The Hubble Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope was named after Edwin Hubble, the leading American astronomer of the 20th century. It was built under the supervision of NASA after the U.S. Congress had authorized its construction in 1977. It is capable of performing observations in the visible, near-ultraviolet, and near-infrared. Power to the two on-board computers is generated by two 2.4 by 12.1 meter solar panels. The Hubble's current science instruments include three cameras (Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2, Near Infrared, and Faint Object), two spectrographs (High Resolution and Multi-Object), a high-speed photometer, and three fine guidance sensors. The crew of the Discovery space shuttle placed it about 370 miles above the Earth on April 25, 1990. The telescope is a cooperative program of the European Space Agency and NASA to operate a long-lived space-based observatory. The observatory was first dreamt of in the 40's, designed and constructed in the 70's and 80's, and operational in the 90's. From the beginning, HST was designed to be a long-term space-based observatory. Astronomer Mario Livio of the telescope institute says, "The thing that is so amazing is that, literally every place HST has looked, it has found somethin
Looking at young stars in the "Orion" constellation, the telescope has spotted "platters of swirling dust" called protoplanetary discs. Astronomers believe these disks will eventually break into "distinct clumps of matter orbiting the star." They call these clumps of matter planets. That means that our sun is probably not alone in having what scientists call a "retinue". The Hubble suggests that it's a rare star that doesn't have planets. That makes the odds that we are alone in the universe even shorter. Astrophysicist John Bahcall of the Institute for the Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, says "Of all the secrets that the Hubble has unlocked, its images of galaxies that formed when the universe was in its infancy would be at the top of my list of its achievements. HST speaks eloquently to how galaxies got started and got together, something we argue about endlessly." The "Hubble Deep Field" is an image taken over the course of 10 days in December 1995. It shows how the Hubble Space Telescope is also the "Hubble Time Machine". Light falling on the space telescope today left its source at some time in the past because images form when light hits a telescope and light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Light from the sun takes 8.3 minutes to reach the earth, so when we look at the sun, we are seeing it as it was 8.3 minutes ago. Because light from an object billions of miles away began its journey years ago, astronomical distances can be measured in "light-years", which is the distance light travels in a
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