Hubble space telescope

Hubble space telescope

Subject: Science and Tech

Context: NASA plans to fix a glitch that has stopped the Hubble space telescope from being used for science work for more than a month.

Concept:

• The Hubble, launched in 1990, is the most important scientific tool ever to be built,
• the observatory is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space and has made groundbreaking discoveries in the field of astronomy since its launch. According to NASA’s official website, the launch and deployment of Hubble in April 1990 is said to be the “most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo’s telescope.”
• It is has a 7.9 feet mirror, and captures stunning images of deep space playing a major role in helping astronomers understand the universe by observing the most distant stars, galaxies and planets.
• NASA also allows anyone from the public to search the Hubble database for which new galaxy it captured, what unusual did it notice about our stars, solar system and planets and what patterns of ionised gases it observed, on any specific day.

Astounding captures By Hubble,

• The disintegration of an ancient comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami while it was approaching the sun. It was one of the clearest views of a breaking icy comet.
• The collusion of two dwarf galaxies one of which is I Zwicky 18 with another one on its upper right. This led to the formation of a new star.
• A disc surrounding a star ‘Beta Pictoris’, which was discovered in 1984, was found to be constituted by two planets, light-scattering dust and debris.
• The black hole-powered core of the Circinus Galaxy appears in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. (NASA/Hubblesite)
• Colourful patterns of gases in a black hole powered galaxy known as the ‘Circinus Galaxy’. These gases depicted a cauldron of vapours, concentrated in two disks of the galaxy.
• ‘Galaxy Cluster Abell 2744’ which is 3.5 billion light-years away and has several clusters of small galaxies in it. It also poses a strong gravitational field which acts as a lens to reflect the light of almost 3,000 background galaxies.
• Neptune which is the most distant planet. The image of the planet revealed the formation of high-altitude clouds composed of methane ice crystals.
• Collision between two galaxies UGC 06471 and UGC 06472 which are 145 million light-years away from the earth were captured. The collision eventually led to the formation of a larger galaxy.
• Triangulum Galaxy was snapped depicting the specific areas of star birth with a bright blue light spreading across the galaxy in beautiful nebulas of hot gas
• ‘Galaxy ESO 243-49, which had a medium-sized black hole. The 20,000 suns sized black hole was positioned on a glacial plane of the galaxy.
• An encounter of a comet named C/2013 A1 with Mars. The ‘Comet Siding Spring’ passed with a distance of just 87,000 miles to that of Mars.
• ‘Gum 29’ a vibrant stellar being ground, which is 20,000 light-years away, consisting of a giant cluster of 3,000 stars was captured by the telescope. This behemoth cluster of stars is called ‘Westerlund 2’.
• ‘Southern Ring Nebula’ was recorded which did show two stars a bright white star and a fainter dull star at the centre of the nebula where the dull star was indeed creating the whole nebula.