagittarius

This stunning image, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), shows part of the sky in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The region is rendered in exquisite detail — deep red and bright blue stars are scattered across the frame, set against a background of thousands of more distant stars and galaxies. Two features are particularly striking: the colors of the stars, and the dramatic crosses that burst from the centers of the brightest bodies.

While some of the colors in this frame have been enhanced and tweaked during the process of creating the image from the observational data, different stars do indeed glow in different colors. Stars differ in color according to their surface temperature: very hot stars are blue or white, while cooler stars are redder. They may be cooler because they are smaller, or because they are very old and have entered the red giant phase, when an old star expands and cools dramatically as its core collapses.

The crosses are nothing to do with the stars themselves, and, because Hubble orbits above Earth’s atmosphere, nor are they due to any kind of atmospheric disturbance. They are actually known as diffraction spikes, and are caused by the structure of the telescope itself.

Like all big modern telescopes, Hubble uses mirrors to capture light and form images. Its secondary mirror is supported by struts, called telescope spiders, arranged in a cross formation, and they diffract the incoming light. Diffraction is the slight bending of light as it passes near the edge of an object. Every cross in this image is due to a single set of struts within Hubble itself! Whilst the spikes are technically an inaccuracy, many astrophotographers choose to emphasize and celebrate them as a beautiful feature of their images.

Source: NASA Return to Contents