Bethany Downer
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bethanydowner.bsky.social
Bethany Downer
@bethanydowner.bsky.social
250 followers 41 following 11 posts
Bringing #space to the public │ Chief Science Communications Officer for #Hubble and #JamesWebb telescopes for the European Space Agency │ #Newfoundland, Canada
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bethanydowner.bsky.social
Today's we've published our last Picture of the Month from James Webb in 2024! NGC 2566 is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Puppis, featuring well-defined spiral arms, long central bar and delicate tracery of gas, dust and stars. Details: esawebb.org/images/potm2...
December 18, 2024 at 4:45 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
⭐ It's here!! ⭐
The 2025 Hubble/Webb calendar is now available FREE to the public for digital or print download options. We invite everyone to enjoy the twelve months of images of the cosmos from these beloved missions that were released throughout 2024: esahubble.org/announcement...
December 13, 2024 at 5:41 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Today’s new Hubble Space Telescope image features the glorious spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is located roughly 40 million light-years away. It is known as a grand design spiral, referring to how the galaxy’s two large, winding spiral arms are clear to see. Details: esahubble.org/images/potw2...
A close-up of a spiral galaxy, seen face-on. Its center is a bright white point, surrounded by a large yellowish oval with thin lines of dust swirling in it. From the sides of the oval emerge two bright spiral arms which wind through the round disc of the galaxy, filled with shining pink spots where stars are forming and more dark reddish dust. Many stars can be seen in the foreground, over and around the galaxy.
December 9, 2024 at 3:59 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Happy Monday! ⭐

Today's we've published a new Hubble image of NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker

Full details: esahubble.org/images/potw2... #hubble #astronomy #scicomm
A spiral galaxy filling the view. Its disc is filled with bright red spots where stars are forming, dark reddish threads of dust that obscure light, and bluish glowing areas where older stars are concentrated. It has a large, glowing yellow oval area at the centre, from which two spiral arms wind through the galaxy’s disc. The bottom side of the disc is rounded while the top side is somewhat squared-off.
December 2, 2024 at 3:43 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Happy Friday! Sending you into the weekend with my favorite image our Webb team has published in 2024: the spectacular star cluster NGC 602! It resides near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy 200,000 light-years away. Full press release: esawebb.org/news/weic2425/
A star cluster is shown inside a large nebula of many-coloured gas and dust. The material forms dark ridges and peaks of gas and dust surrounding the cluster, lit on the inner side, while layers of diffuse, translucent clouds blanket over them. Around and within the gas, a huge number of distant galaxies can be seen, some quite large, as well as a few stars nearer to us which are very large and bright.
November 29, 2024 at 3:15 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Today we've published our new James Webb Picture of the Month, featuring the spiral galaxy NGC 2090, located in the constellation Columba and residing roughly 40 million light years away.

Full details: esawebb.org/images/potm2... #webb #astronomy
A spiral galaxy with a wide, oval-shaped disc. It has a shining spot at the centre from which two curving, pale red spiral arms emerge, wrapping once each around the galaxy. They’re surrounded by a whirl of bright threads and patches of dust, with spots of star formation scattered throughout. The glow of the disc fades smoothly into the background where some patches of dust can be seen, as well as foreground stars.
November 27, 2024 at 3:15 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
I'm delighted to see how much coverage yesterday's #Webb image release of the Sombrero Galaxy has gotten on this platform. Hubble and Webb are truly a fantastic synergetic team!

Full press release: esawebb.org/news/weic2427/
November 26, 2024 at 3:12 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Happy Monday!!

This is a new image out today from #Hubble that features the spiral galaxy NGC 2090, located in the constellation Columba. It resides roughly 40 million light years away.

Full details here: esahubble.org/images/potw2...
November 26, 2024 at 1:13 AM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Last month our team created this #Hubble time-lapse spanning from 2014 to 2023 of R Aquarii, a symbiotic binary star that lies only roughly 1,000 light-years away. A personal favorite!

Details: esahubble.org/news/heic2413/ #astronomy
November 21, 2024 at 7:39 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Each month our team publishes a new #JamesWebb Picture of the Month. For September we shared one of my favorite #astronomy pictures to date of the open cluster Westerlund 1. It resides 12,000 light-years away behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust.

Details: esawebb.org/images/potm2...
A dense cluster of bright stars, each with six large and two small diffraction spikes, due to the telescope’s optics. They have a variety of sizes depending on their brightness and distance from us in the cluster, and different colours reflecting different types of star. Patches of billowing red gas can be seen in and around the cluster, lit up by the stars. Small stars in the cluster blend into a background of distant stars and galaxies on black.
November 20, 2024 at 3:36 PM
bethanydowner.bsky.social
Released yesterday from #Hubble: Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on!

A new personal favourite! ✨

Full details here: esahubble.org/images/potw2...
A spiral galaxy seen directly from the side, such that its disc looks like a narrow diagonal band across the image. A band of dark dust covers the disc in the centre most of the way out to the ends, and the disc glows around that. In the centre a whitish circle of light bulges out above and below the disc. The tips of the disc are a bit bent. The background is black and mostly empty.
November 19, 2024 at 5:41 PM