[No Audio]
What we're seeing here is a deep
look at a newborn star. So we're looking with some of Hubble's
instruments, its cameras, at a small region in the Orion star-forming region.
We're seeing a baby star with material that's collapsing onto the star from gravity.
And it's causing jets of material to spew out its poles, a bipolar
outflow at supersonic speeds. It looks like a double-bladed "lightsaber."
[No audio]
[Laughing] Hubble has never actually seen
a 'Death Star' as you see in Star Wars. But we certainly
are able to look at regions where stars are in their death throws.
And those are some of the most beautiful image that Hubble has captured because as
stars die they spew material out into the interstellar medium.
They're actually enriching the area around them. And when new stars form the chemicals
that come from the older stars are in the mix of the new stars.
So you're seeing some stars as they're spewing out their last layers
calmly and others supernova remnants as the star explodes. And when we
have a supernova explosion happening that's the type of force that would
anilate planets around it just like a death star might.
[No audio]
The future for Hubble is very bright. It was serviced by astronauts
five times on orbit, most recently in 2009.
left it at the peak of its scientific capabilities. And we're working hard
on the ground to keep it going until the year 2020 and beyond. We want to have
some overlap time with the next thing, the James Webb Space Telescope
which will launch in 2018 and will take pictures in the infrared
beyond the visible. And when we're able to peer inside regions with the visible
and the infrared we're really going to be able to uncover the layers and see what's
going on in there. [No audio]
[No audo] That's a great
question. Of course Star Wars showed us a variety of worlds. Ice worlds
forest worlds, desert worlds. And Hubble has been able to look at some
of the worlds in our own solar system, right around our own backyard. So we've
looked at Mars and seen storms there. We're looked at Jupiter. We see Jupiter
evolving. We see the cloud structures on it evolving, the great red spot
shrinking. We see evidence for water oceans on the
moons around Jupiter just like there were moons where there was civilizations
in Star Wars. We're seeing moons with water in our own solar system.
And we're also starting to take those first steps beyond and look at planets around other stars.
with Hubble.
[No audio] So we're actually with Hubble
able to get a real sense of the life cycles of galaxies through the history
of the universe. We're now learning that galaxies commonly collide
and that there's a certain sequence. You know younger galaxies look
very different than the galaxies around us today, the more modern galaxies
And it's the same concept when we look inside of our own galaxy.
at the star forming regions or where stars have died. We're looking at the
life cycle of stars and we're getting this beautiful coherent picture together
of how the sun formed, the solar system and what that
means in the place and context of everything else in the universe when it formed and how it
evolves.
[No audio] Well there's a vast archive
of images at nasa.gov/hubble.
Anything from the solar system all the way out to the edges of the universe.