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Best of the Hubble Space Telescope

June 10th 2009 10:50

The Hubble Space telescope was based on a simple idea – to get a powerful lens up above the clouds and atmosphere that get in the way of earth bound telescopes. Over the last 20 years, some of the most incredible images of all time have been beamed down. In a few years the Hubble will be decommissioned and replaced, so let’s look back at the best of the hundred of thousands of Hubble images taken so far. These images and information taken from the Smithsonian Institute. See more pictures here.

Black Hole

The Earth’s gravitational pull is strong enough to hold its atmosphere and moon in place. The Sun’s gravity draws together the eight planets and numerous asteroids. But that’s nothing compared to the pull of a black hole, which is so powerful that light cannot escape. A black hole exists in the heart of our galaxy, and possibly all galaxies. This Hubble photograph shows dozens of galaxies bound together by the gravity of a supermassive black hole famous among astronomers for generating the most powerful outburst seen in the universe.

Supernova

What kind of star died on October 9, 1604? On that day, several observers spotted a supernova that was as bright as Mars. German astronomer Johannes Kepler was so taken with the sight that he wrote a book about it. Kepler’s supernova is thought to be the most recent star to explode in our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers combined the forces of the Hubble, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to see if they could identify the type of star that produced the explosion; they could not. But this rainbow photograph of the supernova remnant combines all the images. The different colors represent infrared radiation (red), visible light (yellow), and X-rays (blue/green).

Light Echo

The light from a distant sun can take thousands of years to reach Earth. Looking at the night sky is like watching ghosts—some of the stars may have burnt out long ago. In 2004, Hubble captured a light burst from the star V838 Monocerotis, a red supergiant on the outer edge of our Milky Way. The light pulse, which illuminates the dust clouds surrounding the star, took place 20,000 years ago.

Mars Up Close

Every 26 months, Mars and Earth have a close encounter. Earth travels around the Sun twice as fast as Mars and since both planets have an elliptical orbit, these encounters differ in distance each time. Hubble caught the red planet on one of these fly bys, when Mars was just 55 million miles away. This color image taken within 36 hours of the approach shows Mars free of any dust storms, but with noticeable cloud cover in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Hubble Constant

This picture of the pinwheel-like galaxy NGC 1309 helped astronomers more accurately measure the universe’s rate of expansion, original discovered in 1929 by Edwin Hubble, the space telescope’s namesake. By measuring supernova explosions, scientists have been able to determine that this expansion is accelerating, because galaxies like NGC 1309 are moving away ever faster.

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Posted By: Ian - Category: satellite & space

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