– The Hubble opened up a new universe literally. Hubble is positioned outside the atmosphere, which disturbs observations in ground-based astronomy. Man is not dependent on day and night, and finally Hubble see radiation does not reach the ground and provides additional information about the objects you look far out, says SOLFORSK Pål Brekke of the Norwegian Space Centre said.
During of 25 years, Hubble passed 110,000 times around the Earth – a distance equivalent to 32 trips to the sun. Using the optical telescope is more than 1 million observations, among them also the observations of the galaxies located farthest from the Earth, the oldest galaxies known to humanity.
Five major discoveries
Discovery News Ranks Hubble five biggest discoveries so:
* Hubble was to determine age of the universe to 13.75 billion years.
* Hubble contributed to the discovery of that 70 percent of the universe consists of dark matter – which we still do not quite know what is.
* Through Hubble, astronomers could see a galaxy being eaten up by a supermassive black hole.
* Hubble has given us the opportunity to give us images of planets orbiting distant stars.
* Hubble has helped to reduce the margin of error in the Hubble constant to below 5 percent. Hubble constant is similar to telescope named after astronomer Erwin Hubble and is a measure of how fast galaxies are moving away from each other.
Had to have glasses
US NASA and the European Space Agency ESA collaborated on the telescope that was designed already in the 70s. But the disappointment was great when the work was finally going to show their capacities. A tiny error in the grinding of the mirror gave blur on the longest distances. Grinding error was more than 100 times smaller than a human hair, yet enough.
– A unique set of lenses were built and installed during the first repair mission by space shuttle in 1993. Equipped with “glasses” got telescope sharp vision and opened a new universe, says Pål Brekke.
Still flagship
Five repair missions have upgraded and made telescope better than it was at launch. 25-year-old is scheduled to be replaced by the new space telescope James Web. But the next generation space telescope has been significantly delayed.
– Hubble will remain the flagship as long as it manages to stay afloat. Now there is no more repair missions, so Hubble will slowly but surely go under. If you are lucky and nothing breaks on Hubble, one will be able to keep the telescope operating in 4-5 years, says Brekke said.
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