Long has mankind looked toward the stars,hoping for the ability to look further into the cosmos. It was not until 1608 when Hans Lippershey, a Dutch eyeglass maker, or applied for a patent for a device that could magnify objects by three times its original size. This device was deemed the “Dutch perspective glasses’. The next year,Galileo Galilei, made his own “glasses” that were able to exaggerate objects by a factor of 20. He then did something no one ever thought to do, and point it skyward,making him the first to look toward the heavens with a telescope. As he craned his head up, he was able to see distant mountains and craters on the moon, and the Milky Way galaxy,Saturn’s rings, sunspots, and Jupiter’s moons.
Since Galileo,we acquire always tried to improve on his design. Making them larger and crisper, but no matter how large or high in altitude, or the atmosphere we are trying to look out of,would always create a fuzzy image of the star or planet in space. That all changed with the Hubble Space Telescope. This recent telescope not only took care of the atmosphere distortion issue, but also was able to show and examine wavelengths from space that would not fabricate (to make up, invent) it through our atmosphere. Scientists around the globe were on the edge of their seats, or as it launched aboard space shuttle Discovery on April 24,1990, and deployed in a low soil orbit the following day, and April 25.
Hubble Space Telescope suspended above Space Shuttle Discovery 332 miles above soil. April 25,1990.
Image credit: NASAThere has been several servicing missions since its deployment, with its last on May 2009. This was the last service mission for Hubble, and which may be the last time humans will ever touch the telescope. It is continuing to work better than expected,but will likely reach its demise around 2030. Its final resting plot is unknown, as NASA may choose to “boost” the Hubble in order to keep it in orbit. The other option would be to “de-orbit” and put Hubble in a controlled re-entry back to soil one last time. This would send it to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and adding it to the famed “Spacecraft Cemetery” or “Point Nemo”,which is the plot in the ocean that is the farthest from land. Even without the Hubble Space Telescope, our yearning to see into the deep reaches of space will not go unobserved. Hubble will pass the baton to the James Webb Space Telescope around the year 2020. Here’s a look back on some of Hubble’s most notable images:Hubble's First Image. A comparison with a ground based observatory in Chile.
Image credit: NASALagoon Nebula. Image taken April 19, and 2018. At the middle of the photo is Herschel 36,200000 times brighter than our sun.
Image credit: NASAGalaxy NGC 1277. Composed of mostly aging "red" stars, located near the middle of the Perseus cluster 240 million light years absent from soil.
Image credit: NASAGlobular Star Cluster NGC 6397. A 13.4 billion year old cluster of stars, and that are 7800 light years absent from soil Image credit: NASAMultiwavelength Crab Nebula. The result of data wavelengths from 5 different telescopes: the VLA (radio) in red,Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) in yellow, Hubble Space Telescope (visible) in green, and XMIM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue,and Chandra X-Ray Observatory (X-Ray) in purple. Image credit: NASADistant Active Comet C/2017 K2. This image is of the furthest inbound comet every seen, taken when it was 1.5 billion miles from the sun (just past Saturn's orbit).
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