There is nothing more surprising than telescope shots! Hubble and other high-quality astronomical optical instruments capture the target with one glance and capture what they see. Compared with them, the voluminous lunar module is only a crude device designed to land in another world. Any rocket is a machine for a quick attack. The world-famous automatic observatory in orbit around the Earth is a human-made eye that carefully and tirelessly examines the vast universe.
It's all about him
For the first time, the artificial eye gazed intently into the black depths without end and edge immediately after launch on April 24, 1990. After a quarter century of honest service, it became clear: the Universe is richer, more beautiful and complex than it is represented in the most daring scientific assumptions.
But relatively recently, a person had difficulty imagining that he could take clear pictures of the solar system. With the Hubble telescope, the impossible became possible. For nearly thirty years, a bright silver object with a diameter of 43 feet (13 m) and a length of 14 feet (4.2 m), with a wide-open eye at one end and an "eyelid" that never closes, continuously and carefully examines the cosmic expanses.
They say about uncharted lands on Earth "a human foot has not set foot here." It is possible that thanks to research by scientists based on data from the “heavenly laboratory”, a person will one day not only examine other worlds, but also walk along the surface of habitable planets of distant galaxies.
Came out, saw, fixed
What are telescope shots? Hubble is not just a device for registering still images in space. A complex celestial station collects data in a special way, registers electromagnetic radiation in which the earth's atmosphere is opaque.
The device, named after the famous astronomer and cosmologist Edwin Hubble, captures the emission ranges of stars, ionized particles, reflected light. Astronomers process the data, bringing them into a visual image.
A novelty worth $ 1.5 billion was created by several companies. A special contribution was made by the American military-industrial corporation Lockheed. There were many problems and difficulties, but as a result, an apparatus appeared that changed astronomy almost from the moment it entered space. It was expected that high-resolution images of the Hubble telescope will provide clear and detailed images, the study of which will bring a person closer to unraveling the secrets of the universe.
Grinded, but not polished
The well-known primary mirror measuring 94.5 inches (2.4 m), Perkin Elmer polished so that the size of the bumps did not exceed the allowable 10 nanometers (10 one-million meter meters), which allowed to reduce distortion to 1/50 of the thickness of a sheet of paper.
Since the Shuttle Discovery launched a miracle of scientific thought into orbit, many dramatic incidents have occurred to it. One of the most critical happened at the beginning, when it turned out: the Hubble telescope couldn’t take space images of the required quality, since the sharpness was an order of magnitude lower than the calculated one. An unacceptable image error was caused by a microscopic defect in an improperly polished mirror.
Space repair
It was urgent to take action. Put a new mirror when the whopper is already in orbit? Ruled out. To lower the apparatus to Earth? Dear pleasure. We decided to compensate for the distortion using the COSTAR system. Astronauts installed it during the first expedition to service the celestial observatory, plus replaced the camera.
Figuratively speaking, they put on the “most expensive glasses” in history to the “cosmic eye”. After 2009, they became unnecessary - devices with self-correcting optics (spectrographs) appeared. The best pictures of the Hubble telescope - not just a story about the secret of the universe. This is a fantastic gallery of the works of the greatest Creator.
Fireworks, turntables, sadness
The Heavenly Fireworks, captured by Hubble, has about 2,000 young stars sparkling at a distance of 20,000 light-years. A huge cluster of three thousand stars in the huge constellation Kiel is called Westerlund 2 (1). The large planetary nebula "Snail" (2) in the constellation Aquarius (two and a half years across) is also called the "Eyes of God." The red color of the “pupil” is the display of gas blowing from a dead sun-shaped star. Until the “eye” only 690 light years.
High-quality images from the Hubble telescope revealed the beauty of the object adorning the Pinwheel Galaxy called Mesier 101 (3). Before the spiral miracle, 25 million, from one end to the other - one hundred seventy thousand light years. Our Milky Way is impressive in size, but Messier 101 is two times larger, although flat is very similar to it. Pronounced sleeves in the form of spirals and a small dense bulge (the central ellipsoidal component of spiral and ellipsoid galaxies) are clearly visible.
Pillars, head, jupiter
There is no doubt, the images of the planets from the Hubble telescope are beautiful. But even more wonderful is the surreal process of dying and birth of galaxies, the echoes of disasters that happened millions of years ago. Take even these “cosmic snakes” in the Orion nebula - the so-called Pillars of creation (4). Terrible accumulations of hydrogen gas - a kind of egg, new stars “hatch” inside. About 6 thousand years ago, the pillars were destroyed by a supernova explosion. A gradually fading picture will be observed for another thousand years.
"Horsehead" (5) in the constellation Orion. The famous nebula was removed in detail in detail in 2013, when the Hubble telescope turned 23 years old. The glow is caused by the ionization of hydrogen clouds behind the object. But as if several moons cast shadows on Jupiter (6). The black spots that you see are not shadows, but the largest satellites of the fastest planet in the solar system - Io, Ganymede and Callisto.
Crabs, eyes and rings
The giant mosaic of the Crab nebula (7) is what remains of a star that died in a supernova explosion. On Earth, an outbreak was observed in 1054, in Taurus (there are reports of Chinese astronomers about this phenomenon). "Cat's Eye" (8) is a nebula in the constellation Dragon. Before us is the last, very bright phase of a star resembling the Sun. Studying the current process, astronomers have suggested: in 5 billion years, our star will enter the same state.
The images from the Hubble telescope made it possible to determine the true shape of the Ring Nebula (9). This part of the constellation called Lira is located at a distance of 2,000 light-years. It is believed that spirals of dust imitate the work "Starry Night", written by Vincent Van Gogh. As for more mundane comparisons, it was found out with the help of the apparatus: the sparkling gas shell around the obsolete old one resembles a donut with filling (matter), and not a donut.
Preparing a shift
The Whirlpool Galaxy (10) in the constellation of the Hounds of the Dogs demonstrates the birth of new stars. Before her 23 million light years. The dust in the center feeds the black hole. This is how two interacting cosmic beauties-galaxies Arp 273 (11) look like: the shape of the larger one is distorted due to the tidal interaction with the smaller one. Simply put, one galaxy almost swallowed another. Wonderful, fantastically beautiful, this "Rose of galaxies" appears before the eyes of earthlings. The larger one shows an expressive floral shape. But this is not “flowers, but berries” - a beautiful image of a terrible space catastrophe that occurred as a result of the collision of two galaxies.
Two other galaxies NGC 2207 and IC2163, critically close to each other, in the constellation Canis Major (12). The consequences of this mutual “ram” will stretch for hundreds of millions of years. One image resembles ships at sea. Others say they see "the burning eyes of the Hound of the Baskervilles." Thanks to the unique "video production" of the most complex devices, there are more than a dozen comparisons!
The time will come when the first "swallows" - images from the Hubble telescope - will cease to come to Earth. An ultramodern orbital infrared observatory is being created, with which the name of NASA’s second chief, James Webb, is predicted. The design of the apparatus significantly exceeded the budget, the implementation deadlines were violated. Something similar happened with the "hard worker", preparing to go on a well-deserved rest. But while it works, scientists from NASA will once again surprise the world with stunning images of stunning space phenomena.