Hubble Telescope: 25 Years Of Stunning Images
In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 25th year in low-Earth orbit, InformationWeek has taken a selection of some of the craft's most stunning and awe-inspiring photos, which explore the far reaches of our galaxy and beyond -- pictures that truly define the phrase "out of this world."
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The Hubble Space Telescope was less than a rousing success when it first launched a quarter of a century ago, but the problems that first plagued the massive craft have been rightfully eclipsed by the stunning accomplishments of the telescope --which has transformed our understanding of the solar system and beyond.
Now, on the 25th anniversary of the launch -- April 24, 1990 -- we mere mortals have a chance to looking back at more than two-decades of stunning images of the universe.
Named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble, the telescope cost $1.5 billion at launch and is powered by two, 25-foot solar panels.
Among its many discoveries, Hubble is credited with finding the age of the universe -- 13.7 billion years old, in case you were wondering -- four moons around the dwarf planet Pluto, the first organic molecule discovered on a planet outside our solar system, and the rate of expansion of the universe.
While the technical and scientific discoveries of the Hubble are undoubtedly impressive, it is the stunning cache of images that the telescope has amassed over the years that captures a worldwide audience.
One of the key companies involved in the production of those images is Ball Technologies, which has been involved in the Hubble program since the beginning and has provided a total of seven science instruments on the telescope over the past 25 years, including the pioneering optics responsible for Hubble's iconic images and discoveries.
A selection of the company's favorite images is included here, as well as a survey of some of the Hubble's most iconic snapshots, which take viewers not only through space, but also back in time.
In addition, to a retrospective of the telescope's most stunning images, NASA is celebrating the Hubble's 25th anniversary with a variety of events highlighting its groundbreaking achievements and scientific contributions with activities running from now through April 26.
In one particularly impressive display, images taken by the Hubble telescope will be broadcast several times each hour on dual-LED screens in Times Square in New York City, through April 26.
"My favorite image was, and still is, the Hubble Ultra-Deep-Field image. To take the image, astronomers looked at photographic images taken with the best telescope that was then available to locate a very small patch on the sky where apparently nothing existed," Robert Arentz, manager of advanced systems at Ball Aerospace and an unofficial company historian, said on the occasion of the 25th anniversary.
Arnetz noted his second favorite Hubble image shows something that's called the Whirlpool Galaxy. "It's twice as big as our galaxy is, and the image shows hundreds of billions of stars, and it also shows hundreds of places inside the Whirlpool galaxy where thousands of new stars are being born today," he explained.
This image is a presentation of data from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), which Ball built and Dennis Ebbets, an astronomer and senior business development manager for the company, worked on for many years. It represents the most definitive proof of the existence of a supermassive black hole in the nucleus of a galaxy.
Centered near the location of the Pathfinder landing site, this image, taken in 1999, highlights dark sand dunes that surround the polar cap, which merge into a large, dark region called Acidalia. Below and to the left of Acidalia are the Martian canyon systems of Valles Marineris, some of which form long linear markings that were once thought by some to be canals.
Shot in 2009 with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) using both ultraviolet and visible light, this spectacular image depicts roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour -- but at this distance, the effect brings to mind more a graceful celestial butterfly than the massive explosion of a dying star.
The sharpest view ever taken of the Orion Nebula offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where more than 3,000 stars are forming. While the Orion Nebula is still 1,500 light-years away, it remains the nearest star-forming region to Earth. The faint red stars near the bottom are myriad brown dwarfs -- objects that are too large to be called planets and too small to be stars -- that Hubble spied for the first time in the nebula in visible light.
Just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility lies the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104), a brilliant white bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from home, the galaxy appears almost perfectly edge-on, and is so named thanks to its hat-like appearance.
The gas giant's defining feature may well be its Great Red Spot -- larger than three whole Earths. But the roiling, cloud-choked atmosphere has also given birth to two smaller, similar storms, which were captured by Hubble in a series of images recorded in May 2009 with the telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 instruments.
The gas giant's defining feature may well be its Great Red Spot -- larger than three whole Earths. But the roiling, cloud-choked atmosphere has also given birth to two smaller, similar storms, which were captured by Hubble in a series of images recorded in May 2009 with the telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 instruments.
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