Farewell To Eyes Above And Below

LMCBoy writes "SpaceRef is reporting that the STIS Instrument on board HST has failed. The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was HST's only spectrometer, and was responsible for several important discoveries, including the first detection of an exoplanet's atmosphere. The loss is believed to have been caused by a failure in the instrument's main electronics box, which led to a rapid increase in the input current of about 1 ampere, which caused the instrument to enter a "suspend" state. It is believed that this failure is not recoverable." No_Weak_Heart writes "Perhaps the world's most renowned submersible, Alvin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is slated for retirement. Alvin has helped scientists explore deep sea, find a lost Hydrogen bomb(oops!) and discover more than 300 new animal species, will be replaced by a newer version in 2008. Also available this audio clip from NPR." (Here's a glance at Alvin's replacement.) Update: 08/07 17:29 GMT by T : Note: "HST"="Hubble Space Telescope." Thanks to Chris Johansen for pointing out the overloaded acryonym.

Comments

Alvin and Titanic

[linuxdoctor]

Don't forget that Alvin was also responsible for helping Dr. Robert Ballard to find the wreck of the Titanic.

Geez guys, pay attention!

[nbvb]

The spectrograph is what failed; the optics are fine and dandy.

We're still going to get nice pretty pictures out of Hubble, just no UV/wavelength pictures ...

Hubble's hobbled, but still alive and kicking.

ACS grism still works!

[Capt'n Hector]

Hubble is NOT blind, although this is a major setback. There is still a working spectograph on the space telescope called the ACS grism. You can still do spectroscopy!

Linkage

Re:Replacements

[wass]

The new telescope in Arizona is planned to produce visual images 10 times sharper than Hubble

for the bazillionth time, Hubble is more than just pictures. Ground-based scopes are limited to optical frequencies, Hubble can see from near IR to near UV.

More importantly, though, imaging is only one small component of astronomy, it's the spectra where much of the 'real' science is done. Spectra need to be very clean, the atmosphere not only blocks certain frequencies out of optical, but adds its own absorption/emission spectra on top of that.

So basically this telescope is NOT a replacement for Hubble, no matter what they're claiming to get funding. It will complement Hubble, that's for sure, but definitely not replace.