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Hubble Snaps Farthest / Oldest Galaxy
starannihilator writes "Astronomers use gravitational lensing, a magnifying effect caused by the gravity / mass of galaxies, to capture images of the farthest / oldest galaxy known - from when the universe was just 750 million years old. Stories from the BBC,
Sign On San Diego, West Hawaii Today, or
Mercury News."
Hubble needs this sort of thing to keep it serviced. This is very interesting and in my mind at least partially justifies Hubble.
vampirical
Yay! Even more reasons to keep this guy around! It's a damn shame they want to deorbit Hubble. With this much invested into a telescope that STILL continues to function fine, why not just open it up for other uses rather than deorbit it?
I can't recall how many hundreds of times I have seen Hubble in the headlines over the last few years. The waiting list for Hubble time is insane, and the science has been among the best that NASA has ever done.
It's amazing to me that this "it's too risky" reasoning for the cancellation of the repair missions to Hubble is still being floated.
It's franky disappointing to me as American that we are such a nation of wimps now. I personally think it's more of a risk to send people to the space station in regards to the scientific return.
While I have seen hundreds of "discovered by Hubble this week" I have not seen one discovery in the news come from the station. It's usually fighting with the Russians or announcing it's going to cost ten times more than we thought to do one twentieth the science.
Yes, I am off-topic. But I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!
WHY are we just letting the Hubble die again?
.. lets study it to learn more about the origins of the galaxy! Oh, we can't lease any more time on the Hubble because we're junking it remember?.
Oh yeah, thats right, NASA says that it costs too much to maintain, and it's getting close to its estimated end of life date.
Guess we better junk it because it seems we aren't getting any good science out of it. Whats that? oldest known galaxy huh? Cool!
Once again, I think NASA really needs to learn a very old saying that you don't junk something until you have a replacement. When the JWT is operational and snug in its lagrange point, then we can talk about whether or not to scrap the Hubble. Until then, I think its worth perhaps *outsourcing* a maintinence mission to another country (or private company) who thinks they can get the job done.
Who says we *have* to use the shuttle? Or is there something I am missing about the shuttle being the only craft that can work on the Hubble?
Then again, I can't think of anyone else that can get there at the moment either. And if they can, I suppose they would probably be more apt to put their own agenda's ahead of a NASA maintinence mission.
Oh well.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
It takes light a whole lot of years to make it this far. It sounds like this story should have started with: "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away..."
if NASA is only bitching about not being able to finance the repairs, then why not lease it to another country? With some "creative legalties" we can have the leasing country fix it for us and return it good as new... But how many countries'll fall fall for that one?..
Try HubbleSite - their article includes a full-res JPEG/TIFF image.
(N.b. Apologies to their webmasters/hosting company)
I understand the stupidity of de-orbiting Hubble, and I do think NASA should extend its life a little longer by doing the service mission. But don't you think all the sentimental slashdot comments is a little too sentimental? Just maybe Hubble is getting old, and it's time to put up a new telescope for replacement (hopefully or eventually)?
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
If you want to see this thing up close, here's a better link. click me
...there's no mention of this at Dr. Dino, clearly this is a clever hoax... It's impossible anyhow since we all know the earth (and therefore the universe) is only 6000 years old!
(humor folks, humor)
As I understand it they cannot service hubble because of the danger to astronauts if the shuttle tiles were damaged (unlike the ISS, there is nowhere for the astronauts to "shelter").
How many shuttles are left? If there were two, perhaps one could go to the ISS on a supply mission, and following a test to check the tiles are OK a second could be launched to the Hubble. If the hubble shuttle had problems the ISS shuttle could go to the rescue?
Is this all skyborn 3.14? Yep, I'm sure NASA have analysed all these possibilities, but after wasting so many resources on ridiculous exercises it would be a pity if NASA abandoned the one thing that does a day to day useful job out in space!
In fact over 13 bilion years old...
So, we can apparently see [the light from] something 13 billion light years away, and find something 750 million years old, meaning we can see about 95% of the life of the universe.
How long will it be before we can get to the point where the whole universe was invisible?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Wondering why we haven't called home? :(
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Convince all the young talentless people that everyone on Earth is going to die from a nasty virus and pack Brittney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Busted and all the Pop Idols on the first colonization ship...
Then the rest of us can enjoy proper music in the mainstream again!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Don't the astronauts have to do EVA anyway while doing the Hubble service ? I mean, they should be able to spare 10mins for checking the shuttle... No reason for a second EVA.
Ping times for that galaxy must be terrible!
May the source be with you!
I'm coming increasingly to believe the space station is a bit of a dead duck and the issues that prevented the location of ISS in a higher orbit should have been addressed, so that it could do something really useful - like being a base where servicing missions can start and end from.
Then one would deliver a true shuttle which would flit between ISS and whatever hardware needed upgrading. Fuel and personel would be delivered to the space station alone as a starting and ending point.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Bush has handed a political stick to his opponents. Kerry would be well advised to promise to revisit the Death of Hubble decision: it will get him a lot of votes. There is no sense in killing Hubble to add 1 or 2% to the Mars / Moon missions that might launch sometime in the 2010's. Webb may be killed for its money as well. NASA is using Hubble as a political lever, and the argument that space is a dangerous place for shuttle nauts does not stand up: remember the burned Apollo crew anyone? Maybe NASA believes Bush wants stuff in orbit that points down and not up.
space agency? If all the major nations combined their efforts rather than having a fragmented approach then surely things would get done and benefit everyone. Also it would create debate as opposed to politicains declaring equipment repairs unsafe and EOL them without a good analysis of whats going on.
Jonathanjk.com
What I wouldn't give to be just 750 million years old again...
Life, the universe and everything seemed so simple back then.
In typical cya fashion, O'Keefe called on Harold Gehman, who led the Columbia accident inquiry, to review the decision. It's a bit of neener neener on O'Keefe's part because Gehman's commission nailed NASA for sloppy safety management policies.
What O'Keefe is saying to Gehman is "Look you SOB - you try running an agency that's being pulled 20 different ways and see if you don't start cutting corners."
Problem for O'Keefe is that there are plenty of ideas on how to both service Hubble and adhere to the Gehman's commission's advice. Not surprisingly, NASA management choses to ignore its engineers instead of listen.
Nasa will be well rid of Mr. O'Keefe when he leaves. Next time, maybe the powers that be will appoint someone with an engineering background to run the agency.
You're right, there's risk involved. The question is which projects do you decide to spend the remaining shuttle flights on? Do you continue to pour money down an ISS rat hole that has delivered ZERO peer-reviewed science, has no reason to exist other than pork barrel or do you allocate the flights to maximizing the remaining science?
NASA has already killed Compton, is on its way to killing Hubble and you think O'Keefe and gang will fund Webb? Perhaps you didn't notice, Webb has already been scaled back twice - the ISS money vacuum will continue to wreak its damage. Other posters have already pointed out that Webb and Hubble are not interchangeable - they see different spectrums.The problem is is that NASA will continue to lose public support if its only reason to exist is to fly the Shuttle back and forth between ISS. The ISS has no value other than job creation. Hubble on the other hand, provides both jobs and real science - the kind of science that gets published in Science and Nature. ISS science is the kind of science you find at the local county science fair, i.e., "What color does my dog like?"
Your post and O'Keefe's decision to kill Hubble clearly illustrate how poorly educated this country is. Equating Hubble and Webb and choosing ISS over Hubble are examples of what happens when half our children aren't taught science well enough to know that it takes a year for the earth to circle the sun. The cost of that poor education is you get people like O'Keefe running Nasa and the public doesn't know enough to say boo about it. We've lost the super collider, we're going to lose Hubble, 50/50 Webb will not fly, manufacturing, accounting, customer service and software have been outsourced but we'll have a worthless missile "defense" and plenty of boobies on fark.com. That's the cost of poorly educating people.
"Astronomers use gravitational lensing, a magnifying effect caused by the gravity / mass of galaxies, to capture images of the farthest / oldest galaxy known - from when the universe was just 750 million years old. Stories from the BBC, Sign On San Diego, West Hawaii Today, or Mercury News."
So in other words, these astronomers are a bunch of voyeurs peeking at young starlets through big lenses. This is appaling! Young galaxies shouldn't be exploited in this manner, especially at such a fragile time in their existence, when they are just beginning to discover themselves. The galaxies scientists are viewing keep getting younger and younger as they attempt to reach the elusive "Big Bang". To make things worse, they shameless post pictures of their exploits on the Internet.
IF we had a permanent base on the moon AND a lunar-based telescope, we'd have exposures of up to two weeks long!
BUT if Bush's plan is only a political game to win votes in Florida and Texas, we might as well try to make NASA change its mind on Hubble.
You do realize, though, that the Hubble had the most accurate optics of any telescope ever built? (It was at the time, though since then Chandra probably exceeds it). That's why they were able to correct the spherical aberation perfectly with COSTAR.
Anyway, IIRC, it was the testing equipment that led to the problem with the spherical aberration. Ie, they ground the mirror to a very high standard. They fine-tuned the curvature with testing equipment to get it to the proper shape (talking 10's of nanometers of material to grind away here, not much material at all). It was this testing equipment that was miscalibrated. But it was a systematic error, so they could perfectly undo the aberrations introduced into the mirror.
As far as testing it before launch, I beliebe there were some problems that it couldn't be tested until it was in a microgravity environment. For example, the weight of the mirror in a gravitational field distorts it significantly that it can't actually focus.
make world, not war
Only 750 million years after the big bang, this primal galaxy formed!!! That is amazingly quick. Our galaxy is purported to have taken a lot longer for it to form. The implications are immense.
Thanks to all those who provided updates since I posted this, when the news broke. I thought I'd add a few more: The news from Hubblesite, The Discovery Channel, Yahoo News, and from Innovations Report
After the unchecked torrent of lies from the Bush administration about everything, what makes you think they'll do *any* of the things they've promised the space program, once reelected in November?
--
make install -not war
While a couple of hundred million years is a reasonable timescale for a galaxy like the Milky Way, it is important to realize that galaxies typically rotate differentially and in the case of ellipticals without a single well defined rotation axis. Spiral galaxies like the Milky Way have "flat" rotation curves such that the velocities are constant no matter the radial distance, so it takes stars at larger radial distances much longer to orbit around than stars closer in. Individual stars in sprial galaxies to not all rotate together with a fixed pattern speed. Galaxy formation is a much trickier business. This particular "galaxy" is very tiny compared to to the Milky Way (think more like the Magellanic Clouds). It may just be a small galaxylet that will, in its future, merge with other similar pieces to form a larger galaxy. In such a heirarchical scenario it can be difficult to define a single time of formation. In some sense the size/mass of the galaxy and the age of the universe provide constraints to test formation models. OK, I shoulf go prepare my real lecture for today on the Doppler effect.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Hubble might not be able to see that far into space with failed gyros; but before NASA is going to cancel Hubble because of that, they might wanna have a little chat with ESA engineers about operating their joint-venture IUE project without gyros.
To quote from the project page: The IUE is the longest-lived and one of the most productive satellites ever built. It worked non-stop (only one week of program interruption was made in 1985) until it was switched off in September 1996, 14 years later than originally planned., but the paragraphs NASA's engineers should be interested most in is:
The reliability of IUE's operation throughout its 18-year lifetime was staggering. Although the back-up cameras were faulty, the primary cameras remained fully operational. Despite the failure of four of its six gyroscopes, the pointing and slew control remained precise to the last.
When its fourth gyroscope failed in 1985, IUE continued operations thanks to an innovative reworking of its attitude control system by using the fine Sun sensor as a substitute. Targets were acquired blindly by knowledge of their positions and by careful pointing of the telescope. This redesign (the first ever in the history of space) worked well, with the loss of only a few minutes observation time per hour. Even with another gyroscope lost in its last year, IUE could still be stabilised in three axes, with only a single gyroscope, by adding star-tracker measurements.
So, in my opinion, Hubble could stick around a long time, as long as NASA accepts that it can't look into "very deep space" anymore, only into "somewhat deep space". It still can be very usefull to explore nearby stars and our own planets.
LLAP & LG
Rene
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev