The Hubble — Bringing Universe to Earth since 1990

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”

― Carl Sagan, Contact

24th April 2020 marked the 30th birthday of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). So here is my next blog dedicated to this exceptional piece of art that is bringing us the most beautiful pictures of the universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched from Earth on 24th April 1990 and deployed into orbit the following day.

As a kid, I have been interested in Astronomy and I still remember that for the longest time I wanted to be an astronaut. At home my father loves Astronomy, Physics and Astrophysics, perhaps that’s how my sister and myself developed an interest in the subject. I remember as a kid (I was in 6th grade), we used to walk under the clear sky in Ahmednagar and my father used to teach us how to spot the North Star using simple methods. This developed my interest in the subject and I used to visit the libraries and pick out books that covered topics on different stars, nebulas, comets, supernovas et al.

The Hubble Space Telescope

Moving onto The Hubble Telescope, it is named in the honor of the astronomer, Edwin Hubble. Hubble is the first telescope to be placed in space in April 1990 to have an unobstructed view of the massive universe. Her mission was to spend 15 years probing the cosmos. However, she exceeded her goal with a whopping 30 years (yet) observing our universe and is expected to run until 2030–2040.

When launched, the primary objectives of the Hubble Space Telescope were to —

a. investigate the constitution, physical characteristics, and dynamics of celestial bodies
b. determine the nature of processes occurring in stellar and galactic objects
c. study the history and evolution of the universe
d. confirm the universality of physical laws
e. provide a long-term space research facility for optical astronomy

I won’t go more into details about the telescope because then that would be never-ending, but here are some quick facts about the HST (and probably raise your eyebrows) —

1. The HST travels at about 17,000 mph (27,000 kph or 7500m/s) and takes 95 minutes to complete one orbit around Earth. Isn’t that the fastest man-made thing you know now? Well, but the fastest man-made object is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
2. To take images of distant, faint objects, Hubble must be extremely steady and accurate. The telescope can lock onto a target without deviating more than 7/1000th of an arcsecond, or about the width of a human hair seen at a distance of one mile.
3. Hubble transmits about 150 gigabits of raw science data every week.
4. HST’s energy source is none other than our Sun which generates a power of about 5,500 watts​!
5. Hubble has made more than 1.4 million observations since its mission began in 1990.
6. Hubble has no thrusters. To change angles, it uses Newton’s third law by spinning its wheels in the opposite direction. It turns at about the speed of a minute hand on a clock, taking 15 minutes to turn 90 degrees.
7. Hubble has peered back into the very distant past, to locations more than 13.4 billion light-years from Earth.
8. Hubble generates about 10 terabytes of new data per year. The total archive is currently over 150 TB in size.

Interestingly, there is a page by NASA where you can see what Hubble saw on your birthday. Do check out what Hubble saw on your birthday and drop the picture on the comment section. Fascinating enough, the below picture is what Hubble took during one of my birthdays.

Globular Cluster M15 as seen on December 20 in 1998

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
― Carl Sagan

Hubble’s explorations have changed our perception of the universe. Let me leave you with some of the surreal pictures taken by our very own Hubble telescope. Keep sending us more such mesmerizing pictures, dear Hubble —

References—

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Hubble Space Telescope

P.S: I promised myself to write one blog a week until the Covid-19 lockdown is lifted.