00005 - The Hubble

No wonder that we consider the telescope to be one of the greatest inventions ever made , it connects the earthlings and the space.

How amazing is that right !

This marvel dates back to 1608, when a Dutch eyeglass maker got an idea when his 2 kids were playing with lenses at his store.

What do these telescopes do?

Simple, it's an instrument used to see far away objects, like very far.

Think that it's a zoom button in reality.

There are different types of telescopes, widely classified as the following four:

Refractor Telescope, Reflector Telescope, Dobsonian Telescope, Maksutov - Cassegrain Telescope.

They're differentiated on basis of what's the main component which serves the function of the telescope.

On Earth, there are many powerful telescopes and they're pretty amazing, but humans didn't stop;

Since the atmosphere of Earth allows only some light blocking the rest, they started sending telescopes to space to get a clearer view of the far away galaxies, stars and planets.

And again, there were many telescopes launched into space and one of the most significant one to be launched was "The Hubble Space Telescope".

Launched in 1990, it's 547 kms away from us in the lower earth orbit and though it wasn't the first one to be launched, it still is one of the biggest and the most versatile space telescopes ever launched.

That is fine, but what does it do?

It not only sees far away galaxies, planets, stars but also, clicks sharp images of them.

It has done numerous object discoveries which were once observed from earth and were declared as dust and gas clouds.

Hubble has observed more than 13.4 billion light years away, means it saw things that formed 13.4 billion years ago.

That's something just crazy right!!

The six cameras, sensors see various types of lights from the spectrum.

The working of Hubble is pretty complex for us to understand, but it has done a significant contribution to astronomy like clearly examining our own planets, stars, birth of galaxies, outer galaxies and many more.

Hubble Space Telescope

What will happen to Hubble in future?

Though it was designed for 5 years, it lasted pretty long.

In 2009, Astronauts flew to it for the fifth time to replace a few parts and cameras. As of now, it's working well and it won't be repaired any further.

Why did I write about this now?

Well, 31 years ago, on 24th April,1990 the Hubble was launched into space with the space shuttle "Discovery" on a mission STS-31;

Happy Birthday Hubble!

Now, NASA is planning and working on Hubble's successor, The James Webb Space Telescope.

This is scheduled to launch in October 2021

James Webb Space Telescope under construction

This has four main objectives :

1.To search for the first light from stars that formed while Big Bang.

2. To understand birth of galaxies.

3. To understand formation of stars and other planetary objects.

4. To study origin of life.

Seems interesting, there's much more to understand about these wonderful inventions...