Out of This World

	The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, needs to be repaired and maintained. There is currently controversy over the fate of Hubble with scientists and politicians debating the worth of a mission to fix the aging space telescope.

Out of this World Lots of light emitted by far away stars never makes it though our atmosphere to the Earth's surface. Earth-bound telescopes don't get the whole picture. So astronomers have launched various satellite telescopes, the most renowned being the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched in 1990 by the space shuttle, Hubble has been busy capturing images from what scientists believe is the edge of our universe. Hubble carries aboard it many instruments including: a Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), a Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) and an Advanced Camera for Survey (ACS).

The STIS is like a prism separating light from the cosmos into its component colors. This provides a wavelength "fingerprint" of the object being observed. Scientists can infer its temperature, chemical composition, density, and motion with this information. Similar to radio telescopes, NICMOS concentrates on the invisible spectrum; in this case it is collecting infrared light. Since it isn't absorbed or scatted like visible light by the clouds of gas and dust found abundantly in the universe, scientists are able to peer into the centers of galaxies to study quasars and other exotic objects. The ACS has three components. One takes wide field pictures in the visible and near-infrared spectrum. Another uses amazingly high resolution -- 16,777,216 tiny pixels -- to search for elusive phenomena such as massive black holes and the third operates in the far ultraviolet spectrum.

These incredibly sophisticated and powerful tools are expanding our understanding of the outermost reaches of our cosmos, allowing us to look back into both time and space. From two lenses on the play ground to multi-billion dollar orbiting space satellites, telescopes have allowed us to continually further our understanding of the Universe. Who knows what the next generation of telescope will allow us to see.

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