Through the Hubble telescope we can learn more about the formation of stars and galaxies.
The Hubble Telescope is a space observatory that was launched in 1990 aboard the shuttle Discovery . It is a device created jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) .
This space telescope allowed great advances in astronomical observation . Over the years, Hubble images have helped scientists learn more about the origin of the Earth , confirm the existence of black holes , and learn various facts about comets, stars, and planets in general.
History of the Hubble telescope
The history of the Hubble telescope begins in the 1940s , with the first desires of astronomy experts to observe beyond the Earth's atmosphere. The North American Lyman Spitzer , a specialist in astrophysics , is noted as a precursor for having proposed, in 1946 , the construction of a telescope that could be placed in orbit.
With his idea, Spitzer aimed to overcome the distortion that affects light when passing through the atmosphere, which has different temperatures and densities depending on altitude. Therefore, due to this curvature of light, ground-based telescopes cannot offer very clear images of distant objects.
Of course, the atmosphere is essential for life on Earth since it blocks part of the ultraviolet rays, gamma rays and X-rays . Thus, the solution to the astronomers' problem was to try to position a telescope above this layer of gases .
It was not until 1977 that Spitzer managed to get the US Congress to approve a budget to move forward with this type of development. Then NASA and ESA began to work together to produce the space observatory that, over time, became the telescope named after Edwin Hubble (astronomer who made important discoveries about the expansion of the universe ).
Both construction and launch were delayed for a variety of reasons, including funding issues and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 that killed 7 people.
On April 24, 1990 , Discovery (space shuttle) finally made possible the launch of Hubble from Florida 's Kennedy Space Center . The telescope was put into operation in low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 590 kilometers.
The study of the cosmos was optimized thanks to the Hubble telescope.
Main features
The Hubble telescope has a cylindrical shape, with a diameter of 4.2 meters, a length of 13.2 m and a weight of around 11 tons. It is a reflecting telescope that has a primary mirror whose diameter is 2.4 m.
Hubble, which also has two spectrographs, two cameras and guidance or orientation sensors, has a pair of solar panels that power rechargeable batteries. In this way, it takes advantage of the Sun's energy to obtain electricity.
Hubble's orbit around our planet takes 96 minutes. This means that the telescope – equipped with four motors – makes a complete revolution around the Earth every little more than an hour and a half.
The Hubble telescope and servicing missions
From its inception, the Hubble telescope was conceived as a space observatory that, once in orbit, could be accessed from a ferry. This allows servicing missions to be carried out to install new instruments, carry out repairs and correct its orbit.
The first of Hubble's servicing missions was carried out by the Endeavor (space shuttle) in late 1993 . For ten days, they worked to reverse a spherical aberration caused by a defect in the primary mirror.
The second service mission took place in 1997 , while the third took place in December 1999 . Both were made with the shuttle Discovery .
In March 2002 , Columbia completed its fourth servicing mission to Hubble. Seven years later, in 2009, the Atlantis (space shuttle) executed the fifth and last of these missions.
The Hubble telescope helped understand how the big bang developed.
The discoveries
The discoveries made possible by Hubble were numerous. With their images, it was possible to establish that the origin of the universe dates back about 13.8 billion years , for example.
The discovery of evidence to confirm the presence of black holes was another achievement of Hubble, which also made it possible to analyze the birth of stars thanks to its photographs of the Orion Nebula . Another Hubble milestone was its detailed photos of a comet on its way to Jupiter .
Space observatories after the Hubble telescope
After Hubble was put into orbit, which is still in operation, other launches of great importance were carried out.
The Chandra space telescope is a space X-ray observatory launched in 1999 that, among other achievements, made the first detection of this type of rays from an object that is part of the Kuiper belt ( Pluto ). The Spitzer space telescope, meanwhile, was launched in 2003 and was in operation until 2020 , making infrared observations.
The Fermi space telescope, launched into orbit in 2008 , is a gamma-ray observatory; the Kepler space telescope, from 2009 to 2018 , was dedicated to the search for extrasolar planets; and the Herschel space telescope, launched in 2009 and active until 2013 , discovered water vapor on Ceres (dwarf planet), to mention other of these space observatories.
In 2013 , on the other hand, the Gaia space telescope began its work, which aims to detect exoplanets , among other objectives. More recent and transcendent is the James Webb space telescope, launched in December 2021 and whose sensitivity and resolution are not compared to other devices of this class.
Links of interest
The Hubble Telescope at NASA.gov
Resources in Spanish on the official site of the Hubble Telescope