Saturday, 1 July 2017

Hubble Space Telescope

By Malay Kumar at 18:24    1 comment

Hubble Space Telescope to Observe night sky objects from the Space
     Hubble Space Telescope is a American (National Aeronautics Space Administration) space telescope launched into space to observe night sky objects which are invisible from our Earth telescopes. The most largest and versatile among all telescopes is Hubble Space Telescope. Nowadays Hubble plays a major role and a powerful scientific tool for Astronomers in the field of Research and discoveries. Since its launch from 1990 it had made millions of discoveries like Galaxies, Stars, Dual Stars, Gas Nebulae, Exoplanets, Comets, Star clusters, Supernovas, Active Black Holes producing a good quality and high resolution images on computer screen. It helps astronomers to understand the phenomenon and evolution of universe easily.

TELESCOPE IN SPACE:

     On 24th April 1990 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was parked into Low Earth orbit, which was carried by Space Shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center of Florida. It took Eight years to construct and complete the Hubble project starting from 1977 to 1985. Hubble was named in the honour of a famous Astronomer Edwin Hubble.

PROPERTIES OF TELESCOPE:

     The telescope basically consist of a mirror reflector of 2.4 meter and imaging instrument which will give astronomers a clear and magnificent view of Universe with greater resolution in the presence of visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. It orbits Earth at a distance of 568 kilometers from Earth.The total cost to complete the Hubble project was $1.5 billion dollars. It has mind-blowing feature to image (Deep Field Image) the sky objects to a distance of 13 billion light years away from our Earth which is impossible to imagine and image through ground based telescopes. 

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE'S INTERESTING FACTS:
  •  Hubble Astronomers have published nearly 14,000 scientific papers after 1.3 million observations since its year of launch1990.
  • Hubble uses Spinning wheels to change its position by applying Newton's Thrid Law instead of using thrusters
  • Hubble has an accuracy point of 0.007 arc seconds and can see objects with an angular size of 0.05 arc seconds.
  • It can image and locate objects to a far of more than 13.4 billion light years away from our Earth.
  • It had archived more than 140 Terabytes of data by generating 10 Terabytes of New data per year.
 TECHNICAL DETAILS:
  • Hubble Telescope has 1.25 MHz DF-224 Processor CPU, it intel based 80486 processor.
  • It has Multiple Access Transponder components MAT-1 and MAT-2
  • The wide-field camera uses RCA 1802 microprocessor.
INITIAL INSTRUMENTS:
  • Planetary Camera
  • Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph
  • High Speed Photometer
  • Faint Object Camera
  • Faint Object Spectrograph
HUBBLE INSTRUMENTS:
  • Advanced Camera for Surveys
  • Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
  • Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement
  • Faint Object Camera
  • Faint Object Spectrograph
  • Fine Guidance Sensor
  • Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph
  • High Speed Photometer
  • Near Infrared Camera
  • Multiple-Object Spectrometer
  • Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph
  • Wide Field and Planetary Camera
  • Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2
  • Wide Field Camera 3
SERVICING MISSIONS:
  • Servicing Mission-1 - STS-61 December 1993
    • Seven Astronaut in Endeavour replaced High Speed Photometer with COSTAR
    • Wide Field Planetary Camera was replaced with Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2
    • Solar arrays and electronic components was replaced
    • Four Gyroscopes was also replaced and the onboard computers were upgraded to coprocessors  
  •  Servicing Mission-2 - STS-82 February 1997
    • STIS and NICMOS was replaced and a New Solid State Recorder was mounted
  • Servicing Mission-3A - STS-103 December 1999
    • Four new gyroscopes were replaced with Fine Guidance Sensor and new computer systems were upgraded with more memory.
    • Voltage/Temperature Improvement Kit was replaced with Thermal Insulation Blankets.
  • Servicing Mission-3B - STS-109 March 2002
    • Fine Guidance Sensors was replaced by the Advanced Camera for Surveys
    • Solar panels was replaced for the second time for more power
  • Servicing Mission-4 - STS-125 May 2009
    •  New Nickel-Hydrogen Battery was installed and also Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
DISCOVERIES:

Eagle Nebulae Image Captured in 2014
Hubble Studies New Frontier's Program
Pismis 24 Star Cluster
Carina Nebulae
 
Hubble Detecting Early Universe with Various Space Telescope and Ground based telescope
 FURTHER REFERENCES:

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