Launch Pad Lecture: Celebrating Hubble's 25th Anniversary

Courtesy photo - NASA The Hubble cameras revisited the Pillars of Creation, originally pictured in 1995. The result was clearer sharper images. Stars are forming inside the towering structures of cold gas and dust. The pillars are located some 6,500 light-years away, in the Eagle Nebula, toward the constellation of Serpens.

New Mexico Museuam of Space History Education Director Dave Dooling will discuss the accomplishments that resulted from the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dooling is familiar Hubble since its inception. He worked as science reporter for Huntsville Times in Alabama and for Perkin-Elmer who built the telescope. He wrote documentation for maintenance and refurbishment of the telescope in space.

Although planning for Hubble started in the early 70s, it wasn't launched until 1990. Since then, the Hubble has sent back more than 45 terabytes of information. For those unfamiliar with a terabyte, one terabyte equals 1,023 gigabytes.

The Hubble space telescope was launched into low Earth orbit on April 24, 1990. It remains operational. With a mirror measuring nearly 8 feet, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra.

The telescope was named after astronomer Edward Hubble. He proposed the expanding universe theory state. Hubble's findings fundamentally changed the scientific view of the universe.

The Hubble telescope has led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe.

Dooling said he would be hard pressed to pick out what was the most important discovery made. He explained if he were to try and pick out the top 10 at a conference, there would be an outcry as scientists came up with 10 others of equal import.

Dooling said that one of the most stunning occurred when astronomers pointed Hubble at an empty area of sky near Ursa Major, just above the Big Dipper, and discovered hundreds of distant here-to-fore galaxies. "They did this in December of 1995 for a 10-day period," he said. "They stacked the images, taking 342 images with 43 hours of exposure time. Over 900 scientific papers have cited this single discovery."

The portion of sky scrutinized was small yet it not only proved the enormity of the universe but just how crowded a place it was.

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Launch Pad Lecture: Celebrating Hubble's 25th Anniversary