Happy birthday Hubble! Telescope going strong after 25 years

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Happy birthday Hubble! Telescope going strong after 25 years
Irene Klotz, Reuters
First posted: Thursday, April 23, 2015 03:31 PM EDT
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA on Thursday marked the silver anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope with fireworks, of a celestial kind, conveyed by the orbiting observatory itself.
To commemorate Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990, NASA selected a picture of a stellar nursery located about 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina.
"This is really an exciting week for astronomers and people who love astronomy all over the world," said Hubble scientist Jennifer Wiseman at a televised anniversary celebration at the Newseum in Washington, DC.
From its orbital perch 547 km above Earth, Hubble's sharp eye can distinguish individual stars in the cluster, which is teeming with about 3,000 newborns. With its infrared vision, Hubble also can peep inside cocoons of dust and gas where even more stars are forming.
This visualization shows a three-dimensional view of nebula Gum 29 with star cluster Westerlund 2 at its core.
Learning about the lifecycle of stars was one of the reasons Hubble was built. By operating above distortions and blocking effects of Earth's atmosphere, astronomers hoped to look farther back in time, at generations of stars and galaxies that formed closer to the Big Bang, some 13.7 billion years ago.
The 50-year development effort nearly ended after Hubble's launch, when NASA discovered a manufacturing flaw in the telescope's 2.4-metre diameter mirror. Corrective optics, installed by space-walking astronauts, saved the day in 1993, the first of five servicing calls by space shuttle crews.
"We never thought it would last this long," said NASA administrator and former astronaut Charlie Bolden, the pilot on the mission that launched Hubble.
This animation outlines the constellations Carina, Vela, Crux and Musca before zooming in toward nebula Gum 29.
Many of the telescope's most important discoveries turned out to be in areas that didn't even exist when it was launched. Hubble's observations of a particular kind of exploded star helped astronomers realize that the pace of the universe's expansion is ramping up, propelled by some unknown force referred to as 'dark energy.'
Hubble also has imaged a planet beyond the solar system and scanned other planets' atmospheres for telltale chemical fingerprints. The first so-called exoplanet was discovered in 1992, two years after Hubble's launch.
"Hubble has fundamentally changed our human understanding of our universe," Bolden said.
NASA hopes to keep Hubble operating through 2020 to overlap with its infrared successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in October 2018.
A stellar nursery of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2 located about 20,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Carina in a photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope released April 23, 2015. (NASA)


HubbleSite - NewsCenter - Hubble Space Telescope Celebrates 25 Years of Unveiling the Universe (04/23/2015) - Release Videos
HubbleSite - NewsCenter - Hubble Space Telescope Celebrates 25 Years of Unveiling the Universe (04/23/2015) - Release Videos
Happy birthday Hubble! Telescope going strong after 25 years | Video | World | N
 
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Canada plays 'critical role' in building next space telescope
Nicole Ireland, Postmedia Network
First posted: Sunday, April 26, 2015 07:00 AM EDT
As the Hubble Space Telescope turns 25, Canadians are at the forefront of building its successor.
Since the space shuttle Discovery released it into orbit in April 1990, the Hubble has "transformed the way scientists look at the universe," according to NASA, giving visual proof to astronomical theories and allowing scientists to take a close look at stars and galaxies far beyond our solar system.
The Hubble also made the wonders of the universe more accessible to the public through the iconic images it transmitted back to Earth, says Ray Jayawardhana, astronomy professor and dean of science at York University in Toronto.
On mobile? Click here to watch the video

This visualization shows a three-dimensional view of nebula Gum 29 with star cluster Westerlund 2 at its core.​
"(The photos) fuelled the imagination of the ordinary person," Jayawardhana said in an interview with Postmedia Network. "You can't help but be ... awed by them."
While the Hubble telescope is expected to continue wowing both scientists and the public in the near future, its parts will eventually wear out.
To replace it, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is working with NASA and the European Space Agency to build the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in October 2018. Billed as the most complex and powerful telescope ever built, it will allow astronomers to peer even farther into the universe. The Webb telescope will use infrared light to see stars and galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago -- the estimated age of the universe that the Hubble telescope helped determine — and study how they evolved, the CSA says.
Jayawardhana is "incredibly excited" about the next-generation telescope and the opportunity to look at some of the very first galaxies.
Even more exciting, he says, are the "discoveries we don't even imagine at the moment."
On mobile? Click here to watch the video

This animation outlines the constellations Carina, Vela, Crux and Musca before zooming in toward nebula Gum 29.​
For example, Jayawardhana's own field of research — exoplanets, or planets around other stars — only developed after the Hubble telescope confirmed their existence.
Unlike the Hubble telescope, which orbits about 550 kilometres above Earth, the Webb telescope will be positioned in deep space -- about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Although that will allow the Webb to capture images the Hubble couldn't, it also means it will be out of reach for servicing, and it has an estimated maximum lifespan of 10 years.
Like the Hubble, the Webb space telescope will serve scientists around the world. However, according to the CSA, Canadian astronomers are guaranteed a share of observation time because the country is contributing scientific instruments to the telescope.
Those contributions include the Fine Guidance Sensor, which will help the telescope accurately target objects in space to gather data, and the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, which can detect the earliest and most distant objects in the universe, as well as determine whether the atmosphere of a planet contains potential biological markers like water vapour, carbon dioxide and oxygen.
Jayawardhana, who is part of the Canadian team developing those instruments, says they can also assess climate conditions and even monitor weather changes on planets.
"Canada has a very direct and critical role (in creating the James Webb telescope)," he says.
"It's a fantastic time to be an astronomer in Canada."
Canada plays 'critical role' in building next space telescope | Canada | News |
 
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