14 HW Hubble's Discovery

Despite Hubble’s relatively modest mirror diameter of _, it is more than able to compete with ground-based telescopes that have mirrors 10 or 20 times larger in collecting areas.

2\.4 meters

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The Hubble Space Telescope witnessed the final journey of the comet _.

It was torn into numerous pieces by Jupiter's gravitational pull when it passed the massive planet in the summer of 1992.

Two years later, these fragments returned and drove straight into the heart of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Hubble followed the comet fragments on their last journey and delivered stunning high-resolution images of the impact scars.

Shoemaker-Levy 9

In the _, NASA and ESA began working together to design and build what would become the Hubble Space Telescope.

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1970s

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The birth, life, death, and rebirth of stars continue in an unending cycle, in which stars are born of gas and dust, will shine for millions or billions of years, die, and return as gas and dust to form new stars.

The by-products of this continual process include planets and the chemical elements that make life possible.

true

The stars containing the most mass end their lives cataclysmically, destroying themselves in titanic stellar explosions known as _.

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For a few glorious months, each becomes one of the brightest objects in the entire Universe, outshining all the other stars in its parent galaxy.

supernovae

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So, for many years, astronomers around the world longed for an observatory in space. As early as 1923, the famed German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth suggested a space-based telescope.

However, it was decades before technology caught up with the dream. The American astronomer Lyman Spitzer proposed a more realistic plan for a space telescope in _.

From a position in space, above Earth's atmosphere, a telescope would be able to detect the pristine light from stars, galaxies, and other objects, well before it was distorted by the air we breathe.

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1946

ESA stands for

European Space Agency

**_** is the **founder of modern cosmology**. In the **1920s**, proved that not all that we see in the sky lies within

the **Milky Way**.

Instead, the cosmos extends far, far beyond. Hubble's work changed our perception of mankind's place in the Universe forever and the choice of naming the most magnificent telescope of all time after  _ could not have been more appropriate.

Edwin Powell Hubble

Space probes with sophisticated instruments are frequently sent to the planets of our Solar System. They provide close-up investigations of these distant places. 

True

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Hubble, too, provides its own unique service, by opening a window on our Solar System that is never closed.

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true

This film takes you on a journey…

…a journey through time and space.

It tells you the story of an instrument that has vastly improved our view of the skies, sharpening our perception of the Universe, and penetrating ever deeper toward the furthest edges of _.

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space and time

Hubble has several communication antennae on its side that are necessary for sending observations and other data down to Earth.

Hubble sends its data first to a satellite in the __Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System__, which then downlinks the signal to __White Sands, New Mexico__.

The observations are sent from NASA in the United States to Europe where they are stored in a huge data archive in _. 

No single nation could undertake such an enormous project. Hubble has been a major collaboration between NASA and ESA, the European Space Agency from an early stage in its life.

\n Munich

Astronomers don't believe there are any planetary systems similar to ours, orbiting other stars throughout the Galaxy.

false

Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has watched the drama unfold in supernova _,

the nearest exploding star in modern times. The telescope has been monitoring a ring of gas surrounding the supernova blast.

1987A

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NASA stands for

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Even now, there is no exact estimate of how much matter or even how many planets exist within our Solar System…

True

Our Solar System has formed about  _ billion years ago from a huge gas cloud.

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4 and a half

A star is nothing but a sphere of glowing gas.

It forms out of a compressed cloud of gas and releases energy steadily, throughout its life, because a continual chain of nuclear reactions takes place in its core.

Most stars combine _ atoms to form _ through the process called nuclear fusion. 

hydrogen, helium

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On April 24, 1990, five astronauts aboard the space shuttle _ left on a journey that changed our vision of the universe forever! They deployed the eagerly anticipated Space Telescope in an orbit roughly __600 km above the Earth’s surface.__

Discovery

Since Pluto’s discovery in the _ , and its satellite Charon’s in the 1970s, astronomers have tried to figure out if there’s anything else out there, beyond the ninth planet.

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\n 1930s

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Ironically, it could have been the deadly force of a thermonuclear blast from an exploding star in the vicinity that triggered our creation ...

The devastating force of the blast may have disturbed the precarious equilibrium of the original gas cloud, causing some of the matter to collapse inwards, towards the center, creating a new star, our Sun, and a minute percentage of the collapsing matter became the multifaceted assembly of planets that we have around us today.

We are, in other words, just the leftovers of our Sun’s birth.

True

\n

In _, Hubble spotted something moving fast enough across the background

of faraway stars to be an object within the Solar System.

Estimates show that it could be about the size of a planet and it has been named **Sedna**, after an Inuit goddess.

Sedna may be 1500 km in diameter, that’s about three-quarters the size of Pluto,

but so far away that it appears as just a small cluster of pixels even to Hubble.

Nevertheless, it is the largest object discovered in the Solar System since Pluto.

2003

Hubble’s ability to observe infrared light enables it to penetrate the dust and gas and reveal the newly born stars.

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One of the most exciting of Hubble’s many discoveries was __the observation of dust disks__ surrounding some newborn stars, buried deep inside the _.

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Orion Nebula

The _ were formed in the inner Solar System while the _ were formed further out.

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rocky planets, gas giants

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Looking at the night sky we see the familiar twinkle of starlight. The light that has traveled enormous distances to reach us. But we are not seeing the stars themselves flicker…

The universe is gloriously transparent. The light from distant stars and galaxies can travel unchanged across space for thousands, millions, and even billions of years.

But then, in the last few microseconds, before that light reaches our eyes, the accurate view of those stars and galaxies is snatched away.

This is because, as light passes through _, the ever-changing blankets of air, water vapor, and dust, blur the fine cosmic details.

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our atmosphere

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The Sun is about 15 billion km from **Sedna**, _ further than Earth’s distance from the Sun – and barely gives out as much light and heat as the full moon. So Sedna is engulfed in an eternal bleak winter…

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100 times

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Just as your car needs servicing, so Hubble needs tuning up from time to time.

Engineers and scientists periodically send the Shuttle to Hubble, so that astronauts can upgrade it, using wrenches, screwdrivers, and power tools, just as your mechanic does with a car.

True

In fact, stars are nuclear factories that convert _ elements into _ elements in a series of fusion reactions.

\n lighter, heavier

Our Sun, that vital source of energy for life on Earth, is a star.

A totally unexceptional star, just like billions of others that we can find throughout the Galaxy.

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true