Doran 1
John Doran
Mr. Jurgens
English
April 4th, 2014
The Hubble Space Telescope
Centuries ago, people gazed into the night sky wondering what it was that they were looking at. When astronomers first started to study the night sky, like Galileo, Copernicus and even modern day astronomers, they all shared one goal, and that was to see further than anyone has ever before. The invention of the Hubble Space Telescope changed the study of astronomy forever. Astronomers were seeing and learning more in just days of the launch of the telescope than past astronomers had in their lifetimes. The Hubble Space Telescope is the most technologically advanced telescope to enter space. Its advanced technology has made it possible to obtain countless amounts of data about space and open many doors in the exploration of space. Its accuracy has and still is proving/debunking the myths of space.
Once NASA was given the right to start constructing The Hubble Space Telescope, or paraphrased as the HST, it cost $1.5 billion dollars to construct. The length of this massive piece of technology is 43.5ft long( 13.2m). The HST has a diameter of 14ft(4.2m) that allows it to store its hard drives, processors and other fragile technical organs inside the telescope. With its metal base, solar panels, mirrors and etc. protecting the telescopes fragile insides from floating space debris, the HST weighs in at 24,500 pounds, 11,110Kg(“The Telescope”).
Doran 2
The most technologically advanced part about the telescope is its mirrors and optical capturing system. “The HST is a large reflecting telescope whose mirror optics gather light from c...
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... with the rate at which the universe is accelerating, allows us to calculate how long it took for them to reach their current locations. The answer is about 14 billion years. The second method involves measuring the ages of the oldest star clusters. Globular star clusters orbiting our Milky Way are the oldest objects we have found and a detailed analysis of the stars they contain tells us that they formed about 13 billion years ago. The good agreement between these two very different methods is an encouraging sign that we are honing in on the universe’s true age.” Dark Energy is a theoretical repulsive force that counteracts gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. More is unknown than known about Dark Energy. There had been many theories about Dark Energy before HST, but no one had hard evidence. The HST provided evidence
lifetime. Some of Edwin Hubble's greatest accomplishments were: Edwin Hubble proposed a classification system for nebulae, which are fuzzy little patches of light that are up in the sky. He discovered a variable star, called the Cepheid. It is located in the Andromeda Nebulae. Edwin Hubble settled decisively the question of the nature of the galaxies. Edwin Hubble's distribution of galaxies was determined to be homogeneous in distance. Edwin wanted to classify the galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and pattern of brightness. By observing redshifts Edwin saw that galaxies were moving away from each other at a rate constant to the distance between them (this is known as Hubble's Law).
Milovic, Carlos, Hubble Legacy Archive and NASA. "Astronomy Picture of the Day." 29 October 2012. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131015.html. Photograph. 1 Dec. 2013.
In the article from the official NASA website, NASA gives a list of Hubble’s accomplishments, which gives the reader a comprehensive picture of Hubble’s importance. Hubble has not only given astronomers the most detailed images of outer-space in existence, but also taug...
Edwin Hubble was born on November 20, 1889. He graduated from the University of Chicago and served in WWI before he settled down to lead research in the field of astrophysics at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Edwin Hubble revolutionized the field of astrophysics through the discovery that there are other galaxies outside of the Milky Way as well as the creation of a classification system which is used to identify the various types of galaxies.
Anonymous. (1998). A closer look at Hubble's Variable Nebula. Sky and Telescope, 95, 24-25. Retrieved April 17, 2016, from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/ehost/detail/detail?sid=e3eaa20f-cd07-4589-9e1a-64af362890ae%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4207&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d&preview=false#AN=170864&db=f5h
Tyler, Pat. Supernova. NASA’s Heasarc: Education and Public Information. 26 Jan. 2003. 22 Nov. 2004
Nasa’s Chandra x-ray observatory was launched on July 23, 1999, and with a length of 45 feet is the largest satellite ever launched. The observatory was first proposed to NASA in 1976, funding began in 1977, and after more than 20 years it was finally launched into space. It was previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), but after a contest in 1998 it was renamed to Chandra after Nobel-prize winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. “Chandra's main mission is to teach us about the Universe that we live in which has indirect benefits, e.g. by inspiring students to take an interest in math and physics, or showing people how complicated and beautiful the Universe is.”(Chandra’s official website, faq)The Chandra x-ray Science Center (CXC) can be found in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Harvey Tananbaum is the Center’s director. The flight is directed by the Science Control Center that also executes the observing plan of the observatory, and receives the scientific data. The mission planning and service operations are the responsibility of Science Support. Chandra is the most sophisticated telescope in space and is used by scientists around the world. The observatory exists of three major parts, the x-ray telescope, the science instruments and the spacecraft. The electrical power required to operate the spacecraft and the instruments is 2 kilowatt that is how much it takes to operate a hair dryer. The Chandra observatory orbits up to an altitude of approximately 139,000km that is about a third of the distance to the moon and returns it to 16,000km away from the Earth. It takes Chandra 64 hours and 18 minutes to complete an orbit that is about two and a half days. In 1992 Chandra’s orbit ...
Nancy Grace Roman has researched fascinating phenomena, made amazing discoveries, and started several projects that have changed the way the field of astronomy works. In 1955 as one of her first major research projects, Dr. Roman was part of a team that documented new “spectral types photoelectric magnitudes and colors and spectroscopic parallaxes for about 600 high-velocity stars.” (Roman, 1955, p. 195) Dr. Nancy Grace Roman was also the one who discovered that stars similar to the earth’s sun demonstrated subtle differences from other stars in the same class. (Roman, 2013, p. 2) This discovery led into her research in radio astronomy, where she also determined that Sagittarius A was a composite source instead of the galactic center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Dr. Roman did this by comparing her own measurements of the galactic center region that she acquired using radar with her colleague’s measurements, that he obtained using a shorter wavelength. (Roman, 2013, p. 3) But perhaps Dr. Roman’s greatest known accomplishment as an astronomer is her work with the Hubble Telescope project. During her time at NASA, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman was in charge of the early planning and development of the Hubble Telescope. (Roman, n.d.) Roman also created the program structure for the project, as well as convince Congress to approve of the program and its funding. (Roman,
The Hubble Telescope is the world’s first space-based optical telescope. The Hubble telescope received its name from American astronomer Dr. Edwin P. Hubble. Dr. Hubble confirmed an ever expanding universe which provided the basic foundation of the Big Bang theory. The first concept of the Hubble telescope came from Lyman Spitzer in 1946 who at that time was a professor and researcher at Yale University, Professor Spitzer believed that Earth’s atmosphere blurs and distorts light and a space orbited telescope would be able to surpass this problem. He spent nearly all of his life dedicated to making this concept into a reality. (http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/hubble_essentials/)
Back on Earth 99 years ago on July 23, 2015, NASA’s Kepler telescope confirmed the first Earth sized planet in the “habitable zone” in relation to its star. The orbit is not close enough that it’s too hot and it’s not far enough that it’s too cold. It’s in just the right place where liquid water can exist and life can thrive. This made the planet, at the time named Kepler-186f, unique from the other 1000 exoplanets discovered by the Kepler telescope. People of that time thought nothing of this; but it would come to mean so much more.
At Goddard Space Center scientists have been working have been working on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which is the most largest and complex project NASA has launched. Astronauts and the public have high expectations on this project. The telescope will be able to study when the earliest galaxies formed, the birth of stars and the formation of their solar systems, atmospheres of planets outside our solar system. Many things can go bad during the launch and unlike The Hubble Telescope the JWST will be too far away from Earth to fix if any difficulties happen. A goal is to see infrared light and we can’t see that on Earth because Earth’s atmosphere blocks it by the time it gets to Earth. Everything it needs to work correctly and collect
Many scientists currently believe that dark energy is a new part of the law of gravity. So, by fully understanding dark energy, gravity could be modified to become more exact. Moreover, understanding how dark energy works could help further understand many of the particles and their interactions, which could revolutionize particle physics and everything occurring at CERN. In general, the physics fields will be evolved by my work with dark
The reason the Hubble telescope is so revolutionary is because it is the first telescope in the world to be sent to space (“Hubble Essentials”). Before the Hubble, telescopes had not been able to capture space with such accuracy and precision—the atmosphere was in the way. Atmospheric distortion was the cause of many high functioning telescopes to suddenly cease to work because pockets of air in the atmosphere distorted the telescope images, and even aerospace engineers could not find a solution.
The refracting telescope is one of many different types of telescope. Refracting telescopes work by refracting the light through an initial convex lens, (known as the objective lens), then through another convex lens (known as the eyepiece lens). These two lenses focus the light into the eyepiece so we can see the image clearly.
These mission doubled during this time than in the last decade (Dunbar). NASA began to see various different possibilities throughout this decade. From missions to discoveries, the United States felt proud of its accomplishments throughout the decade. The introduction of the Hubble Telescope was accomplishment in space exploration. It was one of the first missions done by NASA and according to them has “been attributed with expanding our understanding of star birth and death, and has transitioned black holes from scientific theory to fact