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Space Science

Hubble Space Telescope Back and Better Than Ever 104

Posted by emmett from the mike-killed-the-hubble-mike-killed-the-hubble dept.
Rafael writes "The Hubble Space Telescope is back in business and better than ever, as made dramatically clear by stunning new pictures of remote galaxies and a colourful dying star. The story is at the BBC's webpage."
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Hubble Space Telescope Back and Better Than Ever More

Hubble Space Telescope Back and Better Than Ever

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  • Too bad the people that fixed Hubble aren't the same one's in charge of the Mars Missions. It would be really nice for one of them to work.

  • Slashdot Poll (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I like the way they chose 'photogenic' objects to photograph (good PR, I guess). Maybe it's time to have a slashdot poll on the most photogenic stellar objects? My vote: Uranus

  • Better resolution images. (Score:4)

    by matthewsim ( 22663 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @10:35AM (#1342226) Homepage
    There are some higher resolution images [stsci.edu] on NASA's website.
  • Does anyone know of someplace that sells Hubble images? Some of the images would make great art.
  • Why is this stuff always reported on BBC but ignored by the American media? It's our fscking satellite. Still, this means the NASA mailing list will start getting interesting again...

    Jpowers
  • A well erned victory for NASA! With all the poor press NASA has received lately with the Mars programs, it's nice to see a victory.

    "Thanks to the great work by the astronauts, Hubble is better than new,"

    Not only did they correct the gyro problems which made pointing a little difficult, the continued efforts on correcting the optics making them better than ever.

    "After a two-month hiatus, it is a tremendous boost to all of astronomy to see Hubble back in action. Nasa has restored the observatory to a condition that was better than it was even before the fourth gyroscope failed."

    Hats off to NASA [nasa.org]!

    Never knock on Death's door:

  • Wow, did you see those images on the BBC article?

    This is good stuff, finally getting the 'scope up and running properly.

    But its still passive observance. Not that I actually understand any of this, but wouldn't it be a good idea to spend some research dollars on a more active observation system? Impossible at today's tech level, but maybe not someday.

    I guess I just want more pretty pictures.

    Sakhmet.
    "When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95."

  • Fantastic idea. Come on Rob, give it to us!

    I'd vote Saturn, myself.

    I think NASA needs all the good PR it can get right now. Though not catastrophic, the Mars missions have been less than spectacular as of late.

    Sakhmet.

    P.S. - No comment about AC's choice, unless he's my boyfriend.....


    "When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95."

  • Pretty Pictures (Score:3)

    by jetpack ( 22743 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @10:44AM (#1342233) Homepage
    Bigger and better (well, mostly bigger) versions of the images can be found here [stsci.edu] and here [stsci.edu]

    I always love pictures from Hubble; they are always stunningly beautiful. However, they tend to look almost *too* good, as if some graphics artist had a bit to much free time while fiddling about with The GIMP ... I sometimes think the Hubble folks are trying to pull a fast one on us with these pictures :)

  • Hidden Agendas (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 24, 2000 @10:44AM (#1342234)
    Yet another hubble story. Hmmm. I'm astonished by the amount of people who are ignorant of the purpose of the telescope. Yeah, sure, everyone looks at the pretty pictures and says "yay! space is fun!" or "we can learn sooooo much!!!" without ever taking a peek at the real picture.

    This is sad and ironic given that looking to space is supposed to focus our perspective on earth. Sigh.

    But even this is not the true mission of the Hubble Space Telescope. I work for one of NASA's Hubble teams, so I am privy to certain documents that aren't released to the public. Ordinarily I'd withhold this information, but I think it's time for certain facts to come to light. Many people discounted the telescope due to the gyroscope failure, but failed to understand the gravity of the situation (pun intended . . . I work for the government, remember?).

    The Hubble Space Telescope exists to find signs of cheese in other celestial bodies, be they star system or stars themselves. The grand lunar cheese expeditions were a phenominal disaster due to the total lack of cheese on the moon, as had been previously believed. Subsequent missions were sent after the initial to see if maybe they were just looking in the wrong place.

    We've found that they WERE. The Mars lander was covered up because no cheese was found there either (which we knew, but it never hurts to double check).

    The way the Hubble works is by looking at major cheese centers on earth, and analyzing the various waves emitted by cheese (dubbed "dairyons"), and then points out towards space to see if it can match with any dairyon centers in space, so we know which direction to fire the next probes. It is believed that in 15 years we will have a vessel capable of retreiving any cheese we can locate now.

    NASA has come under alot of flack lately for various "failures". Yet we long ago forsaw the imminent cheese-shortage that Earth will face within the next 7-10 years. We've been doing all we can to locate external cheese supplies to harvest. I hope you all understand and do what you can to support projects like the Hubble, even if you are doing it just to look at the pretty pictures.

    Forgive my sloppy prose. I'm a rocket scientist, not a writer.

  • What's up with that /. department name? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    from the mike-killed-the-hubble-mike-killed-the-hubble dept.

    What the hell is that supposed to mean? I don't get it.

  • Why is this stuff always reported on BBC but ignored by the American media? It's our fscking satellite. Still, this means the NASA mailing list will start getting interesting again...


    There's no prurient interest, no shocking expose, no government waste, just plain old science, and too boring to bring in good ratings.

    George
  • My vote: Uranus

    Depends on who U r, I suppose..

    I've always liked the sun reflecting off Saturn's rings.. Or binary star systems, complete with a matter cloud... I'd better stop before I change my wallpaper again..
  • my uninformed guess would be that Mike Killed the Hubble.

  • Re:Press Coverage (Score:3)

    by Bucko ( 15043 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @10:50AM (#1342239)
    Actually, the picture shown was in the Washington Post and the NY Times morning editions on 1/24.

    You can also check STScI's Website [stsci.edu] for the latest news.

    BTW, HST is not purely American. At least one of the instruments on board is German made/operated, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore is run by a consortium that consists of NASA, The Assoc. of University Researchers in America (AURA) and the European Space Agengy (ESA). Quite of little bit of its current funding comes from non-US sources.

    J.

  • Fake images (Score:5)

    by K. ( 10774 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @10:53AM (#1342240) Homepage Journal
    I can see it now:

    "Fsck! The new gyros aren't working!"

    - "That's okay, I downloaded this program called
    Povray on Friday."

    Expect to see the discovery of the Teapot Nebula
    any day now.

    K.
    -
  • definatly the orion nebula
    Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this is the war room..

  • Re:Hubble Art (Score:4)

    by Duke of URL ( 10219 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @10:56AM (#1342243)
    I haven't found any sites that sell pictures yet (trying to answer my own question), but I did find the site with a nice 6+ meg file (and smaller versions) of the cool photo on the top of the BBC article. I suppose if you have a nice RGB printer you could print it out nicely. Somebody want to loan me a fujix photo printer.


    Here's the URL: http://oposite.stsci.edu /pubinfo/pr/2000/07/pr-photos.html [stsci.edu]

  • Who did the quality control for this thing? We have had 3 missions to fix the hubble since it went up. It costs roughly 1 billion every time the shuttle goes up. This is in addition to the innitial 1 billion or so. It has captured some stunning images, but between warped mirrors, bad solar panels, and failing gyros you would think this was put together by packard bell.
  • Here are the spots you can see the big images over at the Space Telescope Science Institute.


    First, the Eskimo Nebula [stsci.edu]. And Abell 2218 [stsci.edu]. Both sets of images are really really pretty.

  • Re:Slashdot Poll (Score:3)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @10:59AM (#1342246) Homepage Journal
    Not vibrators, fully-functional blow-up dolls. Or Al Gore. I can see the campaign slogan now!

    Al Gore in 2000! He's the plastic pal that's fun to be with! And Al's made from a 100% biodegradable, corn starch-enriched 4 mil polymer that not only will stand up to the tough job of President, but can be tossed in the landfill of your choice after his term! Try doing that with Bill Bradley! Coming soon! The Tipper Gore 'IQ transplant' kit! Replace the useless hot air she has in her head with 100% pure, processed American cheese food! Watch her drop her crusade for music censorship!
  • For this and lots of other info from the Space Telescope Institute check out http://www.stsci.edu. It is an outstanding web site.
  • You go hang out in Lower Earth Orbit for a decade and see how you turn out.

    Solar panels tend to wear out when they are exposed to extreme temprature variations and cosmic radiation.

    The gyros and the mirrors were flawed designs however.
  • Try this link [skypub.com]. Where it says "Select Product Categories" at the top, pop open the combo box and select "Hubble Space Telescope". I'm sure there are others; if you e-mail me, I can probably track down some more for you.

  • NASA's Press Release on This (Score:3)

    by pridkett ( 2666 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @11:02AM (#1342250) Homepage Journal
    You can see NASA's press release on this at http://hubble.nasa.gov/updates/1- 24-00update.html [nasa.gov]
  • from the mike-killed-the-hubble-mike-killed-the-hubble dept.

    What is that from? I know I didn't kill the hubble, honest...

  • Re:What's up with that /. department name? (Score:4)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @11:07AM (#1342253) Homepage Journal
    In one episode of MST3000, Mike manages to destroy the Hubble. Hence: 'mike-killed-the-hubble' I think the robots were chanting something to that effect as well.
  • You go hang out in Lower Earth Orbit for a decade and see how you turn out.


    Solar panels tend to wear out when they are exposed to extreme temprature variations and cosmic radiation.

    The gyros and the mirrors were flawed designs however.

    The mirrors, yes. But gyros fail and were fully expected to.

    On the other hand, the decaying CCD on Chandra was a big "oops", though they've stabilized it.

    [TMB]
  • They're talking about the MST3K Movie where Mike crashes the Sattelite of Love into the Hubble and while attempting to remove the Hubble from the hull he trashes it.
  • haha, it took 1 minute for that to be moderated down. and i'm not even trying to be a troll. but.. karma's overrated. what is it from though?
  • Someone said it's from MST3K: The Movie, which sounds plausible enough.

    Make Seven
  • Damn! I'd swear that I can see some blue lyapunov fractals in that Abell shot. Maybe I just need to lay off the mushrooms at lunch.

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
  • Better use it well before it gets shot down
    It takes about a year for missiles to travel from mars.

  • Re:This is getting out of hand (Score:3)

    by zantispam ( 78764 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @11:14AM (#1342261)
    The gyros [snip] were flawed designs however.

    Actually, (IIRC) the gyros were designed to last for a period of time x. They lasted something like x+6months. These were the water-filled gyros.

    The new gyros are gel-filled and designed to last a period of time x^3.

    So, as far as designs go, the gyros weren't flawed, they just lasted as long as the materials dictated that they would. Now that we have better materials, we can make better gyros. Dig?

    Now the mirror is a different story entirely....

    Here's my [redrival.com] copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?

  • Re:This is getting out of hand (Score:5)

    by mattorb ( 109142 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @11:18AM (#1342263)
    I really hope you're kidding. For my money, the Hubble is one of the best scientific investments we've _ever_ made -- it's absolutely unreal how much it has furthered astronomy and astrophysics in the years since it went up. The pretty pictures are great, sure -- they are beautiful, and beauty is I think something that any civilization discounts at its own peril. But there has also been a lot of pretty hard-core science from the Hubble -- witness the HST Key Project, which used the Hubble to observe remote Cepheids and calibrate the astronomical distance scale. Knowing the distance to all the objects in our Universe (and hence how old the light we're seeing is, how old our Universe is, etc.) is a pretty big deal, don't you think? The Hubble has also let us see, in far more detail than was possible before, the process of star formation itself -- think of the Eagle Nebula pictures, the so-called "pillars of creation." It's cool stuff.

    Sorry if I'm ranting a bit here. My point is just this: if you want to rave about waste in our government, there are plenty of other places to look. Sure, the Hubble has had problems. Some of them have been stupid problems. But at maybe 6 billion dollars spent so far (the initial expenditure was quite a bit bigger than you quote, but I believe the shuttle flights cost less), it's been a bargain. And yes, I mean that seriously. :-)

  • Re:This is getting out of hand (Score:5)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @11:25AM (#1342266) Homepage
    Correction: One mission to fix the Hubble; two missions to upgrade it.

    The Hubble was designed from the very beginning, in the early 70s, to be upgraded and serviced by the shuttle. While it was extremely unfortunate that the mirror flaw was not detected before it was on orbit, Hubble was able to do useful science even then; and after the fix it's performed superbly.

    The gyros were expected to wear out, just maybe not so fast. The only real problem that's resulted was a bit of downtime, since the shuttle fleet was grounded for safety reasons last year (representing excellent quality control on the part of the shuttle teams); that wasn't Hubble's fault, though, and it went into safe mode as designed.

    Estimating shuttle costs is an art, not a science, depending on how you include extraneous costs. Most people call a shuttle mission budget about HALF a $billion. Probably this is 5 to 10 times the cost that was expected during the Hubble design phase, but we're also flying the shuttle much less than expected -- which has nothing to do with Hubble.

    I have no love for NASA; read _The Hubble Wars_ and you'll understand how the policitians and engineers took places in line before the scientists on this project far too many times. But in the end it's been a (qualified) success in so many ways.

    In short, Hubble wasn't any more "broken" than your car is when you take it to Midas for new brake shoes.
    ----
  • What do ya mean by "active observation"? I mean, there's not a whole hell of a lot we can _do_ to things that are a billion light years away. We're pretty much constrained to sit here and watch what comes our way.

    There are a few other projects that will be around after Hubble (though some will go up before HST comes down) -- the Next Generation Space Telescope is the "biggest," I guess. (Other recent/upcoming telescopes, designed to look at different parts of the spectrum, include FUSE, XMM, Chandra/AXAF, etc.) One interesting bit is that there isn't currently a telescope in the works that will fully cover the HST's observation range -- that is, there are parts of the spectrum that are going to get the big 'ole shaft when HST comes down. But enough of this.

  • _sarcasm mode on_
    Yeah - that's right. NASA's Mars guys must be stupid. Because designing budget priced hunks of steel and silicon that must be launched into orbit on tons of explosive fuel, then flung hundreds of thousands of miles through space, and finally come to land on a rocky planet with no atmosphere is easy.
    _sarcasm mode off_
    Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't - all NASA can do is make the best engineering effort they can to increase the probability of success.
  • It's from Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie. The SOL crashes into the Hubble.
  • You are incorrect. It is not from an episode. It is from the actual movie.

  • Re:This is getting out of hand (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The gyros ...were flawed designs however.

    I disagree with this statement. The gryo is quite possibly the greatest invention ever bestowed upon the world by the Greeks. Here are the facts:

    1) Meat on a spit rocks
    2) Lamb and Beef together can conquer the world
    3) That damn sauce is the bomd
    4) How Do They Fold it in the Aluminum foil like that ?!?

    I respectfully submit that gyros are the best thing in the world. If more people ate gyros, we'd be better off.

  • Behold the power of cheese.
  • They say that Hubble is "better than new" now, but they don't explain in what way!

    Does it take better pictures now, or will the better gyroscopes just make it last longer?

  • Re:Better resolution images. (Score:4)

    by yellowstone ( 62484 ) on Monday January 24, 2000 @12:08PM (#1342278) Homepage Journal
    Also check out The astronomy picture of the day [nasa.gov]. This site has the same picture as the above link, but has lots of other suitable-for-root-window astronomy pictures (like the bubble nebula [nasa.gov], the full moon [nasa.gov], and the Andromeda galaxy [nasa.gov] (my current root window image))

    Share & enjoy :-)

  • You're right.. I realized seconds after clicking 'Submit' that it was the movie.. Then again, I'm not a 'die-hard' MST fan, so the mistake isn't going to kill me.

  • A lot more impressive is the next set of pictures [stsci.edu].

    A2218 contains images of 50+ galaxies some 10^9 lightyears away, that's what could be called the "edge" of the Universe... gravitational lensing is soooo cool!

  • between warped mirrors

    FYI, that's not really true. The mirror wasn't warped, but just shaped wrong. At the time the mirror was made (not sure if it's still true), it was the MOST ACCURATE mirror ever designed. The problem was it was designed to the wrong standards. The testing apparatus to fine-tune the mirror's surface were incorrectly positioned from the mirror, so it was tuned VERY accurately to the wrong shape. It was the precise knowledge of the miscalculations which allowed the mirror to be fixed relatively easily.

  • Oops, I should have proofread better. you probably know this, but it wasn't the mirror that was fixed during the first servicing mission, but another corrective lens was installed to fix the optical pathway.
  • Heh heh heh. There _is_ some subjectivity ("artistic interpretation") that goes on ... but not with any intent to mislead, just in the attempt to give the best picture. What you get from Hubble is just a CCD readout -- that is, for each filter in which you take an image, you get (roughly speaking) a number of photons for each pixel. So the image, when you look at it, is greyscale, not spiffy reds and greens and blues.

    To get a color picture, you basically pick a color to go along with each filter image -- these are pretty sensible (usually), but there's still a bit of leeway. Conventional choices might be, for instance, H-alpha (H transition, at 6563 A) as red , H-beta (4861) as blue, and maybe [OIII] 5007 as green. But depending on what you wanted to show, you might choose different color-wavelength correspondences.

    Also, most of the images you see in PR releases and such have probably gone through additional processes to make them look nice -- ie gaussian smoothing filters, hand-removal of pesky lingering cosmic rays, subtle implantation of subliminal messages ("hubble good. nasa good."), whatever. It's all in good fun.

  • Actually, I believe the solar panals also had thermal problems. The original panels would expand and contract as the Hubble passed in and out of the Earth's shadow.

    What amazes me is that it works at all.

    rbb
  • Glorious, colorful DEATH!

    Of a star, I mean.


  • OOooooOOoohhhh... you guys have GOT to run around the highter resolutions images that NASA puts out. try the best pics from 1990 - 2000. definatly worth your time
  • I think you need to get out more and appreciate how stunningly beautiful nature actually is. :}

    Seriously, though, when we do analysis, a large part of the work can be considered a form of image enhancement or image manipulation. You might spend two hours or two nights on the actual observing, and two months (or much more) on the data reduction. That tedious work makes a big difference in how good your images will be for use in actual analysis and publication, or, alternatively, how good the pretty John Q. Public version of them will look on a webpage (cummulative with, but largely independent of the quality of the actual observation). (Ah, I C while I was typing someone mentioned a few of those things that go on in optical and other regimes; I'll skip things related to that.)

    Your point jogs my memory on something about NASA graphics people, tho. ("They're goood...real goood.") When I visited a digital video lab at the JPL last year or so, they showed an S-VHS of a nice fly-by of the LA basin (centered around JPL site, and sans human structures). It was about 30 sec, in 24-bit and some ridiculous 3D res, making it some 2.5 GB.

    Not impressed? It was made in _1982_. On a 286 speed equivalent machine. It took five days to render. And it was stunningly beautiful. Just (aside from you guys who actually _know_) imagine what they're doing now.

    Fun, fun

    K
  • This is one of the most worth while ventures that Humanity has undertaken. We have learn't more about Distant space in it's brief time in operation than in the entire time that the human race has been "watching the Stars".

    The pictures that Huble has been providing has greatly interested me for years, and It excites me greatly to have at least another few years to get magnifisent pictures from the depths of space,

    Well done this time NASA, for something that this time works properly (Dispite it's many glitches)
  • "your plastic pal thats fun to be with" sounds like a marketing ploy aimed at children ages 5 and up. perhaps something more... "hip" and "britney spears-ish" directed towards our budding adolescents would do the job. maybe... "I've got plastic in me, SO CAN YOU" would work
  • 'blessed are the cheesemakers...'
  • that's so baaad. (ok, so that's a lamb/goat, but goats have cheese too)
  • Why are all the (un)funny posts getting moderated higher than decent posts. I hearby join the call for being able to ignore a "+1 funny" moderation.
  • [wipes tear off eye]

    Man, it's great to be alive, isn't it?
  • One mission to fix the Hubble; two missions to upgrade it.

    Three missions to bring it up, and in the darkness stead it.
  • Hey great so nasa has this big telescope up in space and it can see numerous things which we on earth cant see (obvious reasons).

    As has been with the case for the history of telescopes on earth, old and outdated telescopes have been replaced by new ones. If nasa was at all serious about the using telescopes in outer space we would have heard of plans of them building a new telescope.

    The only reason i see them for maintaining hubble
    is because it provides nice public relations (we get to nice pretty pictures: which religious scholars get to call god..)

    I mean cammme onnnn an news about hubble is old news.. We need to go the next step
  • I got a new catalytic converter for my truck today. Neighbors of mine, Mr. and Mrs. Loudbody, were quoted as saying, "That thing made the most god awful sound you could imagine. And he drove around at the oddest hours, too, sometimes waking us as early as 8pm, after we had the early bird special at Denny's. That puts ya to sleep real quick, ya know."

    The late 199th decade vehicle is now known to be purring like a cuddly kitten. Once again able to reach speeds of 60mph in as little as three minutes. "There ain't nothin sweeter than cruising down the street at 30 when the speed limit is posted as 25," I was heard braggin at the local BigK.
  • NHK, the Japanese broadcasting agency had a special on what Hubble has discovered accompanied by the most moving and haunting soundtrack. They take this picture then seamlessly transition to a 3-dimensional CG flight through all the galaxies giving you an even greater impression of the depth. There has been many American and UK-made specials like this, even in IMax (Cosmic Voyage) but absolutely NOTHING compares to this. Has me reaching for the hankies everytime.
  • Mst 3000? what the hell's that? (bear in mind i'm uk, so there'll be cultural differences etc.)
  • Personally, I wouldn't go for any of the local planets - they've been done too much before. Judging by the eskimo nebula, nebulae are the way to go - for a little while at least. I also like the appearence of stuff when it's pouring into a black hole, just before the event horizon.
  • There are several bigger telescopes on the drawing boards - I remember reading about plans for an array of telescopes out in deep space that would have the ability to resolve landmasses on an Earth-size planet 10 lightyears away - cool or what? :)
  • Hey, pretty cool. A Kenny Nebula.

    http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/01/24/hubble. awakes/eskimo.large.jpg
  • What's the message here? even in space, there are 404 errors: galaxy not found?
  • The hubble REPAIR mission cost more than the last
    3 mars missions combined. If you want to start placing blame, talk to your congressman about NASAs dwindling budget.



    (Hubble cost so far: > $4Billion)

  • ....particularly since I was trolling..... ;-) But hey, you reacted. Points for me.
  • late reply, but maybe you'll see this in your log.

    I said there was one mission to fix Hubble. You are correct, the first mission was an unplanned one to correct the optics. That was the mission I referred to.

    As I stated, while it was unfortunate that the main mirror was imperfect, it was still able to perform good science: this is something that is made clear by Eric Chaisson, who was the Science Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute at the time.

    As for the gyro replacement, this was a planned refit that was known to be necessary for many months. Shuttle scheduling pushed the original maintenance mission back many months, and when the Hubble ran out of working gyros, the shuttle was rescheduled as soon as possible to replace them.

    Call it whatever you like; my point stands. The most recent Hubble servicing mission was already planned and expected. The fact that Hubble shut down and waited for the mission is irrelevant.

    When you are due a 3000 mile oil change, and the oil change place is closed, and you stop driving your car until you can take it in for the oil change -- is that a "fix"? That's close to what happened here.
    ----

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