Chinahand Posted November 1, 2006 Share Posted November 1, 2006 I have to say I'm delighted that NASA has agreed to a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope which will keep it operating for another seven years. New Scientist Story NASA's most famous observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, will get a much anticipated life extension after all. "We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to the shuttle's manifest to be flown before it retires [in 2010]," Griffin said to applause at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US. "The Hubble Space Telescope has been the greatest telescope since Galileo invented the first one," said US Senator Barbara Mikulski, who pushed NASA to reconsider a final servicing mission. The servicing mission, if successful, could keep Hubble operational until at least 2013. Without a shuttle flight, Hubble's instruments would have eventually started to shut down. The gyroscopes that point Hubble and keep it steady could last until 2008 and the batteries until 2010. The telescope has told us alot about the Universe and our place in it ... and produced some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring images I have ever seen. Just remember every dot you can see in the Galaxies aren't individual stars, they're star clusters with 100 or more stars in them ... its a big old universe. Enjoy Edited to add link to Photo Gallery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Tatlock Posted November 1, 2006 Share Posted November 1, 2006 they're star clusters with 100 or more stars in them ... its a big old universe. Great pics. A 100 billion stars like our own, in 100 billion galaxies! And it would take you 30 billion years (at the speed of light) to travel across it. Mind boggling - enough to make you say 'f**k it - I don't believe in all that tosh, pass me a bible'. A hundred billion 'stars' each containing 100 billion stars - and people have the audacity to say 'we are the centre of the universe' and that 'god created us in his image'. People should look up more and get a grip on reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted November 1, 2006 Author Share Posted November 1, 2006 I think there are 5 stars in this picture: they have "starbursts" around them. And how many galaxies? Thousands! Every time you look up into the night sky and see 5 stars, just think how many galaxies there are out there invisible behind them. Some poor Phd has gone through every single one of Galaxies in this picture, undertaken a spectral analysis to get their red shift and as a result has found between 54 and 108 galaxies out of the thousands of Galaxies in the picture that are the oldest and most distant objects ever seen. These galaxies existed when the universe was between 500 million to one billion years old. Ain't science amazing. Detailed analyses of mankind's deepest optical view of the universe, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), by several expert teams have at last identified what may turn out to be some of the earliest star-forming galaxies. But even though Hubble has looked 95 percent of the way back to the beginning of time, astronomers agree that's not far enough. "For the first time, we at last have real data to address this final frontier — but we need more observations ... [of the] epoch of reionization [which] is thought to have ended 0.5 to one billion years after the big bang. Prior to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, astronomers did not have the sensitivity to accurately constrain the numbers of very distant sources at that epoch. The HUDF shows that close to a billion years after the big bang the early universe was filled with dwarf galaxies, but no fully formed galaxies like our Milky Way. After careful analysis, they have been sorted out as between 54 and 108 dim, red smudges sprinkled across the HUDF image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4mbi Posted November 1, 2006 Share Posted November 1, 2006 Completely awe inspiring. science 1 religion 0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Static Posted November 1, 2006 Share Posted November 1, 2006 Completely awe inspiring. science 1 religion 0 But surely something intelligent must have designed it all....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted November 1, 2006 Author Share Posted November 1, 2006 ... or maybe heaven is empty apart from a billion, billion, billion little demons all jiggling about in their self made chaos and the randomness and evolutionry paths we see are a result of their games. ... or nothing controls the universe, not the intelligent, or the random, the demonic or the divine and it just does what it does. One man's theology is another man's belly laugh ... now who said that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SugarBee Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 The Space Telescope Science Institute is located on the campus of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland!!!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
When Skies Are Grey Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 ... or maybe heaven is empty apart from a billion, billion, billion little demons all jiggling about in their self made chaos and the randomness and evolutionry paths we see are a result of their games. ... or nothing controls the universe, not the intelligent, or the random, the demonic or the divine and it just does what it does. One man's theology is another man's belly laugh ... now who said that? "It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure." -- Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Tatlock Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." Douglas Adams Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebees Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 Want a hubble telescope for christmas. Got Mr Bees one for his birthday in March...so far he has seen the people accross the road, thats it! no stars not even the moon, I think its a bit too fancy for either of us to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bombay Bad Boy Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 Microsoft to withdraw support for Universe 1.0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the mo beats experience Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 You know the butterfly effect? Well this happened last week, the day after i had beans on toast. Cheers for drawing our attention to this China, truly awesome images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matty Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 Some awsome images from Hubble - I'm also glad Nasa are into giving it a '25000 mile service' - it was thought the the shuttle might have been 'canned' after recent failures, but I'm very happy to see construction of the ISS resuming, and this recent news about Hubble is a complete bonus!!! If only the US could spend some more of their debt on Nasa, instead of killing people & stealing oil!!!!!! Oooh - and spend a bit on reducing world poverty! The ISS is going through a recent phase of being easily 'spotted' in the night sky - ISS fanclub website there's a tracking utility on the website, so you can get an idea of when it might be overhead - I've seen it a few times & been amazed at the speed it travels across the sky - have also made contact via the onboard packet digipeater a number of times (ham radio stuff - if you're interested, PM me). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gladys Posted November 6, 2006 Share Posted November 6, 2006 Beautiful, just beautiful. The Eagle Nebula is the most mind-blowing thing I have ever seen and tried to get my head around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mission Posted November 6, 2006 Share Posted November 6, 2006 Fascinating stuff indeed. I've admired many images that Hubble has brought us over the years. I wonder though, if they put something similiar just outside of our known galaxy, what more wonders it would capture? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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