“Even the most optimistic person to whom you could have spoken back in 1990 couldn’t have predicted the degree to which Hubble would rewrite our astrophysics and planetary science textbooks.” - NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden
The universe and its workings will always be one of the biggest mysteries that humans will spend countless hours and endless musings, attempting to unlock. And as long as we have wondered, scientists and inventors have been constructing tools to enhance their knowledge of the same. In an era where India can successfully reach Mars’ orbit on its first attempt, and NASA’s getting a ridiculously close look at Pluto, our notion of what these tools might be have evolved over the years but that doesn’t mean we forget the building blocks where it all began. After all, it isn’t exactly easy to know what’s going on out there in that vast expanse of space, unless you have a window into it. This is why the Hubble Space Telescope’s extraordinary existence is of such great significance. But first, a little context.
In 1609, when Galileo created the first telescope and turned it up towards the skies, he opened up a whole new world to discover. Over the years, the models and functions of telescopes evolved, opening up new discoveries about the world beyond us and left us awestruck every single time. But even though the idea for a space bound telescope was thought of, as early as 1923 by Herman Oberth, it took years to perfect the technology that would make this a reality. Finally, in 1990, NASA in collaboration with the ESA (European Space Agency) launched what we all know as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) today. Soon, the scientists realised that the telescope they had sent across had a flaw called “spherical aberration” that caused its primary mirror to be slightly the wrong shape by about 1/50th of the thickness of a paper causing the pictures to be blurry. It took 11 months to train a crew of seven astronauts and NASA scientists before they could carry out the first Hubble Servicing Mission (SM1) in 1993 so that they could fix this problem. Subsequently, there were four other similar missions--all of which have conspired towards allowing us to understand the cosmos in a way that Neil Degrasse Tyson would be enormously chuffed by.
Today, it orbits the Earth at a speed of 97 minutes per rotation, observes near infrared and UV light, surpasses all capabilities of ground-based telescoped, and has consistently helped us make groundbreaking discoveries. Out of the 1.2 million observations its made till date, it’s also helped astronomers publish over 12,800 scientific papers, making it one of the most productive scientific tools to ever be created.
With the help of the data produced from the HST, scientists have been able to unravel greatest mysteries of the universe. We discovered that the universe is about 13 to 14 billion years old, learned about black holes and quasars, plus scientists have been able to witness galaxies in all stages of evolution, including galaxies that were around when the universe was still young, helping them understand how galaxies form. It discovered gamma-ray bursts that occur in distant galaxies when massive stars collapse; it has recorded both, the birth and death of stars; clumps of gas and dust around young stars that most probably act as birthing grounds for new planets. And these are just a handful of its many contributions.
As of April 24, 2015, it has been 25 years of Hubble scope images. In 2011, the US Space Shuttle retired, which means there will be no more service missions to and with the last round of upgradation and repairs, it is likely to function for 7-8 years longer. Eventually, its parts will degrade to a point where it will no longer function and the engineers have already started working on its successor, James Webb Space Telescope. However, the legacy of this Cassegrain reflector will remain forever.
In honour of this wonderful creation that has single-handedly opened up the realms of the universe, we at Homegrown have curated 25 of the most incredible images to have been captured by the HST since its conception, one for every glorious year.
This image is of a young stellar grouping called Westerlund 2, lighting up a cavity in the 30 Doradus Nebula. Several of those stars are over 100 times more massive than our Sun and are destined to become supernovas in a few million years. Image Source: The Guardian
A pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 are ripped apart by gravitational forces and they fall back together. The interaction between the gravitational forces of the two bends the the galaxies as they approach each other and merge about 300 million light years away. Image Source: National Geographic
In 2002, the V838 Monocerotis, a star, suddenly brightened up for several weeks and the Hubble was able to capture a phenomenon called the light-echo, that revealed pulse of light from the star's outburst illuminating particles surrounding it that had been rejected by the star at a much earlier era. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
Nicknamed as the Whirlpool thanks to its spiral-like structure, the galaxy M51 infused with its companion galaxy, the NGC 5194, making it look like a spiral staircase Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
What looks akin to a butterfly actually has a dying star places at its heart. The “wings” of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, is, in fact, gas that has been heated up to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, travelling through space at a speed faster than 600,000 miles an hour. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
This picture of the Carina Nebula, in the Milky Way was created by stitching together 32 Hubble images along with the data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. This view of the nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
The Mystic Mountain, a part of the Carina Nebula, is an area of star formation. The pillars are a sign of new stars forming at their tips and at the same time, jets of gas are being fired from within the pillar by infant stars. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
This is one of the largest mosaics ever manufactured and it showcases the Sombrero galaxy. This galaxy, located about 28 million lights away from the Earth, has a diameter that is nearly one-fifth the diameter of the full moon. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
This image shows us a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula, which may be an incubator to newborn starts. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 57 trillion miles high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
This image, called “Pillars of Creation”, taken in 1995, three giant columns of interstellar gas bathed in the ultraviolet light from a group of young stars in a small region of the Eagle Nebula, or M16. Image Source: The Guardian
The Cat's Eye Nebula, one of the first planetary nebulae discovered, is made out of eleven rings, or shells, of gas. Each "ring" is actually the edge of a spherical bubble projected onto the sky which is why its outer edge appears bright. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
This is an infrared-light portrait of a roiling region of starbirth called the Monkey Head Nebula, located 6,400 light-years away. You can see newly formed stars near the center of the nebula that are blasting away at dust within the nebula. Image Source: www.seattlepi.com/
This is a photograph of the galaxy NGC 5584, made out of young, bright blue stars. Among the stars you can see pulsating stars called Cepheid variables and a recent Type Ia supernova, which is a special class of exploding stars. These are used by astronomers as reliable distance markers to measure the universe's expansion rate. www.hubblesite.org/
The M82 is a starburst galaxy that is noted for its bright blue disk and fiery plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions. Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way Galaxy. www.hubblesite.org/
The N 49 or DEM L 190 is the remnant of a star that died in a supernova. What looks like fireworks to us, is actually sheets of debris from the explosion. www.hubblesite.org/
This galaxy, called the I Zwicky 18, may be the the youngest galaxy ever seen. It is possible that this galazy may not have even begun active star formation until about 13 billion years after the Big Bang. Image Source: www.apod.nasa.gov/
24. Within the Carina Nebula, you will find this pillar composed of gas and dust, the pillar resides. Scorching radiation and fast winds from nearby stars sculpts the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. Image Source: www.hubblesite.org/
Photograph Credit: Hubble Space Telescope/NASA/ESA