Window on the Universe being Repaired
Yesterday the Space Shuttle Atlantis successfully took off on a mission to repair the Hubble telescope, in orbit 380 miles above Earth. This is the fifth repair and upgrade mission NASA has undertaken since Hubble’s launch in 1990.
Hubble has cost £7 billion so far and NASA hopes that this final mission will enable it to be fully operational for another 5 years when a replacement should be in orbit.
The Hubble telescope has not only expanded our knowledge of the universe, it has produced some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring images ever witnessed by mankind.
The famous Pillars of Creation is a photo Hubble took in 1995 of stars forming in the Eagle Nebula over 7,000 light years away.
Newborn stars are being created at the tips of enormous columns of gas and dust which are light-years long. Inside these gaseous towers the interstellar gas is so dense that it collapses under its own weight and forms young stars.
The stars grow as they accumulate more and more mass from their surroundings. Eventually the stars emerge from their EGGs (Evaporating Gaseous Globules), and a whole new life cycle begins.
Away from this cradle of stars Hubble has also trained it’s eye on some of the largest and oldest groups of stars in the universe ranging between 10 and 13 billion years old.
Peering into the sky for a distance of 28 million light years Hubble has taken some spectacular pictures of Messier 104. The Sombrero Galaxy lies at the southern edge of the Virgo cluster and is one of the largest in that group with a mind-boggling 800 billion suns.
With images like these Hubble is worth every penny on artistic merit alone!
Marathon Runner, Drinker and Artist, Blogging for Pleasure and Profit.
Wow, brilliant post, John, and such fantastic pictures!
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
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John,
A very informative post and brilliant pictures, amazing !!!!
Thank you
Margaret
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Mandy and Margaret,Thanks for leaving such positive comments. I have seen these pictures, (and plenty of others!) before, but I was glad this blog introduced Hubble photos to a wider audience.
John
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Hi John!
WOW. I have NOT seen these photos before but they are really impressive. I love things like this but I find it very hard to conceptualise things like “so dense they collapse in on themselves”. Totally outside my imagination range sadly. But it never stops me trying to understand.
I am one of the people who actually READ S Hawkins “A Brief history of Time” and understood all of it right up until the last chapter, which exploded my head. Thank goodness there are people in the world who can interpret these pictures – but for those of us who can’t, they really are stunning!
Susan
Well done reading ‘Brief History of Time’ Susan, (I am the other person who read it):O) My head blew up with his 2001 sequel; ‘The Universe in a Nutshell’, I got about half way before reaching data overload. John[Reply]
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