Tag: Hubble

Great Eyes, Lidless.

“The biggest building boom in the history of astronomy is upon us. In Chile and Hawaii and in space, astronomers are getting powerful telescopes that dwarf the current state-of-the-art instruments. When the mountain blasting and the mirror polishing are all done, we will have the clearest and most detailed views of outer space ever.”

By way of Follow Me Here, Gizmodo looks at five massive telescopes that will change the game, including the James Webb Space Telescope, a.k.a. Hubble 2.0. “Since blowing past its initial budget and launch data, NASA promises the ambitious project is on-track for 2018. And it better, because astronomers are eagerly awaiting its data.”

The Secret Life of Hubble.

“Hubble has made over a million observations since launch, but only a small proportion are attractive images — and an even smaller number are ever actually seen by anyone outside the small groups of scientists that publish them. But the vast amount of data in the archive means that there are still many hundreds of beautiful images scattered among the valuable, but visually unattractive, scientific data that have never been enjoyed by the public.“

Until now. NASA uses crowdsourcing to unveil “Hubble’s hidden treasures”. The impressive pic above is “NGC 1763, part of the N11 star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud,” submitted by one Josh Lake.

Distant Mirrors, and a Devouring Hunger.


“‘This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin,’ said Douglas Hudgins, a scientist with the Kepler program…Kepler-22b, located about 600 light years away, has a radius 2.4 times bigger than the Earth, making it the smallest planet ever found in the middle of the habitable zone around a star.” Among the several fascinating announcements in astronomy in recent weeks (including Hubble passing the 10,000th mission mark), scientists announce the discovery of a faraway habitable planet, Kepler-22b. “Scientists don’t yet know whether it is a rocky, gaseous or liquid-covered planet.” But, don’t worry — the Air Force has top men looking into the situation. Top…men.

Moreover, just today scientists announced the discovery of two Earth-sized planets — Kepler 20e and Kepler 20f. “‘For the first time, we’ve crossed the threshold of finding Earth-size worlds,’ Torres says. ‘The next step is having an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone.’” And apparently Kepler 20f may have once had water, not unlike a planet closer to home…

“This is the single most bullet-proof observation that I can think of that we’ve made this entire mission regarding the liquid water.” Something to consider if we don’t manage to tackle global warming by 2006 — the prior existence of water on Mars is further confirmed through a trail of gypsum left within an ancient rock. “Both the chemistry and the structure ‘just scream water,’ Squyres added.“

And, on a grander scale, astronomers have begun to uncover supermassive black holes (no, not those ones) at the centers of galaxies. These are “the biggest, baddest black holes yet found in the universe, abyssal yawns 10 times the size of our solar system into which billions of Suns have vanished like a guilty thought.” In other words, plenty of room for Maximillian Schell to get lost in there…Tread carefully.

Into the Murky Deep.


“It is a smudge of light only a tiny fraction of the size of our own Milky Way galaxy, and it existed when the universe was only 480 million years old…If confirmed, the discovery takes astronomers deep into an era when stars and galaxies were first lighting up the universe and burning their way out of a primordial fog known as the dark ages.“

From a few days ago: The Hubble — also the subject of an excellent IMAX-3D movie I saw on Saturday — (probably) finds the oldest, farthest galaxy yet discovered. “Spectroscopic observations with the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope, however, are needed to cement the identification of the smudge as a galaxy…The Webb telescope, which is expected to be launched later this decade once NASA figures out how to pay for it, has been designed to find these primordial galaxies and thus illuminate the dark ages.”

Twenty Years of Hubble.

“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.” Let’s not forget Hubble too: As of today, Humankind’s first great orbital telescope turns 20. And to think we’re only at the beginning… [Greatest hits | A brief history of orbiting observatories | what’s next.]

The Other End of the Telescope.


“‘Houston, Hubble has been released,’ Atlantis commander Scott Altman radioed Mission Control. ‘It’s safely back on its journey of exploration as we begin the steps to conclude ours.” The crew of STS-125 re-release the Hubble into high orbit, their epic repair-and-upgrade mission accomplished. “‘We have literally thousands of astronomers out there around the world waiting to use these new capabilities,’ Morse said. ‘And they are chomping at the bit to get their data.‘” Great work, Atlantis.

Update: Spiffy pic above — and many more like it — courtesy of Boston.com‘s The Big Picture and Hal at Blivet.

On the Dark Side.

Using the thankfully soon-to-be-refurbished Hubble, astronomers find more evidence of “dark energy” in the early universe working along the lines of Einstein’s famous fudge factor, the cosmological constant, to combat a gravitational crunch. “‘Dark energy makes us nervous,’ said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the supernova study. ‘It fits the data, but it’s not what we really expected.’“

Griffin in the door?

Finally, a Dubya nominee I can get behind. At his confirmation hearing, Michael Griffin — the administration’s pick for head of NASA — suggests the Hubble may still be worth saving. “Griffin, a physicist-engineer who holds six advanced degrees, is known as a devotee of human space travel and a firm advocate of Bush’s ‘Vision for Space Exploration’ aimed at the moon and Mars…He bluntly expressed his intention to lead a resurgence in American ‘spacefaring,’ noting that Russia and China had both put humans into space since the space shuttle last flew.”