Hubble Space Telescope facts for kids
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is the first big optical space observatory telescope. Being above the atmosphere means it can see the sky more clearly than a telescope on the ground. The atmosphere blurs starlight before it reaches Earth. Named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope can observe 24 hours a day. The main mirror is 94.5 inches (2.4 meters) across. The telescope can take pictures of things so far away it would be nearly impossible to see them from anywhere else.
It was made by both NASA and the ESA working together. It is 600 km in space and was launched on April 24, 1990. Like other things in low Earth orbit it travels at 5 miles (10 km) per second. If you were going this speed on Earth, you would be able to get from New York to San Francisco in 10 minutes. This speed creates difficulty in scheduling observations.
The Hubble itself is the size of a large school bus, but still small enough to fit inside the cargo bay of a Space Shuttle. It was repaired in 1993 due to problems in the picture quality.
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Launch
The telescope was launched in 1990 by a space shuttle. When it entered orbit, everything seemed fine. But there was a problem with the telescope that was not discovered until it started taking pictures.
Problems
When the HST took its first pictures, astronomers were happy to see the images, but they were not as sharp and as crisp as expected. Telescopes in space can take better pictures than telescopes on Earth, but for some reason, the pictures were not better than the pictures taken on Earth. They found a problem with the telescope's mirror. The mirror was not curved right. It was only wrong by 2.2 microns (1/50th as thick as a piece of paper). Still, this was enough to cause the images to be blurred. Some said that Hubble was nearsighted.
Repair
Another space shuttle was soon sent up to repair the space telescope. The repair was not easy. The astronauts had to install some small mirrors to correct the light from the big mirror. The big mirror could still be used. It took five days of space walks. When an astronaut opened one of the doors on Hubble to install a new camera, the door would not close. The astronauts had to think of a creative way to get around the problem. Eventually, Hubble was fixed.
Repairs and servicing missions have been made to the Hubble Space Telescope five times to keep it in orbit and make it even better as technology improved. The space shuttle program was kept going longer than planned to send an extra trip up to the Hubble Space Telescope for a final fix.
Accomplishments
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- Early on, in 1994, Hubble stared at what was thought to be an empty area of space for ten days. It found there were actually many galaxies even there, but very faint and very far away. No other telescope could have seen that.
- In 2004, Hubble looked back several billion years to the first galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
- It was able to help settle the age of the universe at about 13.7 billion years. Before the Hubble, scientists only knew it was between 10 and 20 billion years old.
- It took the first picture of a planet outside our solar system, and was able to find what type of atmosphere other planets might have.
Future
Hubble will be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope which will be located even further from Earth. There are now other telescopes in orbit, like the Herschel Space Observatory and the Kepler Spacecraft, which was specially made for finding Earth-like planets around other stars.
Images for kids
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Astronaut Owen Garriott working next to Skylab's crewed solar space observatory, 1973
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Grinding of Hubble's primary mirror at Perkin-Elmer, March 1979
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The backup mirror, by Kodak. Its inner support structure can be seen because it is not coated with a reflective surface.
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The OTA, metering truss, and secondary baffle are visible in this image of Hubble during early construction.
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DF-224 in Hubble, before it was replaced in 1999
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Hubble Control Center at Goddard Space Flight Center, 1999
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STS-31 lifting off, carrying Hubble into orbit
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An extract from a WF/PC image shows the light from a star spread over a wide area instead of being concentrated on a few pixels.
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Optical evolution of Hubble's primary camera system. These images show spiral galaxy M100 as seen with WFPC1 in 1993 before corrective optics (left), with WFPC2 in 1994 after correction (center), and with WFC3 in 2018 (right).
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COSTAR being removed in 2009
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Nickel–hydrogen battery pack for Hubble
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One of Hubble's most famous images, Pillars of Creation, shows stars forming in the Eagle Nebula.
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Star cluster Pismis 24 with nebula
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The HST is sometimes visible from the ground, as in this 39-second exposure when it is in Orion. Maximum brightness about magnitude 1.
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Hubble's STIS UV and ACS visible light combined to reveal Saturn's southern aurora
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Brown spots mark Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 impact sites on Jupiter's southern hemisphere. Imaged by Hubble.
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Hubble Extreme Deep Field image of space in the constellation Fornax
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Hubble and ALMA image of MACS J1149.5+2223
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Evolution of detecting the early Universe
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Hubble precision stellar distance measurement has been extended ten times further into the Milky Way.
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In 2001, NASA polled internet users to find out what they would most like Hubble to observe; they overwhelmingly selected the Horsehead Nebula.
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A pillar of gas and dust in the Carina Nebula. This Wide Field Camera 3 image, dubbed Mystic Mountain, was released in 2010 to commemorate Hubble's 20th anniversary in space.
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Hubble views the Fomalhaut system. This false-color image was taken in October 2004 and July 2006 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
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Illustration of the Soft Capture Mechanism (SCM) installed on Hubble
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