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Hubble Turns 25
Taco Cowboy points out that the Hubble Space Telescope turns 25 today.
Hubble was launched on April 24, 1990, aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Currently, it is flying about 340 miles over the Earth and circling us every 97 minutes. While the telescope itself is not really much to look at, that silver bucket is pure gold for astronomers. Scientists have used that vantage point to make ground-breaking observations about planets, stars, galaxies and to reveal parts of our universe we didn't know existed. The telescope has made more than a million observations and astronomers have used Hubble data in more than 12,700 scientific papers, "making it one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built," according to NASA. ... NASA aims to keep Hubble operating through at least 2020 so that it can overlap with its successor. The James Webb Space Telescope is due to launch in October 2018 and begin observations in mid-2019.
NASA celebrated by releasing a new, epic image from Hubble titled "Celestial Fireworks." It is accompanied by an impressive flythrough video. Some nice galleries of Hubble images have been put together at the NY Times and Slate, but a bigger collection is available directly from the official Hubble website.
So you've basically failed to understand why they're necessary for astronomers to make sense of things?
Hubble isn't up there taking photographs with a camera .. the only way to interpret the images is with the false color stuff.
The Hubble images aren't artists conceptions, but they're not straight up camera pictures either. They're the actual real things, just processed to make humans be able to understand them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Create an account at Heavens-Above to get time and direction to see space objects. http://www.heavens-above.com/ It's a great resource.