Hubble Space Telescope: Photographing the Universe
PHOTOGRAPHING THE UNIVERSE The Earth is always bathed in the light of distant stars The light may take millions of years to reach us But at the last moment it must pass through Earth's thick atmosphere before it can be seen Details become blurry Stars appear to twinkle because of pockets of cold and warm air 4
To make star gazing clearer in 1990 NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope HST It is an enormous observatory in orbit far above the 5 Earth
The Hubble Space Telescope can see 10 times farther than most telescopes on Earth It detects objects that are one billion times dimmer than what can be seen by the human eye Whirlpool Galaxy 6
After more than 25 years in orbit it has made over 1.3 million observations Hubble has changed our understanding of how the universe works XTREME FACT The Hubble Space Telescope is named after 20th century astronomer Edwin Hubble He discovered nebulae outside the Milky Way Galaxy We know today that the universe contains billions of galaxies in addition to our own Hubble's observations also proved the expanding universe theory 7
