NASA's Hubble Telescope completed its 100,000th orbit
August 16th 2008 08:29
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completed its 100,000th orbit of Earth on the morning of August 12 2008.
As a fitting crowning achievement of this event in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., aimed Hubble at a dazzling region of celestial geneses. Hubble captured a small portion of this nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074. This part of the region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a remnant supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active stellar nursery region in our Local Group of galaxies.
The Hubble telescope reached a milestone several years sooner than scientists expected. The eighteen year-old orbiting observatory has averaged 1,389 exposures a month, an amount that would make any photographer green with envy.
Data processing involves data calibration, evaluation and subsequent archiving. The data is sent to specific astronomers who were awarded observing time, and eventually are made available to researchers worldwide in a data archive. This archive presently contains over 2.5 trillion bytes of Hubble science data stored on 375 optical disks. About 2 Gbytes of data are processed and archived daily.
The data storage on Hubble has been upgraded making image capture and downloading more efficient.
The Hubble camera takes images in monochrome and then uses blue, green, and red filters were combined to make this color-composite image possible.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)Carlcan
As a fitting crowning achievement of this event in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., aimed Hubble at a dazzling region of celestial geneses. Hubble captured a small portion of this nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074. This part of the region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a remnant supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active stellar nursery region in our Local Group of galaxies.
This colour enhanced image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.
The Hubble telescope reached a milestone several years sooner than scientists expected. The eighteen year-old orbiting observatory has averaged 1,389 exposures a month, an amount that would make any photographer green with envy.
Data processing involves data calibration, evaluation and subsequent archiving. The data is sent to specific astronomers who were awarded observing time, and eventually are made available to researchers worldwide in a data archive. This archive presently contains over 2.5 trillion bytes of Hubble science data stored on 375 optical disks. About 2 Gbytes of data are processed and archived daily.
High speed image of the Hubble telescope crossing the evening sky over South East Queensland.
The Hubble camera takes images in monochrome and then uses blue, green, and red filters were combined to make this color-composite image possible.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)Carlcan
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