Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 12 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology
If you have the time, make sure you check out all the new Hubble pictures, which are just spectacular.
Make sure you check out the the wallpapers. I just switched from “Maelstrom of Star Birth,” which I had for a year, to the “Dying Star Creates Fantasy-like Sculpture of Gas and Dust.”
Magnificent is exactly the right word. In these whacky times of fiscal conservatives spending gazillions of dollars on, well, you name it, I have no problem spending a couple billion on this baby.
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Hubble Telescope is magnificent
Most recent Hubble Image. Full Res here.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been one of the most enduring and resounding successes in all of observable science. If you’re ever feeling particularly insignificant, don’t go to that website. …
Hubble Gallery
If you want to do some Saturday picture grazing here is a great find from John Cole where you can find great pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope and download images for printing and wallpaper; The Hubble Gallery.
Josh
No I don’t have time.
Ok let’s check them out.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2004027a/1280_wallpaper
OOOOOOOO
Robert
The Helix Nebula has been my wallpaper for the past year or so. Nothing like a great big celestial eye staring at you to make you get back to work.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2003011a/
CaseyL
Enjoy them while you can. This Admin is letting Hubble die.
Nate
Casey – not true. NASA has allocated the funds to service Hubble yet again in spite of President Bush’s vision of a manned Mars Mission. I had just posted on this earlier today.
mac
John, I’m a huge fan of the Hubble, but it’s time to replace it. Maybe it needs one last repair mission. Maybe. But there’s a much better orbital telescope on the drawing board for 2009. I’d like NASA to focus on that baby instead.
The Hubble is not such a crucial piece of equipment anymore. Earthbound telescopes are catching up in resolution, using adaptive optics (AO). A newer space scope would push the envelope further.
It’s not just money that gets spent on Hubble. It’s manpower.
Facts:
Ordinary ground-based telescope resolution is 1 arcsecond.
Hubble resolution is .1 arcsecond.
Bleeding edge AO resolution is .1-.15 arcsecond.
So the Hubble is obsolete.
(References for AO telescopes:
http://nsosp.nso.edu/ao/AO76.html
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbtwww/tech/light.htm)
But the Hubble was indeed a magnificent thing for two decades.
PS: Bleeding heart liberal speaking. I’m really a huge fan of old-style NASA. (I despise the Space Station.) But the Hubble’s time has come and gone. What would truly be a shame is if they scrapped the plans for the replacement satellite, which is supposed to be an order of magnitude better than the Hubble.
mac
John, I’m a huge fan of the Hubble, but it’s time to replace it. Maybe it needs one last repair mission. Maybe. But there’s a much better orbital telescope on the drawing board for 2009. I’d like NASA to focus on that baby instead.
The Hubble is not such a crucial piece of equipment anymore. Earthbound telescopes are catching up in resolution, using adaptive optics (AO). A newer space scope would push the envelope further.
It’s not just money that gets spent on Hubble. It’s manpower.
Facts:
Ordinary ground-based telescope resolution is 1 arcsecond.
Hubble resolution is .1 arcsecond.
Bleeding edge AO resolution is .1-.15 arcsecond.
So the Hubble is obsolete.
(References for AO telescopes:
http://nsosp.nso.edu/ao/AO76.html
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbtwww/tech/light.htm)
But the Hubble was indeed a magnificent thing for two decades.
PS: Bleeding heart liberal speaking. I’m really a huge fan of old-style NASA. (I despise the Space Station.) But the Hubble’s time has come and gone. What would truly be a shame is if they scrapped the plans for the replacement satellite, which is supposed to be an order of magnitude better than the Hubble.
John Cole
Mac- I am not beholden to the Hubble. I mean this type of discovery in general. If there is something better, then fire it up and send it out there.
I am just against ending all of this…
mac
Sorry about the double post. I should have read the warning before making my second attempt….
Shami
A response to mac, as someone who has used both the Hubble (HST) and a camera on Gemini with adaptive optics (AO): saying that AO makes HST obsolete is a deep misunderstanding of the situation.
1. The HST is above the atmosphere, and can study UV wavelengths which are simply not accessible to ground based telescopes, AO or not. (And as an aside, the James Webb, the “successor” to the HST, only does infra-red, not UV and not much visible light.)
2. AO requires a good guide star (i.e., you know what it looks like, you deform your mirror to get there, and then you see what your faint target looks like), which restricts the field of view to within a few arcminutes of a very restricted subset of stars in the sky. Artificial laser guide stars are nowhere near good enough yet.
So for the near future, the HST is irreplacable. That said, there are certainly better ways to build future space telescopes – the servicable design has been more trouble than just flying new space telescopes.
Kimmitt
Also, having two really excellent telescopes is better than having one really excellent telescope, for obvious reasons.