Hubble Space Telescope: Our Eyes to the Universe

Hubble Space Telescope:

Our Eyes to the Universe

Hubble Facts:• It orbits Earth at 5 miles per second! At that speed, it could

travel across the US in 10 minutes!

• It is about the size of a school bus.

• Hubble was launched in 1990. At the time, it cost $1.5 billion to put into orbit.

• The Hubble is powered by the sun, using 2, 25-foot solar panels.

• The telescope collects enough data in one week to fill 3,600 feet of books on a shelf.

• The James Webb Space Telescope is being constructed to replace Hubble.

What do you see here?






























What do you see?

What do you see?



















Hubble’s Top Ten Most Significant Discoveries

• How massive stars die – in an explosion call a supernova

• The approximate age of the universe, 13-14 billion years old

• What the early universe (and early galaxies) was like

• Extra-solar “solar” systems – planets orbiting other stars in the universe

• Black holes are at the center of galaxies; its gravity helps to hold galaxies together According to

Hubble’s Top Ten Most Significant Discoveries

• The existence of gamma ray bursts, which are the most explosive, dangerous releases of energy, from the death of massive stars

• Quasars, the brightest celestial bodies, releasing an incredible amount of radio waves

• How stars are “born” – in nebulas

• The scars of a collision between Jupiter and comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (1994).

• Planetary nebula (which have nothing to do with planets) that are the gas & dust remnants of medium-sized stars, like our sun





Documents

Hubble Space Telescope: Our Eyes to the Universe