By Tushna Commissariat
The illustrious Hubble Space Telescope (HST) recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, bringing to light one of the most celebrated and accomplished man-made scientific instruments. On April 24 this year, the HST officially completed 20 years in orbit, making it the most successful venture that NASA and the ESA have embarked upon.
The iconic Hubble image: the Pillars of Creation. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)
On 24 April 1990, the Space Shuttle and crew of STS-31 launched the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope into a low-Earth orbit. What followed was an epic era of the HST collecting some of the most fantastic images ever seen of the entire universe. Its many discoveries have aided and abetted astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology over the years, giving us visual proof for many things that were merely theoretical in the past. It wasn’t always a smooth curve, with the primary mirror being out of focus within a few weeks from launch, broken equipment, and a Space Shuttle rescue/repair mission that was cancelled. There was even talk of not reparing equipment a few times but the Hubble team of engineers, scientists and astronauts from NASA and ESA both proved time and time again that the HST had a lot more to give. To date, Hubble has looked at over 30,000 celestial objects. Its vast archives include over half a million pictures. The most recent renovation was carried out in May 2009, making the telescope 100 times more powerful than when it was launched.
Image celebrating HST 20th Anniversary: Image of the Carina Nebula. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)
As a part of the celebrations, NASA, ESA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) decided on commemorating the date with a stunning new image. The Hubble anniversary image highlights a small portion of one of the largest observable regions of starbirth in the Galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen interwoven with dust ascend from the wall of the nebula. The scene is rather evocative of Hubble’s 1995 iconic image - “Pillars of Creation” taken by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen .This image captures the top of a pillar of gas and dust, three light-years tall, which is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.
Another very interesting aspect of the celebration is the Hubble Pop Culture contest, being conducted by the spanking new European website for HST. It calls to people from all over the world who have enjoyed Hubble images over the years to search for the images that have made their way into culture and arts, as seen in everyday life.
Further shots of the Carina Nebula; details of the 'Cosmic Pinnacle' shown. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)
Also, Hubble fans can post a Facebook message or use the Twitter hashtag #hst20 or get onto the Hubble website and go to the “Messages to Hubble” page. There they can add their own messages or read selections from other messages. Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope’s many terabytes of science data. The Hubble team hope to show future scientists just how much the telescope impacted our world and showed us, with extreme clarity, the awesome beauty of our universe.
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