ASTRO GALAXY: Hubble Space Telescope

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Hubble Space Telescope

Recently, I've taken a great interest in Astronomy.
The star, galaxies, nebules are all very fascinating to me.
Brought a few books on Astronomy and noticed that a lot of images I've seen were produced by this Hubble Space Telescope(HST).

Hubble Data :
Length : 13.2m (44ft)
Diameter : 4.2m (14ft) without solar arrays, 12.0m (40ft) with solar arrays
Mass : 11.1 tonnes
Orbit : 569km (355 miles) above earth
Speed : 28,000kph (17,500mph)

Shuttle mission STS-31 successfully launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit on 24 April 1990!

Hubble was named after Edwin Powell Hubble (American Astronomer)
Born : 20 November 1889
He studied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Chicago and earned a Bachelor of science degree in 1910.
Later he studied law at Oxford University.
After World War I, he returned to the University of Chicago and obtained his doctorate degree in 1917.
Edwin Hubble formulated the "Hubble's law", a statement in physical cosmology that the redshift in light coming from distant galaxies is proportional to their distance.
Giving us a measurement of the time scale of the universe.
At age 64, he died of a heart attack on September 28, 1953, in San Marino, California.

Servicing of Hubble :
Another service date for Hubble is set on 8 October 2008.
Hubble are said to be in function until at least 2013.
Its successor is James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

One light-year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one year.
Light travels about 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second.
One light year is approx. 5,874,589,152,000 miles.
One light year is also approx. 9,454,254,955,000 kilometers.
The followings images belongs to NASA taken by Hubble Space Telescope.
I've selected out a few of my favourites images.

Crab Nebula, NGC 1952
Distance from Earth : 6,500 light years away