The Hubble Space Telescope has created some amazing pictures of the cosmos during its 25 years in orbit, but that's not the only thing the telescope has accomplished. Information gathered by the long-serving telescope has changed the way we understand the universe. Here are five important discoveries Hubble made possible in its quarter century orbiting Earth:. Researchers now know that the universe is about Hot, young stars shine in Hubble telescope's 25th anniversary photo. In order to arrive at this figure, scientists used Hubble to measure the brightness of Cepheid variable stars — a special kind of star that pulses on a set cycle.
Hubble Science and Discoveries | NASA
The set pulsing makes these kinds of stars ideal targets to help scientists measure great distances in the universe because they already know the inherent brightness of the star. The Cepheid star will appear dimmer if it is farther away, giving researchers an easy way to gauge how distant its host galaxy is to Earth.
In , mission controllers directed Hubble to take a series of images looking at one small spot in the sky, and the results were astonishing. The Hubble continued to take images of the deep universe through the course of its lifetime after multiple servicing missions by astronauts replaced cameras on the telescope. The larger a telescope's mirror, the more light it can collect, and the better its vision. Hubble's primary mirror is This mirror is small compared with those of current ground-based telescopes, which can be inches 1, cm and up, but Hubble's location beyond the atmosphere gives it remarkable clarity.
Once the mirror captures the light, Hubble's science instruments work together or individually to provide the observation. Each instrument is designed to examine the universe in a different way.
Its resolution and field of view are much greater than that of Hubble's other instruments. WFC3 is one of Hubble's two newest instruments, and will be used to study dark energy and dark matter, the formation of individual stars and the discovery of extremely remote galaxies previously beyond Hubble's vision. Spectrographs acts something like prisms, separating light from the cosmos into its component colors. This provides a wavelength "fingerprint" of the object being observed, which tells us about its temperature, chemical composition, density, and motion. COS will improve Hubble's ultraviolet sensitivity at least 10 times, and up to 70 times when observing extremely faint objects.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys ACS sees visible light, and is designed to study some of the earliest activity in the universe. ACS helps map the distribution of dark matter, detects the most distant objects in the universe, searches for massive planets, and studies the evolution of clusters of galaxies.
ACS partially stopped working in due to an electrical short, but was repaired during Servicing Mission 4 in May The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph STIS is a spectrograph that sees ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light, and is known for its ability to hunt black holes. Its sensitivity to infrared light — perceived by humans as heat — lets it observe objects hidden by interstellar dust, like stellar birth sites, and gaze into deepest space.
They can be used to precisely measure the distance between stars, and their relative motions.
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All of Hubble's functions are powered by sunlight. Hubble sports solar arrays that convert sunlight directly into electricity. Some of that electricity is stored in batteries that keep the telescope running when it's in Earth's shadow, blocked from the Sun's rays. Engineers use satellites to communicate with the telescope, giving it directions and commands. The telescope has two main computers and a number of smaller systems.
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One of the main computers handles the commands that point the telescope and other system-wide functions. The other talks to the instruments, receives their data, and sends it to satellites that in turn transmit it to the ground. Once the ground station transfers the data to Goddard, Goddard sends it to the Space Telescope Science Institute STScI , where staff translate the data into scientifically meaningful units — such as wavelength or brightness — and archive the information on 5. Hubble sends the archive enough information to fill about 18 DVDs every week.
Astronomers can download archived data via the Internet and analyze it from anywhere in the world. Hundreds of engineers and computer scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center and STScI are responsible for keeping Hubble operating and monitoring its safety, health and performance. At Goddard, controllers monitor the telescope's health while they direct its movements and science activities.
STScI staff also schedule use of the telescope, monitor and calibrate the instruments, operate the archive and conduct public outreach. Astronomers from around the world compete for time to use Hubble. More scientists want to use the telescope than there is time to use it, so a review committee of astronomy experts has to pick out the best proposals from the bunch.
Each year around 1, proposals are reviewed and approximately are selected, for a total of 20, individual observations. The idea for the space telescope arose in , when German scientist Hermann Oberth, one of the founders of rocketry, suggested blasting a telescope into space aboard a rocket. In , Lyman Spitzer Jr. He would spend the next 50 years working to make the space telescope a reality.
Spitzer was one of the main forces behind several of the orbiting observatories of the time, including the Copernicus satellite and the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory. Because of budget considerations, the original proposal was downsized somewhat, decreasing the size of the telescope's mirror and the number of instruments it would carry. In , the group working on the project suggested a telescope with a number of interchangeable instruments. They would be able to resolve at least one-tenth of an arcsecond and study wavelengths that ranged from ultraviolet to visible and infrared light.
The Marvelous Hubble Telescope and its Discoveries - Volume 2
The Space Shuttle would be used to put the telescope in orbit and either return it to Earth for repairs and replacement instruments, or service it in space. In , Congress approved funding for the telescope.
Shortly after Congress approved funding for the telescope, proposals for science instruments began to pour in. Five winners were chosen. Meanwhile, contractors, universities and NASA centers plunged into the effort. Goddard Space Flight Center would take care of the design, development and construction of the science instruments, and also perform ground control.
The Perkin-Elmer Corporation was contracted to tackle the telescope assembly, including the mirrors and Fine Guidance Sensors, needed to point and direct the telescope. Lockheed Missiles now Lockheed Martin was hired to build the structure and supporting systems, put the telescope together, and test it. By , astronauts were training for the mission in an underwater tank to simulate weightlessness, using a telescope mock-up. The space telescope was named the Hubble Space Telescope, after American astronomer Edwin Hubble , who showed that the fuzzy patches of light in the night sky were actually other galaxies, far distant from our own, and went on to prove that the universe was expanding.
Hubble Essentials
After some delays, Hubble's launch was scheduled for October But on January 28, , the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute into its flight. Shuttle flights ceased for two years. The finished telescope parts were moved into storage. Hubble workers continued to tweak the telescope during the delay, improving the solar batteries and upgrading other systems. The telescope carried five instruments: Almost immediately after Hubble went into orbit, it became clear that something was wrong. While the pictures were clearer than those of ground-based telescopes, they weren't the pristine images promised.
Hubble's primary mirror, polished so carefully and lovingly over the course of a full year, had a flaw called "spherical aberration. And they had a solution. A series of small mirrors could be used to intercept the light reflecting off the mirror, correct for the flaw, and bounce the light to the telescope's science instruments. The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or COSTAR, could be installed in place of one of the telescope's other instruments in order to correct the images produced by the remaining and future instruments.
This was the first of Hubble's instruments to have built-in corrective optics. Astronauts and NASA staff spent 11 months training for one of the most complex space missions ever attempted.
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In addition to the critical nature of the mission, it would be the first test of the telescope's vaunted ability to be serviced and repaired in space. Two astronauts installing ACS on Hubble in On December 2, , the Space Shuttle Endeavor carried a crew of seven into orbit for a mission that would involve five days of spacewalks and repairs. They performed a host of other tasks, replacing solar panels, fuse plugs, and other hardware. By December 9, they were finished.
The pictures were beautiful; their resolution, excellent. Hubble was transformed into the telescope that had been originally promised. Hubble would be successfully serviced and repaired several times afterwards.