Professor Smartt
Stephen Smartt is professor of astrophysics at Queen’s University Belfast and has previously worked at the University of Cambridge and the UK’s Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes. He uses telescopes around the world to survey the sky in search of exploding stars. An exploding star is called a supernova, which can shine with the power of 11 billion suns. Professor Smartt leads several international teams using telescopes in Chile (in the southern hemisphere) and Hawaii (northern hemisphere) to search for these spectacular explosions. He also searches for light emitted by sources of gravitational waves which are thought to be dense neutron stars that smash together. Prof Smartt is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and was awarded the George Darwin Lecture by the Royal Astronomical Society and the RIA Gold Medal in the physical and mathematical sciences.
Hubble Space Telescope
Prof. Smartt has taken some images with the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope is a famous telescope that orbits about 380 miles (610 kilometers) above Earth. It views the sky without having to look through Earth’s atmosphere and takes sharp pictures of objects in outer space such as stars, comets, and the sun.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observes some of the most beautiful galaxies in our skies - spirals sparkling with bright stellar nurseries, violent duos ripping gas and stars away from one another as they tangle together, and ethereal irregular galaxies that hang like flocks of birds suspended in the blackness of space.
Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Hubble Heritage Team, S.Smartt
Galaxy NGC 2397, pictured in this image from Hubble, is a classic spiral galaxy with long prominent dust lanes along the edges of its arms, seen as dark patches and streaks silhouetted against the starlight. Hubble's exquisite resolution allows the study of individual stars in nearby galaxies.
Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Hubble Heritage Team, S.Smartt
The beautiful galaxy NGC 3982 is a typical spiral galaxy and looks just as our own galaxy, the Milky Way, would if we could view it face on. It harbours a huge black hole at its core and has massive regions of star formation in the bright blue knots in the spiral arms. Supernovae are most likely to be found within these energetic regions.
Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Hubble Heritage Team, S.Smartt
