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1) SM4 was canceled due to cost, we believe SM4 can extend the useful life of Hubble 4 or 5 years. Not True! SM4 was canceled primarily due to safety reasons. Please remember this, SM4 was Not Canceled due to Cost!!

2) Hubble is in 100% working order. Not true! The gyros which point the telescope are slowly failing.

3) Adaptive Optics/Clever Image Processing/Ground based telescope are better than or equal to Hubble. Not completly true! AO can image single objects to better than hubble. But AO has poor field of view! For reference, the UDF images have a field of view of 180 arcseconds square. AO fails above, 30, and degrades quickly above a few. Worst, AO needs a bright star to work. There simply are not enough of these stars! I can't reference this, but experts in the field think that it will take 30 years to get to Hubble's level of performance with AO.

4) Finally, AO will never work in at UV or near/mid IR wavelengths.

I am an astronomer, and I feel it is my duty to inform the public about the benefits of Hubble. HST serves a unique roll to the community. We should all understand exactly what the risk will be to fly SM4 before we lose 4 years of Hubble!

As I understand it, the last time the Hubble tried something like this was the Hubble Deep Field, which looked out to approximately 10% of the guesstimated age of the Universe. The full press release for the new UDF is here.
and they indicate that what we're looking at is about 400-800M years after the Big Bang.

Generally, the galaxies appear way more active than what we see locally, which is to be expected. But I--total amateur that I am--think it's a bit odd that the galaxies got slapped together so quickly. Whether it draws any of our assumptions about the Big Bang itself into question remains to be seen.

I realize that I'm going to be hammered as a right-wing nutjob for this one, but I really can't let this pass.

Professor Buckley, I have a big problem with a person such as yourself pontificating about how horrible privitization is, and how terribly the American government is treating scientists and researchers.

Don't get me wrong: I agree with your line about the mohair subsidies.. and I hope everone here votes out the pork-barrel weasels in their districts.

However, just once, I wish that a chronic academic such as yourself would realize that the government is not a source of money!

Before I wrote this, I took a look at your Vitae and confirmed what I suspected: You have always been payed by taxpayers! I found no private sector experience at all!

Thank you for your service in the Navy! And I don't doubt that your service to your country/state/school/students in your other positions has been admirable. However, from what I have seen on your vitae, you have never:

• Created Goods/Products
• Started a business
• Created a Job
• Laid off an employee
• Generated Revenue (other than for yourself)
• Had to Create/Follow a Budget

In fact, it seems your primary activity for the past few years has been to do research and write papers about other teachers! All of which has been paid for by either land-grant univerisities or our horribly stingy government.

The contention that saving the Hubble is "Basic Science" is ludicrous: it is an incredibly expensive project that is nearing the end of its expected duration anyway. I'm certain there is more we can learn from Hubble, but we are talking about billions of dollars to save it for a few years!

"Billion? With a B?"
"...Yes, with a B."

By the way, Professor, just why are you so bitter about this particular item? Have you ever actually used Hubble data during your search for better School Systems? Or are you just like the rest of us: mesmerized and inspired by the amazing and beautiful pictures.

Professor, the case for saving the Hubble may be strong. I'm not qualified to make that call. However, our elected officials have decided that the massive cost involved in saving it is not something that our tax dollars will be used for. A part of me is delighted! It's the first time in months I've seen them say no to anything! If you have evidence that they're wrong: let's see it.

Personally, I hope that the approach suggested in the article (you did read it, right?) is followed: let those who find this project crucial and needed say so with their pocketbooks. If they do, I (like most /.'ers) will delight in the images and wish them the best.

However, I hope that you remember that there are those of us in the audience (even here at /.) whose blood boils when they read a comment such as yours! We aren't protected in our ivory towers: our jobs will go overseas if we don't bust our asses. We aren't rich, but those tax cuts saved many of us our jobs! They let others save more and helped to put their kids through your classes.

So before you slam the government and therefore your fellow tax-payers, please remember that without them, your resume (oops, I mean Vitae would look pretty bare.

--Bill

Ok - the ground control software for the NASA Mars Rovers. Or how about Satellite tracking visualization software. There's ShowSky , and I'd venture a guess that there's a whole host of other places it's being used in in-house and scientific apps that don't get the same press as the next release of the Sims.

I'm not sure what sort of image processing software NASA has. Astronomers are mostly using packages that are publically available, but not maintained by NASA. For the Magellan mission, Peter Ford at MIT made a great package called GIPS to reduce all the data. IPAC tends to make the image reduction pipelines for several missions as well as some ground based observatories, and they have some public domain software. The space telescope science institute has made their analysis software, built for hubble, publically available. They even contribute to open source numerical python libraries.

It costs a not-insignificant amount of money to keep Hubble's support infrastructure at STScI running -- above and beyond the maintenance costs required to keep the telescope alive. This is the principal reason for the cut -- to save money.

The same economic reasons have been used before to cut space-based observatories; the International Ultraviolet Observer is one example.

Um...actually it did. Or I should say Adam Riess used HST data to demonstrate it existed originally.

If you could find a few dozen people willing to spend months understanding a near-unique and tightly integrated hardware/software combination.

Hubble is operated and funded by NASA, but all science planning and data analysis is done by Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus.

The key is funding.

With all those links, you'd think maybe a Hubble link would surface... Here's a couple good ones:

Hubble For General Public
Hubble For Scientists
--

For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Unfortunately, this seems to be what's happening.

My girlfriend works for the Space Telescope Science Institute (ie, the group that controls the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as planning for the James Webb Space Telescope, etc).

The 1 billion increase in NASA's overall budget is good thing. But this increase is totally dwarfed by 12 billion funding re-allocation that also accompanies the budget increase. And they're really worried that alot of that funding will be taken away from the hard science missions (Hubble, Chandra, etc).

This is what alot of people, even here on /., don't realize when they bash NASA. NASA doesn't only fund the space shuttle and ISS and Mars rovers. There's a whole slew of astrophysical observational experiments, both earthbound and in orbit, that are contributing hugely to scientific research.

This funding shift implies NASA will be shifting it's focus, away from science and towards engineering. While the budget increase is good for the space travel programs and probably ISS, it's not so good for the pure science and observational programs.

Just my two cents.

Just go down to the store and pick up a gigapixel CCD array for a few million. Of course, CCDs are not too expensive, but the optics will cost you a lot more.

As far as I know, Hubble does not produce true-color images.

Actually, the primary on Hubble has a wavelength range of 110 - 1100nm, where visible light falls in at 400 - 700nm. So, in order to generate true-color images, the HST is used to take three exposures, in red (400nm), green (500nm), and blue (600nm), which are then combined to form the final image. Of course, the conversion isn't perfect, so the resulting image isn't identical to what the human eye would see, but it's pretty close. Nonetheless, the HST is most definitely used to generate true-color images.

Anyway, for a more detailed explanation, you can read this site.

Comets are small, fragile, irregularly shaped bodies composed mostly of a mixture of water ice, dust, and carbon- and silicon-based compounds.

Our entire solar system, including comets, formed from the collapse of a giant, diffuse cloud of gas and dust about 4.5 billion years ago.

I wonder how many intelligent races in other galaxies have looked at our humble home and said "yep, there's a great example of a collision between a large galaxy and a small galaxy" I wonder how many times we've been featured on the cover of some alien's version of a popular astronomy magazine.

We'll never know of course but it's interesting to think about. Recently the Hubble Heritage project published a particularly good image of M104. Take a look at that picture. You can't even see individual stars - there are so many of them. Imagine some other race looking at an image like this one, but an image of the Milky Way. They couldn't even see our sun, let alone this microscopic spec of dust that orbits it. I think it would seem pretty silly to them that we slit each other's throats fighting over real estate they can't even see, when there'd obviously be plenty for everyone if we'd just work together. I don't mean to be sappy even though that clearly was. It's just that sometimes astronomy really puts things into perspective.

Yeah, exactly, so why did you supply the link to the photos of the Arp collection of peculiar galaxies? You originally were arguing about concentric shells of galaxies. That's what I'm curious about, and because you are too reticent to post an appropriate link, I still know nothing about this theory.

And the hubblesite quotes were taken from a page quite relevant to the Arp galaxies. The famous Markarian 205 photos showing a purported link between a high-z Seyfert nucleus and a low-z galaxy are discussed, including the fact that near-UV light from the Seyfert is absorbed by the galaxy, indicating that the Seyfert is behind, not to the side. This argument is particularly convincing as it does not rely on redshift.

videophones have been around for a while in the UK and in other countries(seems to be broken?). The quality still isn't brilliant but Orange(I think) have started to offer Soccer highlights over the latest phones.

moon colonies, ok, we chose to put a space station up there first, and then realised it costs a lot of money for little (commercial or military) value. Moon colonies are sadly not as sexy as say a Mars colony, or even a Mars mission, which ESA has planned in 25 years, NASA tried and continues to test methods of producing enough food,air and water, other countries,notably India and China have planned Moon landings so we are going back. Space is unfortunately used as a pissing contest between nuclear neighbours, when this stops then some more science can get done(e.g. Hubble, Galileo, Beagle 2)

food in pills. You can get food in pills, just not the calories, vitamins will give you nearly all of the trace elements you need to live. Calories are a lot harder, to get 500 Calories into a pill means eating something with 40 times the energy concentration of sugar or twenty times the concentration of fats, I doubt the human body would have much success digesting such complicated food. You can however get protein and creatine supplements which are in tablet/powder form, and sugar sweets( those silly energy sweets which taste of really sour orange) have more calories than their equivalent weight in sugar. (The protein supplements also tend to taste bad and are fed to animals instead. )

cars that drive themselves; power steering has been around for a while, as has ABS and cruise control, that is about as much as the current laws will allow on the public roads. intelligent cars have been developed, which, when combined with other intelligent cars, are actually safe. It's the human drivers who freak out at the sight of a driverless car that's the problem :-)

jet packs; Jet packs appeared in Thunderball (James Bond). You can buy them if you have enough money, or you can build them if you want. They're not used much because, much like the Segway, there are easier and cheaper way of getting around.

moving sidewalk's are in most airports now, as well as some metro stations. There have also been "moving stairs" around for just as long.

This post brought to you by Google.com, paid for by Google For America, Inc.

Here are some links to other projects that have similar goals - examining expansion of the universe, faraway objects, etc. They also have sophisticated infrared imaging capabilities. The James Webb Space Telescope (formerly Next Generation Space Telescope) is the successor to Hubble, and Supernova/Acceleration Probe which, from what I remember, locates potential supernovae by examining data taken at fixed ground locations then points an orbiting camera at the calculated location to collect radiation data. Really interesting stuff!

Here's a link to a white paper (PDF format) prepared by the Space Telescope Science Institute's Scientific Staff with their input to NASA on why they feel Hubble's mission should be extended.

Here's a link to a white paper (PDF format) prepared by the Space Telescope Science Institute's Scientific Staff with their input to NASA on why they feel Hubble's mission should be extended.

As I understand it, the problem right now is that without a propulsion system, they have no control over where Hubble will come down. And in its current orbit, it will come down eventually. If they decided to let it come down, putting a propulsion system on it so that it's a controlled descent is just a matter of taking responsibility and making sure it doesn't land on someone's house.

BTW, the original plan was to bring it down in the shuttle and put it in the Smithsonian. But I believe that was dependent on having Columbia around.

Much more about Hubble is available at the Space Telescope Science Institute's web site.

they should just keep the hubble working until it well, cant. dont decommision something that gives us as good pictures as these while it is still working.

Oh, c'mon, the hubble is much more than just something for the shuttle to do...after it was fixed, the Hubble became one of the most useful tools for astronomists. Everyone wants to schedule some hubble time, and if you don't believe me, take a look at the weekly timelines all the way back from '93 'till now.

I was always fond of this hubble image: Hubble Heritage Project: Keyhole Nebula

These images are not "doctored", at least not in the way you imply.

You are correct that they are composed from a set of single wavelength images (well, strictly, each individual image has a certain fairly narrow wavelength range defined by a filter). If you're viewing this on a three-colour RGB rather than monochrome display, that's not such a bad way of getting a quick look at three observations in one.

The colours are so vibrant you have to assume they're retouched, and the stars in the background were added.

Why do you "have to assume they're retouched"? To be fair, if you're putting together an RGB image from three individual images, you will need to make some decision about the scaling for each channel. Also, the caption says that the stars are from an image of stars in the same field, also taken with Hubble. That seems fair enough for a composite image like this.

In addition many of the stars have lens flares which would destroy any scientific value they had which means the lens flares were Photoshopped in afterward!

No. They are not lens flares, and they are not added for effect.

The artefacts you can see around the brighter stars are diffraction patterns, probably caused by the support structures for the secondary mirror (note: Hubble uses mirrors rather than lenses for its optics anyway). You will see them in many telescope images. You're quite right that the stars do not have that shape, but they are an unavoidable artefact of the observation process. They can be inconvenient, but they do not necessarily "destroy any scientific value".

Whilst I would always go to the original data (images of which are available) to do actual analysis for research purposes, I can also appreciate the aesthetic qualities of one of these "public outreach" images.

These images are not "doctored", at least not in the way you imply.

You are correct that they are composed from a set of single wavelength images (well, strictly, each individual image has a certain fairly narrow wavelength range defined by a filter). If you're viewing this on a three-colour RGB rather than monochrome display, that's not such a bad way of getting a quick look at three observations in one.

The colours are so vibrant you have to assume they're retouched, and the stars in the background were added.

Why do you "have to assume they're retouched"? To be fair, if you're putting together an RGB image from three individual images, you will need to make some decision about the scaling for each channel. Also, the caption says that the stars are from an image of stars in the same field, also taken with Hubble. That seems fair enough for a composite image like this.

In addition many of the stars have lens flares which would destroy any scientific value they had which means the lens flares were Photoshopped in afterward!

No. They are not lens flares, and they are not added for effect.

The artefacts you can see around the brighter stars are diffraction patterns, probably caused by the support structures for the secondary mirror (note: Hubble uses mirrors rather than lenses for its optics anyway). You will see them in many telescope images. You're quite right that the stars do not have that shape, but they are an unavoidable artefact of the observation process. They can be inconvenient, but they do not necessarily "destroy any scientific value".

Whilst I would always go to the original data (images of which are available) to do actual analysis for research purposes, I can also appreciate the aesthetic qualities of one of these "public outreach" images.

• The colour portion of the pic is a composite from two or more pictures.
  True, but this is always true: in order not to saturate detectors, and to remove the inevitable cosmic rays, it is typical to take lots of dithered exposures. For an example of just how serious this cosmic ray problem is, take a look at this before and after image pair.
• The colours are so vibrant you have to assume they're retouched
  True, they are assigned, but it is very typical to get images in multiple filters, each of which has a well defined "color" - so it is easy to produce a final representative color image. Not even stretching the truth that much.
• the stars in the background were added
  Well, they retained the stars from one image (so they were not added), and rendered that in greyscale. Artistic license, definitely.
• many of the stars have lens flares ... Photoshopped in afterward
  Alas, flaring is typical: if you have bright stars in the field, the mirror obstructions (supports, secondary, etc) will produce flares. True at every optical telescope, from Palomar and Keck to the HST. Definitely not Photoshop!

My point of view, should that interest you, is this: except for a couple of very rare exceptions, every target the HST looks at is chosen after a brutal (trust me, brutal) review process. The HST costs an enormous of money to run, and they have lived up to that in terms of published peer-reviewed output per observation. So now if they kick in a few thousand extra bucks to take the science images, combine them with a little (not much, mind) artistic license, and release it to the public (who are, after all, paying for it) -- more power to them! Astronomy is one of those rare disciplines where the the excitement of cutting edge science can still be brought to the casual reader - if nothing else, as "Ooh, look, a pretty picture!" I think that is well worth it, as long as they aren't being scientifically dishonest.

(And that last point is a whole other story: do press releases over-hype the discovery? Does Nature twist a simple research result into "Unprecedented discovery revolutionizes our understanding of the Universe"? Maybe, but that's not a problem with the pretty pictures.)

I don't want to look at cute picture. I want to see the real one, in false color if the picture show something not in the visible spectrum with a scale saying what's the meaning of each color.

No, the picture hasn't been "forged".

You're correct that the image was constructed from specific wavelengths with certain colours applied. Try going directly to the Hubble Heritage pages for this image. If you read the caption for the image you'll see:

The Hubble Heritage image of N 49 is a color representation of data taken in July 2000, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by sulfur ([S II]), oxygen ([O III]), and hydrogen (H-alpha). The color image has been superimposed on a black-and-white image of stars in the same field also taken with Hubble.

The fast facts will tell you the exact filters used:

F502N ([O III]), F656N (Ha), F673N ([S II]), F814W (I), F547M (Strömgren y)

The numbers tell you the wavelengths in nanometres. They have possibly assigned red, green, and blue in the same wavelength order, in which case red=sulphur, green=H-alpha, and blue=oxygen.

If you really don't want to look at "cute pictures", don't look at the public outreach images. Take a closer look the original images.

Hope this helps.

I don't want to look at cute picture. I want to see the real one, in false color if the picture show something not in the visible spectrum with a scale saying what's the meaning of each color.

No, the picture hasn't been "forged".

You're correct that the image was constructed from specific wavelengths with certain colours applied. Try going directly to the Hubble Heritage pages for this image. If you read the caption for the image you'll see:

The Hubble Heritage image of N 49 is a color representation of data taken in July 2000, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by sulfur ([S II]), oxygen ([O III]), and hydrogen (H-alpha). The color image has been superimposed on a black-and-white image of stars in the same field also taken with Hubble.

The fast facts will tell you the exact filters used:

F502N ([O III]), F656N (Ha), F673N ([S II]), F814W (I), F547M (Strömgren y)

The numbers tell you the wavelengths in nanometres. They have possibly assigned red, green, and blue in the same wavelength order, in which case red=sulphur, green=H-alpha, and blue=oxygen.

If you really don't want to look at "cute pictures", don't look at the public outreach images. Take a closer look the original images.

Hope this helps.

I don't want to look at cute picture. I want to see the real one, in false color if the picture show something not in the visible spectrum with a scale saying what's the meaning of each color.

No, the picture hasn't been "forged".

You're correct that the image was constructed from specific wavelengths with certain colours applied. Try going directly to the Hubble Heritage pages for this image. If you read the caption for the image you'll see:

The Hubble Heritage image of N 49 is a color representation of data taken in July 2000, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by sulfur ([S II]), oxygen ([O III]), and hydrogen (H-alpha). The color image has been superimposed on a black-and-white image of stars in the same field also taken with Hubble.

The fast facts will tell you the exact filters used:

F502N ([O III]), F656N (Ha), F673N ([S II]), F814W (I), F547M (Strömgren y)

The numbers tell you the wavelengths in nanometres. They have possibly assigned red, green, and blue in the same wavelength order, in which case red=sulphur, green=H-alpha, and blue=oxygen.

If you really don't want to look at "cute pictures", don't look at the public outreach images. Take a closer look the original images.

Hope this helps.

I don't want to look at cute picture. I want to see the real one, in false color if the picture show something not in the visible spectrum with a scale saying what's the meaning of each color.

No, the picture hasn't been "forged".

You're correct that the image was constructed from specific wavelengths with certain colours applied. Try going directly to the Hubble Heritage pages for this image. If you read the caption for the image you'll see:

The Hubble Heritage image of N 49 is a color representation of data taken in July 2000, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by sulfur ([S II]), oxygen ([O III]), and hydrogen (H-alpha). The color image has been superimposed on a black-and-white image of stars in the same field also taken with Hubble.

The fast facts will tell you the exact filters used:

F502N ([O III]), F656N (Ha), F673N ([S II]), F814W (I), F547M (Strömgren y)

The numbers tell you the wavelengths in nanometres. They have possibly assigned red, green, and blue in the same wavelength order, in which case red=sulphur, green=H-alpha, and blue=oxygen.

If you really don't want to look at "cute pictures", don't look at the public outreach images. Take a closer look the original images.

Hope this helps.

The Hubble has an instrument called the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) package. Given two stars that are bright enough near the sky location of your desired target, Hubble will be able to guide to within sub-pixel accuracy for as long as you like.

If only one star is available, guiding is still possible, but the field may slowly rotate, since one star only provides one of the two needed pointing constraints (of position and orientation).

A big project in preparation for Hubble was the creation of the Hubble Guide Star catalog, exactly for this purpose -- to make sure that given what people would want to observe, there would always be enough guide stars within an acceptable distance!

for more information, see here if you're interested! If you're ambitious, you can even read the instrument handbooks for yourself: here

The Hubble has an instrument called the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) package. Given two stars that are bright enough near the sky location of your desired target, Hubble will be able to guide to within sub-pixel accuracy for as long as you like.

If only one star is available, guiding is still possible, but the field may slowly rotate, since one star only provides one of the two needed pointing constraints (of position and orientation).

A big project in preparation for Hubble was the creation of the Hubble Guide Star catalog, exactly for this purpose -- to make sure that given what people would want to observe, there would always be enough guide stars within an acceptable distance!

for more information, see here if you're interested! If you're ambitious, you can even read the instrument handbooks for yourself: here

Interesting. I was actually thinking more along the lines of automatic compensation, but I hadn't even thought about gyroscopes vs. impulse jets. I poked around a little on the hubble site for the instrumentation and flight computer and I found the handbooks for the instruments at this site. Appearently, the gyroscopes are used for coarse motion detection and the FGS uses constellational guidance. The manuals actually make a pretty interesting read.

On a side note, a constellational guidance is related to how head mount displays like UNC's HiBall work.

For space related 'kid knowledge', check out Amazing Space: http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorati ons/

The writing of the slashdot article makes it sound like this is the LAST Great Observatory that NASA is doing, and then is closing it's doors on that subject. Not so. It happens to be the last of the original 4 proposed ones in the 1970's. But others will come and go. For example, the planned 'replacement' for Hubble. Known as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), formerly known as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). Find out whatever you wish to know about it at: http://jwstsite.stsci.edu/

The problem is that solar-type stars may vary on timescales of hundreds and thousands of years (in addition to the known sunspot cycle of our Sun of about 11 years), dominating the long term weather patterns here on Earth. It's still a highly debated point, though, mostly because we've only head modern instruments doing accurate solar flux monitoring for the past 50 years or so, and before that we have to rely on indirect methods, such as historical records of large groups of sunspots seen with the unaided eye.

One of the longest running experiments in modern astronomy has been the monitoring of solar-type stars at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California. I was fortunate enough to meet the people who run this experiment - it's not too often you see papers with 40 years of data from the same instrument!

Dr Fish

No, I think you (and whoever up-modded you) fill entirely too much of your brain with bad sci-fi.

The chance of a black hole suddenly popping up and sucking in the earth is around 10^-100. The chance of the sun extinguishing or exploding sooner than 2 billion years from now is comparable. This is based on both theoretical calculation (simple astrophysics) and physical observation (never seen).

On the other hand, the odds of a killer asteroid impact within our lifetime is is 10^-6 or higher. We have seen impacts firsthand (note that the blast shown here is the same size as Earth), and we know the likely results.

No, I think you (and whoever up-modded you) fill entirely too much of your brain with bad sci-fi.

The chance of a black hole suddenly popping up and sucking in the earth is around 10^-100. The chance of the sun extinguishing or exploding sooner than 2 billion years from now is comparable. This is based on both theoretical calculation (simple astrophysics) and physical observation (never seen).

On the other hand, the odds of a killer asteroid impact within our lifetime is is 10^-6 or higher. We have seen impacts firsthand (note that the blast shown here is the same size as Earth), and we know the likely results.

Billy Joy? James Gosling? John Gage? Aren't they three of greatest leaders in IT (and science in general) in our generation?

The dude who invented Java as one of the great leaders in . . . science in general of our generation? I think the answer's no. I'm not really qualified to judge what is and isn't important work in whatever the heck IT is supposed to be, but I think it's safe to say that for a generation that has seen the rise of genomics and the human genome project, the cosomological and physical insights from all sorts of sources, including, say, the Hubble Space Telescope, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment, designing a bunch of the technology that Sun uses doesn't qualify you as a great "scientific leader".

It's become a nearly-complete waste of money.

Sure, there have been some spectacular failures. But there have been spectacular successes as well. There's an awful lot we know about the Universe we live in, and about our own planet, that we would not know if it were not for those missions. For that matter, the Apollo project, expensive as it was, and despite the fact that it was not focussed on science, told us a huge amount about the past, present, and future of Earth.

(I have to admit, much though I emotionally like the idea of humans in space, that the uncrewed missions are a lot less expensive per quantum of discovery than the crewed ones.)

Science Daily has a better article (as always) here

The mention of the "tilt" is a mangled reference to the tilt or angle of the orbital plane with respect to our view point. The planet eclipses the star (changing it the apparent magnitude ("brightness") of the star -- that's what they observed) so you know the orbit is edge on to us. Combine that info with the previously measured radial velocity and you can get the actual mass of the planet not just the minimum mass of the planet.

Article follows:

Hubble Makes Precise Measure Of Extrasolar World's True Mass

NASA Hubble Space Telescope's crisp view has allowed an international team of astronomers to apply a previously unproven technique (astrometry) for making a precise measurement of the mass of a planet outside our solar system. The Hubble results place the planet at 1.89 to 2.4 times the mass of Jupiter, our solar system's largest world. Previous estimates, about which there are some uncertainties, place the planet's mass between 1.9 and 100 times that of Jupiter's.

A Hubble set of instruments called Fine Guidance Sensors (FGSs), which are also used to point and stabilize the free-flying observatory, measured a small "side-to-side" wobble of the red dwarf star Gliese 876. This is due to the tug of an unseen companion object, designated Gliese 876b (Gl 876b) and first discovered in 1998 with ground-based telescopes.

Gl 876b is only the second extrasolar planet (after HD 209458) for which a precise mass has been determined, and it is the first whose mass has been confirmed by using the astrometry technique.

Now that this technique has been proven viable for space-based observatory planet confirmations, it will be used in the future to nail down uncertainties in the masses of dozens of extrasolar planets discovered so far.

The observations were made by George F. Benedict and Barbara McArthur (University of Texas at Austin), members of the international observing team led by Thierry Forveille (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation, Hawaii and Grenoble Observatory, France). The results are being published in the December 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Benedict had to observe the star's yo-yo motion for over two years, using a total of 27 orbits worth of Hubble Space Telescope observations. "Making these kinds of measurements of a star's movement on the sky is quite difficult," Benedict emphasizes. "We're measuring angles (.5 milliarcsecond) equivalent to the size of a quarter seen from 3,000 miles away.

The target planet, Gl 876b, is the more distant of two planets orbiting Gliese 876. It was originally discovered by two groups, led by Xavier Delfosse (Geneva/Grenoble Observatory) and Geoffrey Marcy (U.C. Berkeley and San Francisco State University). Marcy's group discovered a smaller planet closer to Gliese 876 a year later, in 1999. These initial discoveries were made by measuring the star's subtle "to-and-fro" speed. This is called the radial velocity technique.

Benedict and McArthur combined the astrometric information with the radial velocity measurements (made in the planet's discovery) to determine the planet's mass by deducing its orbital inclination. If astronomers don't know how the planet's orbit is tilted with respect to Earth, they can only estimate a minimum mass for the planet. But without knowing more, the mass could be significantly larger if the orbit was tilted to a nearly face-on orientation to Earth. The star would still move towards and away from us slightly, even though it had a massive companion. "You can't hide massive companions from the Hubble Space Telescope," says McArthur. "The planet's orbit turns out to be tilted nearly edge-on to Earth. This verifies it is a low-mass object."

"There are a few more stars where we can do this kind of research with Hubble," Benedict says. "Most candidate stars are too distant. Astronomers can look forward to doing these kinds of studies on literally hundreds of stars with the planned NASA Space Interferometry Mission, called SIM, which will be far more precise than Hubble.

"Knowing the mass of extrasolar planets accurately is going to help theorists answer lots of questions about how planets form," Benedict adds. "When we get hundreds of these mass determinations for planets around all types of stars, we're going to see what types of stars form certain types of planets. Do big stars form big planets and small stars form small planets?"

Measuring stellar wobbles on the sky has been used to search for planets for decades. But extremely high precision and telescope optical stability are required. The Hubble FGSs are the first astrometric tool to accomplish this ultra-precise kind of measurement for an extrasolar planet.

The gas giant plant orbiting the sunlike star HD 209458 is the very first planet to have its mass verified by using transit and radial velocity data. This was only possible because the planet was discovered to be passing in front of the star every four days, slightly dimming the star's light. This is proof the orbit is edge-on, yielding a mass that agrees with the lower limit estimate of .7 Jupiter masses.

Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here.

For those of you who enjoy nature..... and nature pics just go to google and then advanced image search and then wallpaper sized. Put in things like landscape... trees... starts.. hubble and you will see wonders.

There are lots of databases that follows this philosophy allready, the NASA Astrophysics Data System, the Digitized Sky Survey, not to speak of the larger arxiv.org. You can all grab whatever you like from there.

That being said, there are a number of amateur astronomers who are extremely dedicated and are willing to obtain the skill needed to use such a system, even if there is a tough learning curve. These can be considered "laymen", but they are actually very good at what they do. That's the kind of "laymen" you would expect to use it. Not Joe Sixpack, but the people who are dedicated enough to learn how to use it.

The parent is wrong about several things:

As others have said already, the primary mirror is not of the right design to look back at the Earth and actually yield the right kind of details. Hubble focuses to infinity and an earth-imaging satellite only has to focus to a distance of a few hundred miles -- the exact altitude depends on the satellite's orbit.

Furthermore, Hubble's optics are too sensitive to be pointed at the Earth or the Moon -- both are so bright that they'd blow out the sensors.

Some of HST's instruments would saturate if they took exposures of the Earth through wide filters. Others would not. The HST calibration team sometimes takes exposures of the Earth or Moon to use as flatfields.

But, yes, as many have already pointed out, HST can't take images resolving newspaper headlines.

The Hubble already DID take pictures of the moon, the best it could resolve was ~280 feet. It's right here.

Hubble's CCD's will NOT be fried by the intensity of light from the moon. This has got to be the most common misconception about Hubble. A 2 second search for "Hubble + Moon" gives you THIS as the very first result!!!

Here are some pretty Hubble pictures of galaxies feeding. Both the Tadpole galaxy (UGC 10214) and The Mice (NGC 4676) are the result of merging galactic masses.

Interestingly there are a few problems with the name Persephone. All of the major planets are named for Roman gods; Persephone is the Greek name for the goddess in Latin called Proserpina.

Second, there is the suggestion that Clarke (or maybe Asimov) made before Charon was discovered: he suggested that Pluto's moon, if one were ever discovered, be named Persephone, and that the name Charon be given to any trans-Plutonian planet, with I think Cerberus being reserved for any moons of that planet. That way someone from outside the system would have to pass Charon and Cerberus (or maybe it was Styx) to get to Pluto and Persephone.

See the Space Telescope Institute's Press Release for more information about Quaoar; on the name, this link may be of use; it looks like Quaoar is a name from mythology, albeit indigenous American mythology, which makes it consistent with the names of the minor planets and moons (which do not need to be named after Roman gods; the moons of Uranus are even named after characters from Shakespeare : e.g., Oberon and Titania from Much Ado About Nothing, and Ariel and Miranda from The Tempest).

NASA's main software page:
http://asds.stsci.edu/packages.html

QCUIAG has links to some excellent software, some free, some not:
http://www.qcuiag.co.uk
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QCUIAG

A new method used by STSI and others:
http://www.pixon.com/brochure.html

A HUGE collection of links:
http://www.r-clarke.org.uk/astrosoft1.htm

My own astro pages 8^)
http://rjs.org/astro