Hubblecast

What makes a scientific discovery really important? It's partly down to how much scientists use the discovery in subsequent work -- but it’s also partly down to what inspires their imagination. In this episode, the Hubblecast talks to some leading astronomers about their favourite Hubble discovery. Meanwhile, our presenter, Dr J, struggles to make up his mind.

For centuries, scientists imagined objects so heavy and dense that their gravity might be strong enough to pull anything in - including light. They would be, quite literally, a black hole in space. But it’s only in the past few decades that astronomers have conclusively proved their existence. Today, Hubble lets scientists measure the effects of black holes, make images of their surroundings and glean fascinating insights into the evolution of our cosmos.

The Hubblecast's Joe Liske (Dr J) takes us on a tour of the Tarantula Nebula. Bright star forming gas clouds, super star clusters and supernova remnants are just some of the sights in this dramatic region of the night sky.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is working on three of the most ambitious projects in its history just now. These multicycle treasury programs are using Hubble's unique ability to observe across the spectrum from ultraviolet, through visible, to infrared light, to build up a library of data which will serve astronomers for many years. In this podcast episode, presenter Dr J (aka Joe Liske) looks at these projects, and how they will complement the capabilities of the next great thing in space-based astronomy, the James Webb Space Telescope.

The Hubblecast's Dr J, aka Joe Liske, takes us on a tour of Centaurus A, a bright and dusty galaxy in the Southern sky. Hubble’s observations are the most detailed ever made of this galaxy.

This joint episode of the Hubblecast and ESOcast presents Abell 2744, an unusual cluster of galaxies nicknamed "Pandora's Cluster" by the astronomers who have studied it. Looking at the galaxies, gas and dark matter in the cluster, scientists have reconstructed the series of huge collisions that created it, and have uncovered some strange phenomena never seen together before.

In this episode of the Hubblecast, Joe Liske, aka Dr J, takes us on a tour of the outer reaches of the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way.

In episode 49 of the Hubblecast, Dr Joe Liske (aka Dr J) asked viewers to send in their questions about astronomy and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In episode 50, Dr J picks his favourite few questions from the hundreds that were sent in.

In this episode of the Hubblecast, we take a tour of the compact star-forming region Sh 2-106. Its hourglass shape is caused by the final, violent phases of a star’s formation in the middle of the gaseous nebula. This episode explains some of the science behind Hubble’s observations and brings them to life with detailed 3D computer visualisations.