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Where Should The Hubble Point? You decide!

Posted by Hemos on from the fun-with-space-telescopes dept.

SlashParadox writes "The Hubble Heritage Project is allowing internet voters to decide where the Hubble Space Telescope points until June 6. Restrictions and a link to the proposal page are here. "

3 of 9 comments (clear)

  1. Hubble used to "see" Dark Matter by Cy+Guy · · Score: 2
    http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000504/sc/missin g_matter_2.html

    The astronomers think the missing matter exists as highly charged hydrogen between galaxies. Since such hydrogen is hard to see, they had to seek indirect evidence by looking at oxygen that had been spewed into space by exploding stars. The hot hydrogen heats the oxygen into an excited state that can be observed.

    Astronomers found the oxygen by using the light of a distant quasar to probe the invisible space between the galaxies, like shining a flashlight beam through a fog. Quasars are distant, very energetic, stellar objects that can spew X-rays and visible light equal to the brightness of trillions of stars.

    With the Hubble Telescope, the astronomers saw traces of the oxygen in the quasar's light, which had crossed through vast distances of space.

    Here's a link to the Journal abstract: Intervening O VI Quasar Absorption Systems at Low Redshift: A Significant Baryon Reservoir . (Warning: PhD in Astrophysics required to just to read it)

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  2. Planetoids? by Dolohov · · Score: 2

    Does anybody know if any of the (presumed) extra-solar planets would be visible from the Hubble? That'd be pretty cool. ("I can see CowboyNeal's house from here!")

  3. SETIatHome hotspots? by Cy+Guy · · Score: 3

    SETIatHome is getting some significant results.

    I think we should have Hubble to take a look at the source of the hottest signals.

    OT: I wish the SETI site would provide a little more discussion of what these apparent hits mean. I think it just means there is a definite source of some sort of signal, but I don't know if it means there is any indication the source is other than a natural phenomenon or errata. The 3/29/00 Newsletter which was published after the latest strong Gaussians was processed says they haven't found any other than "be radio frequency interference, or test signals we inject into the data stream to monitor system, or improperly processed work units" so far. But if that is case, why do they leave them on the statistics page?

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