Hubble - A Beautiful Space Telescope

Hubble telescope

The Hubble space telescope is a large telescope in space. It was launched into orbit by space shuttle discovery on April 24, 1990. Hubble orbits about 547 kilometres (340 miles) above Earth. It is length of a large school bus and weighs as much as two adult elephants. 

Hubble travels about 5 miles per second. That is like traveling from eastern coast of the united states to the western in 10 mins. Hubble is solar-powered.

What does it do?

Hubble is made to take sharp pictures of object in the sky such as planets, stars and galaxies. Hubble has made more than one million observations.

 These include detailed picture of the birth and death of stars, galaxies billions of light years away, and comet pieces crashing into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Scientist have learned a lot about the universe from these pictures. Many of the, are beautiful to look at.

What makes Hubble different from telescope on earth?

Earth’s atmosphere alters and blocks the light that comes from space. Hubble orbits above Earth’s atmosphere, which gives it a better view of the universe than telescope have at ground level.

Important discoveries by Hubble telescope

1 - Images taken by Hubble have helped scientists estimate the age and size of the universe. Scientists believe the universe is almost 14 billion years old.

2- Hubble has helped scientists understand how planets and galaxies form. An image called “Hubble Ultra Deep Field” shows the farthest galaxies even seen.

3- Hubble has detected black holes, which suck in everything around them, including light.

 4- The telescope has played a key role in discovery of dark energy, a mysterious force that causes the universe to expand faster and faster as time goes on. And it has revealed details of gamma-ray bursts – powerful explosions of energy that occur when massive stars collapse.

5- Hubble has also studied the atmospheres of planets revolving around stars like earth’s sun.

Hubble’s new mission to study early galaxies: - NASA’s report

The Hubble Space Telescope has started a new mission to study six massive galaxy clusters that may help shed light on how the earliest galaxies evolved in the universe, NASA said. Learning about the formation and evolution of the very first galaxies in the universe is crucial for our understanding of the cosmos. While the Hubble space Telescope has already detected some of the most distant galaxies known, their number are small, making it hard for astronomers to determine if they represent the universal at large.

Initial observation from the beyond ultra -deep frontier fields and legacy observations (BUFFALO) survey show the galaxy cluster Abell 370 and a host of magnified, gravitationally lensed galaxies about it. Massive galaxy clusters like Abell 370 can help astronomers find more of these distant objects.

3D mapping

BUFFALO’S main mission is to investigate how and when the most massive and luminous galaxies in the universe formed and how early galaxy formation is linked to dark matter assembly. This will allow astronomers to determine how rapidly galaxies formed in the first 800 million years after the Big Bang—paving the way of observation with the upcoming James Webb space telescope.

BUFFALO will be able to detect the most distant galaxies approximately ten times more efficiently than its progenitor. It will also take advantage of other space telescope which have already observed the regions around the clusters. These datasets will be included in the search for the first galaxies. The extended fields of view will also allow better 3D mapping of the mass distribution--- of both ordinary and dark matter—within each galaxy cluster. These maps help astronomers learn more about evolution of the lensing galaxy clusters and about the nature of dark matter.

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