Our Hubble Space Telescope has been exploring the wonders of the universe for nearly 30 years, answering some of our deepest cosmic questions. Some of Hubble’s most exciting observations have been about black holes — places in space where gravity pulls so much that not even light can escape. As if black holes weren’t wild enough already, Hubble has helped us make discoveries that show us they’re even weirder than we thought!

Supermassive Black Holes Are Everywhere

First, these things are all over the place. If you look at any random galaxy in the universe, chances are it has a giant black hole lurking in its heart. And when we say giant, we’re talking as massive as millions or even billions of stars! 

Hubble found that the mass of these black holes, hidden away in galactic cores, is linked to the mass of the host galaxy — the bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole. Scientists think this may mean that the black holes grew along with their galaxies, eating up some of the stuff nearby.

Some Star Clusters Have Black Holes

A globular cluster is a ball of old, very similar stars that are bound together by gravity. They’re fairly common — our galaxy has at least 150 of them — but Hubble has found some black sheep in the herd. Some of these clusters are way more massive than usual, have a wide variety of stars and may even harbor a black hole at the center. This suggests that at least some of the globular clusters in our galaxy may have once been dwarf galaxies that we absorbed.

Black Hole Jets Regulate Star Birth

While black holes themselves are invisible, sometimes they shoot out huge jets of energy as gas and dust fall into them. Since stars form from gas and dust, the jets affect star birth within the galaxy. 

Sometimes they get rid of the fuel needed to keep making new stars, but Hubble saw that it can also keep star formation going at a slow and steady rate.

Black Holes Growing in Colliding Galaxies

If you’ve ever spent some time stargazing, you know that staring up into a seemingly peaceful sea of stars can be very calming. But the truth is, it’s a hectic place out there in the cosmos! Entire galaxies — these colossal collections of gas, dust, and billions of stars with their planets — can merge together to form one supergalaxy. You might remember that most galaxies have a supermassive black hole at the center, so what happens to them when galaxies collide? 

In 2018, Hubble unveiled the best view yet of close pairs of giant black holes in the act of merging together to form mega black holes!

Gravitational Wave Kicks Monster Black Hole Out of Galactic Core

What better way to spice up black holes than by throwing gravitational waves into the mix! Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that can be created when two massive objects orbit each other. 

In 2017, Hubble found a rogue black hole that is flying away from the center of its galaxy at over 1,300 miles per second (about 90 times faster than our Sun is traveling through the Milky Way). What booted the black hole out of the galaxy’s core? Gravitational waves! Scientists think that this is a case where two galaxies are in the late stages of merging together, which means their central black holes are probably merging too in a super chaotic process. 

Want to learn about more of the highlights of Hubble’s exploration? Check out this page! https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/2017/highlights-of-hubble-s-exploration-of-the-universe

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About 15 years ago, our Hubble Space Telescope captured this ultra-deep field image of space, revealing thousands of galaxies tucked away in a seemingly empty spot in the sky.

Now, imagine this view of the cosmos – and all the mysteries in it – at a scale 300 times larger than Hubble’s.

Our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope could capture just that.

Roman recently released this gorgeous simulated image that gives us a preview of what the telescope could see. Each tiny speck represents a galaxy filled with billions of stars. And it’s more than just a pretty picture – scientists could learn a lot from an observation like this!

Since Roman can see much more of the sky at a time, it could create an ultra-deep field image that’s far larger than Hubble’s. So instead of revealing thousands of galaxies, Roman would see millions!

Roman’s ability to look far out into space with such an expansive view would help us better understand what the universe was like when it was young. For example, scientists could study a lot of cosmic transitions, like how galaxies switch from star-making factories to a quieter stage when star formation is complete and how the universe went from being mainly opaque to the brilliant starscape we see today.

And these are just a few of the mysteries Roman could help us solve!

Set to launch in the mid-2020s, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, is designed to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and explore many topics in infrared astrophysics. You can learn about some of the other science Roman will do here.

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Gravity is obviously pretty important. It holds your feet down to Earth so you don’t fly away into space, and (equally important) it keeps your ice cream from floating right out of your cone! We’ve learned a lot about gravity over the past few hundred years, but one of the strangest things we’ve discovered is that most of the gravity in the universe comes from an invisible source called “dark matter.” While our telescopes can’t directly see dark matter, they can help us figure out more about it thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

The Gravity of the Situation

Anything that has mass is called matter, and all matter has gravity. Gravity pulls on everything that has mass and warps space-time, the underlying fabric of the universe. Things like llamas and doughnuts and even paper clips all warp space-time, but only a tiny bit since they aren’t very massive.

But huge clusters of galaxies are so massive that their gravity produces some pretty bizarre effects. Light always travels in a straight line, but sometimes its path is bent. When light passes close to a massive object, space-time is so warped that it curves the path the light must follow. Light that would normally be blocked by the galaxy cluster is bent around it, producing intensified — and sometimes multiple — images of the source. This process, called gravitational lensing, turns galaxy clusters into gigantic, intergalactic magnifying glasses that give us a glimpse of cosmic objects that would normally be too distant and faint for even our biggest telescopes to see.

Hubble “Sees” Dark Matter

Let’s recap — matter warps space-time. The more matter, the stronger the warp and the bigger its gravitational lensing effects. In fact, by studying “lensed” objects, we can map out the quantity and location of the unseen matter causing the distortion!

Thanks to gravitational lensing, scientists have measured the total mass of many galaxy clusters, which revealed that all the matter they can see isn’t enough to create the warping effects they observe. There’s more gravitational pull than there is visible stuff to do the pulling — a lot more! Scientists think dark matter accounts for this difference. It’s invisible to our eyes and telescopes, but it can’t hide its gravity!

The mismatch between what we see and what we know must be there may seem strange, but it’s not hard to imagine. You know that people can’t float in mid-air, so what if you saw a person appearing to do just that? You would know right away that there must be wires holding him up, even if you couldn’t see them.

Our Hubble Space Telescope observations are helping unravel the dark matter mystery. By studying gravitationally lensed galaxy clusters with Hubble, astronomers have figured out how much of the matter in the universe is “normal” and how much is “dark.” Even though normal matter makes up everything from pickles to planets, there’s about five times more dark matter in the universe than all the normal matter combined!

WFIRST Will Escalate the Search

One of our next major space telescopes, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), will take these gravitational lensing observations to the next level. WFIRST will be sensitive enough to use weak gravitational lensing to see how clumps of dark matter warp the appearance of distant galaxies. By observing lensing effects on this small scale, scientists will be able to fill in more of the gaps in our understanding of dark matter.

WFIRST will observe a sky area 100 times larger than Hubble does, but with the same awesome image quality. WFIRST will collect so much data in its first year that it will allow scientists to conduct in-depth studies that would have taken hundreds of years with previous telescopes.

WFIRST’s weak gravitational lensing observations will allow us to peer even further back in time than Hubble is capable of seeing. Scientists believe that the universe’s underlying dark matter structure played a major role in the formation and evolution of galaxies by attracting normal matter. Seeing the universe in its early stages will help scientists unravel how it has evolved over time and possibly provide clues to how it may continue to evolve. We don’t know what the future will hold, but WFIRST will help us find out.

This science is pretty mind-bending, even for scientists. Learn more as our current and future telescopes plan to help unlock these mysteries of the universe…

Hubble: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html
WFIRST: https://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/

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Tiny BurstCube’s Tremendous Travelogue

Meet BurstCube! This shoebox-sized satellite is designed to study the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, called gamma-ray bursts. It detects gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light.

BurstCube may be small, but it had a huge journey to get to space.

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