NEW YORK: This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, whose data has revolutionised the field of astrophysics, and captivated scientists and the public alike. Built by NASA with contributions from ESA, the telescope has a primary mirror (its eye) of 2.4 metres and orbits Earth at an altitude of 340 miles. Travelling at a speed of 17,500 mph it has covered a distance equivalent to a trip to Neptune, the furthermost planet in our solar system.
The telescope was named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble who used a 2.5 metre telescope on Mount Wilson in California to make observations of distant galaxies. His results showed that the universe was expanding, overturning scientists’ expectations and eventually leading to the Big Bang model for the birth of the Universe. The telescope has made over 1m observations out to a distance of 13.4 billion light-years.
The first images relayed back to Earth were disappointing: the main mirror suffered from a distortion called spherical aberration. This flaw was equivalent to 1/50th of the thickness of a sheet of paper, enough to cause significant blurring in all of the images. Corrective optics were inserted by NASA astronauts in December 1993, and with its new glasses Hubble was able to return spectacular images of the universe.
The cumulative cost of constructing, launching and running Hubble has reached $10 billion (£6.7 billion) but the telescope has achieved so much more than initially expected. It’s given us a breathtaking photo album of young and dying stars and their associated nebulae; of vast spiral galaxies similar to our own Milky Way and irregular galaxies disrupted as a result of recent mergers.
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