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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
Try HubbleSite - their article includes a full-res JPEG/TIFF image.
(N.b. Apologies to their webmasters/hosting company)
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)
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
Or, the whole project gets canned because the money is rerouted into other projects.
So why again do you think the replacement will be ready around 2007?
Concerning (d): Other nations are also possible to send people into space and even bring them back. And, be sure, they will happily fill the gap, if the US decide to "end manned space flights for generations".
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
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.