Happy Birthday, Hubble!

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In 1990, when Republican presidents still supported space projects that made sense, NASA launched into space the first telescope that could observe distant stars unimpeded by the blurring which the refraction of the Earth's athmosphere causes in terrestrial telescopes. At first, the project looked like billion dollar flop -- the manufacturer who ground its lense had overlooked a trivial optical effect, and as a result Hubble's first images were more, not less blurry, than those the telescopes on Earth. But the manufacturer managed to produce a spectacle for shortsighted Hubble, and a team of astronauts succeeded at installing it. Ever since, Hubble has supplied humanity with crisp and spectacular images of stellar phenomena almost as far away as it is theoretically possible to look, and almost as old as the the universe itself.

Sadly, Hubble probably won't survive the Bush presidency. The maintenance necessary to keep it going has been cut out of NASA's budget to make room for the project of landing a man on Mars. But it did a hell of a job while it lasted. To celebrate Hubble's greatness on its 15th birthday, Wired Magazine has published a collection of 15 of its most spectacular images. I enjoyed them a lot, so I thought I'd share them here.

http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/1996-38-b-web_print_f.11959.jpg

Happy birthday, Hubble!

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I love Hubble!

Gorgeous image, thanks.

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I actually saw the Hubble before it was launched. Had a buddy who worked in launch operations and he took me into a viewing area. The thing is huge. Seven stories tall. It fit in the shuttle's cargo bay with just inches to spare. They had to keep it in a cleanroom while it was constructed, one of the largest ever built at the time.

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I have a brother who sat on the committee that oversaw the construction of the mirror. Two were built and they randomly choose one for the launch model...ooops.

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Wow, those pictures are really cool. Thanks, Thomas.

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Sozobe and Kickycan -- you're very welcome, I love those images too!

Cjhsa -- that's cool, about visiting the Hubble before it was launched. I wish I could have been there as well.

Acquinunk -- do you happen to know if the other mirror would have worked? Judging by what I have heard about Hubble's history, it probably wouldn't. After all, the mirror was manufactured perfectly, to a higher standard of precision than any mirror before it. The bug was in the specification, which should have been the same for both mirrors. Needless to say, I could be wrong.

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Thomas

As it was explained to me, the other mirror would have worked. The excuses that I heard was that the manufacture set the grinding devisees at slightly different tolerance, fractions of a 100th of a millimeter, for each mirror thinking it would make no difference. There were instuments to test the mirror but by international agreement all technology,standards, and the systems that create technologies for space based science must be freely available to all (this is good science). The instruments that would test those mirrors were at the time used by the CIA and NSA to test mirrors for super sensitive spy satellites and they were "reluctant" to make them available. Rather than fight (and lose) that battle, they decided to randomly choose one, thinking that would reduce the risk of error. They chose the wrong one. After the fiasco the second mirror was tested and found to be acceptable.

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It seems as if Hubble will survive the Bush administration after all. Mike Griffin, the new NASA administrator, reversed his predecessor's decision to let the project die.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin today reinstated a final shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, deciding the scientific value of the orbiting icon justifies the additional cost - and risk - of a stand-alone shuttle flight. "We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to the shuttle manifest before it is retired," Griffi told managers and engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Full story

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Is it interesting to anyone why we find such pictures so astonishing and grant them our admiration?

As a picture it could be a lot of things even a computer generated image.

The objects in it, assuming the validity, which I do, gave off those visible rays, and some invisible ones, possibly before the earth was formed. Possibly before the galaxy it is in was formed in the way we know it. And it must perforce be a very tiny fraction of the sphere of vision we have. Objects to the left of the picture could possibly have ceased to exist before the objects to the right came into existence and were just further away. And the different speeds they are moving at is a factor determining the frequencies of the light as we see it.

Could it be we are simply admiring ourselves? Not that there's anything wrong with that of course. Our well evolved eye.

Photographs from inside cells are very similar.

Is what we see any sort of representation of reality?

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In your mind's eye.

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This is great news! Long live Hubble!

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Thomas wrote:

It seems as if Hubble will survive the Bush administration after all. Mike Griffin, the new NASA administrator, reversed his predecessor's decision to let the project die.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin today reinstated a final shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, deciding the scientific value of the orbiting icon justifies the additional cost - and risk - of a stand-alone shuttle flight. "We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to the shuttle manifest before it is retired," Griffi told managers and engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Full story

You know, that is one of the happiest things I have heard for some time!!!!

And, sounds like it is likely to get better.

.....A servicing mission would not only extend Hubble's lifetime to at least 2013 but would also see two powerful new instruments installed that would give Hubble unprecedented abilities.

One, called the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), can see a broad range of wavelengths including ultraviolet, visible and infrared and should be especially useful in studying the early universe. To make room for it, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which was installed on Hubble in 1993, would be removed.

WFC3's sensitivity and wide field of view would make it 15 to 20 times more efficient at searching for faint, distant galaxies than Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), which has previously been used for this sort of work.

Turning point
That would allow it to see fainter, more distant and more ancient objects than any previous Hubble instrument. Currently, there is tentative evidence it has observed objects that appear as they were about 800 million years after the big bang, says Hubble scientist Malcolm Niedner of NASA's Goddard space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US.

"With WFC3 all this would be a lot more definitive and crisper and in much greater numbers," he told New Scientist.

WFC3 would also be useful for trying to understand what caused primordial hydrogen gas to be stripped of its electrons early in the universe's history in a process called reionisation. This crucial turning point made the universe more transparent to light and affected the growth of early galaxies.

"The WFC3 infrared channel would be just the right instrument for this investigation and, in fact, perhaps the only way of studying the end of reionisation until the James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2013," says Massimo Stiavelli of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, US.

Restore vision
The second instrument that would be installed, called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), would measure the light spectrum of objects at ultraviolet wavelengths.

It would restore some abilities lost when Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) stopped working in 2004 (see Shelved instrument could restore Hubble's UV vision).

COS would be especially useful for studying the gas that floats between galaxies, Niedner says. This would help astronomers survey the diffuse gas in space and understand how star formation and supernovae have affected it. The instrument would also help astronomers study developing stars.

Martin Barstow, an astronomer at the University of Leicester, UK, and a member of Hubble's user committee, says a servicing mission would give Hubble "a dramatic new lease on life".

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn10410

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I had been having problems, just trying to understand why they would let Hubble die. It's wonderful news.

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Gee Ed- I hope that's the limit of your problems.

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You ain't one of them, spendius. Don't get your hopes up.

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I should hope not too Ed.

But I did ask this-

Quote:

Is it interesting to anyone why we find such pictures so astonishing and grant them our admiration?

That is a reasonable scientific question which goes to the core of the science/religion problem. As are the other points I raised about the amazing picture Thomas provided.

Simple gasps of awe and expressions of admiration at Hubble pictures seem quite similar to me to the gasps and admirations at religious icons and ceremonial which some people exhibit. Voluntary and enthusiastic acceptance of part of the cost have some similarity to self flagellation when the incessant drive for bargains is taken into account.

Anyone not interested in such matters is a very long way from having a scientific bent.

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spendius wrote:

I should hope not too Ed.

But I did ask this-

Quote:
Is it interesting to anyone why we find such pictures so astonishing and grant them our admiration?

That is a reasonable scientific question which goes to the core of the science/religion problem. As are the other points I raised about the amazing picture Thomas provided.

Simple gasps of awe and expressions of admiration at Hubble pictures seem quite similar to me to the gasps and admirations at religious icons and ceremonial which some people exhibit. Voluntary and enthusiastic acceptance of part of the cost have some similarity to self flagellation when the incessant drive for bargains is taken into account.

Anyone not interested in such matters is a very long way from having a scientific bent.

I have not read this thread. From what I understand of such pictures, they are helping unlock many mysteries of the universe, from its history, to fundamental structure questions. I am no scientist, so, of course, I don't have all the answers. What this has to do with the god argument is subjective, I would suppose.

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Yeah. The pictures are pretty but it's not their prettiness that is the point. The copious scientific data that has been, is being, and will be gleaned from them is the point.

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That is true sozobe but only to those who think it has a point.

I hasten to say I am one but others do express another view.

It certainly has a point to the businesses involved. Or as a symbol of our mighty achievements. Or even just as entertainment. (Your 'pretty').

Not everybody agrees that gleaning scientific data from we really know not of the whenwherehowwhy of is a waste of resources which might be more usefully employed on gleaning scientific date from sources we do know a bit about and which affect us. They are difficult to argue with. I have tried a few times. I had to fall back on those three reasons I just gave but I didn't make much headway. I've seen articles in prominent newspapers arguing about the pointlessness of the whole thing.

But they still amaze me. But not for long. Which is a bit like entertainment I have to admit. Then I am said to be selfish putting my entertainment before the other uses those resources could be used for and which we might all agree about.

And they for sure don't have a point simply because you say they do.

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spendius wrote:

That is true sozobe but only to those who think it has a point.

Exploration is the point. Figuring out things is a good thing in itself. It needs no point other than this. If this makes exploration a religion by your definition, be my guest. Galileo bless you.

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Happy Birthday, Hubble!

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