Science for All

A blog post about the colorful of the universe and the camera used to capture it.

On April 24, 1990, the space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Earth with the Hubble Space Telescope, the first space-based telescope into Earth’s orbit. Named after the scientist Edwin Hubble, this famous telescope helped to answer some of the most compelling astronomical questions of our time and let us see the beauty of the universe by taking incredible pictures. According to NASA, Hubble has made more than one million observations. Even so, there’s still some pictures that are more outstanding and famous than the others. This blog will show you, the reader, 3 most famous Hubble pictures that you should check out.

The hubble deep field

For 10 straight days in 1995, Hubble focused on a tiny and nearly empty patch of sky near the Big Dipper constellation. The telescope gathered all the light it could, slowly building a picture.  The result is the Hubble Deep Field picture. This picture shows us a part in the beginning of the universe, showing how colorful it was in its young age. Some galaxies in this picture date back from the beginning of the universe, so the light from some of these might have traveled for 10 billion years to reach Hubble.

First light

This is a comparison picture between the Hubble telescope and a ground-based telescope taking the star HD96755. The image on the right, taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera, demonstrates Hubble’s improved visibility compared with observatories on Earth, where the atmosphere can obstruct the view. It was also intended to help with focusing the telescope.

The crab nebula

The Crab Nebula is an expanding remnant of a supernova explosion. Japanese, Chinese astronomers and Native Americans recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago. The glowing relic has been expanding since the star exploded, and it is now approximately 11 light-years in width. This picture is one of the largest images ever taken of a supernova remnant by Hubble. It is also the highest resolution image ever made of the entire Crab Nebula, which is located 6,500 light-years away.

The Hubble space telescope contributes a lot of beautiful pictures and knowledge about the universe to us. Hubble has more pictures than what I’ve shown you. If you are interested, you can visit https://hubblesite.org/home for more information.