Published: 17 Nov 2014 15:300 comments

A REGULAR feature from Tweeddale Astronomical Society...

THE increased popularity of astronomy as an interest and hobby over recent years has been in large part due to one of mankinds greatest technological achievements, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble telescope.

Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has been providing us with spectacular images in exquisite detail. These have not just delighted the amateurs among us and inspired many to take up the hobby, but have given professional astronomers and cosmologists a wealth of insight into the history, structure and diversity of the universe.

The telescope was named after Edwin Hubble, who in the late 1920s demonstrated that the Milky Way was not the entire universe, but was in fact just one of billions of galaxies, all of which seemed to be racing away from one another after an event which became known as 'The Big Bang.

So, why put a telescope in space? In its position 353 miles above the Earth, Hubble uses its 2.4m mirror to get a view of the universe that typically far surpasses that of much larger ground-based telescopes, which look through an atmosphere that can distort and block the light that reaches our planet.

Even the mountain-top telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and the Canary Islands, which can have mirrors as large as 10m across, still suffer from these effects and struggle to match the results of Hubble.

Amongst other things, Hubbles gaze has helped determine the age of the universe, discover planets outside our solar system, and demonstrate the existence of dark energy. One of the most striking images produced by Hubble came from scientists pointing the telescope at an apparently empty part of the sky and collecting light for almost 12 days.

The rest is here:

Eyes On The Skies