Before Hubble’s observation, distance limited study at the same resolution to about two dozen galaxies within the Local Group-a small, gravitationally bound collection of roughly 40 nearby galaxies, approximately 5 million light-years from Earth.īefore NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) launched, it was not known if gamma rays only resulted from local, modest energy events. “It is immediately apparent that the center of NGC 7457 is extremely compact.” The team found that although the center remained unresolved, the images demonstrated that Hubble can “provide unique and astrophysically interesting information” about the central structure of galaxies. “The appearance of the reduced images is striking-the sharp nucleus stands out clearly from the surrounding galaxy,” the authors commented. Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, and more than a dozen of his colleagues co-published an article in the Astrophysical Journal analyzing some of the first images delivered by the Hubble Space Telescope: observations of the core of galaxy NGC 7457. Year-one science presentations at STScI covered planets, hot stars, cool stars, chemically peculiar stars, stellar systems, gravitationally lensed quasars, and quasar absorption systems.ĭr. While Hubble was not returning the image quality expected, it was still providing results that were impossible for ground-based telescopes, with high resolution and spectra that led to new research. Less than two months later, STScI convened an expert workshop on the issue. STScI staff and their partners at NASA immediately began experimenting with algorithms to resolve and make use of Hubble’s data and imagery, pushing forward image processing technology. The flaw scattered the light reflected by cosmic objects, resulting in fuzzy images. An investigation revealed that during its manufacture, the outer edge of the mirror was ground too flat by a depth of 4 microns (roughly equal to one-50th the thickness of a human hair). Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) to capture the ultraviolet spectra (individual wavelengths of light) of celestial objectsĪfter analyzing the Hubble Space Telescope’s first images, scientists realized the primary mirror had a flaw known as spherical aberration.Faint Object Camera (FOC) to detect visible and ultraviolet light from extremely dim objects.Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WFPC, later known as WFPC1), to photograph objects in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light.High Speed Photometer (HSP) to measure the brightness of celestial objects in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light.In addition to its 92-inch primary mirror to collect light, fine guidance sensors to point and lock on to targets, and solar panels for power, Hubble's original configuration included four key scientific instruments: A day later, astronauts guided the 43-foot, 12-ton telescope from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Discovery, out into orbit 332 miles above Earth’s surface. More than 40 years after it was conceived, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was launched into Earth orbit from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Hubble calculated that Andromeda is approximately 900,000 light-years away, more than eight times the distance to the farthest known stars in the Milky Way, which conclusively proved that Andromeda is a separate star system and the Milky Way is not the sum of the universe.įor this reason-and his many other accomplishments as an astronomer-NASA formally named the space telescope after him in 1983. He was able to make these calculations by measuring the variation of the luminosity (the length of time it takes a star to go from bright to dim and back again) of Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Galaxy based on a formula developed in 1912 by Harvard “computer” Henrietta Leavitt. With these findings, he changed how we view our place in space. Wilson Observatory in California, which led him to conclude that Andromeda is not a nebula, but a galaxy and, most importantly, that the Milky Way is only one of the galaxies in our universe. In 1923, Astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble spent months collecting data about the largest known spiral nebula at the Mt.
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