Hubble launches survey of more than 300 nearby stars

<p id="content">The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in the US has launched a new initiative with Nasa's Hubble observatory to survey more than 300 nearby stars.</p>
Called ULLYSES, short for UV Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards, it is Hubble's largest observing programme ever in terms of the amount of time Hubble will dedicate to it, Nasa said yesterday.

"One of the key goals of ULLYSES is to form a complete reference sample that can be used to create spectral libraries capturing the diversity of stars, ensuring a legacy dataset for a wide range of astrophysical topics," programme lead Julia Roman-Duval of STScI said in a statement.

"ULLYSES is expected to have a lasting impact on future research by astronomers around the world."

Hubble is located above Earth's atmosphere, which filters out most UV radiation from space before it reaches ground-based telescopes.

Hubble's ultraviolet sensitivity makes it the only observatory up to the task because young stars radiate a lot of their energy in the UV as they grow chaotically in fits and starts while feeding on infalling gas and dust.

The programme's goal is to give astronomers a much better understanding of the birth of stars and how this relates to everything from planets to the formation and evolution of galaxies.

Astronomers want to learn how young low-mass stars affect the evolution and composition of planets forming around them..