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compare: "Orbit period 100 min" (in the table on the right) and "...orbiting the Earth every 97 minutes." (in first sentence of Technical description).
97 or 100? Make up your midnd!
According to the article:Evidence of planets surrounding stars other than the Sun was obtained for the first time with Hubble. However, I think that this is wrong. I am pretty sure that the first exoplanets were discovered by ground-based telescopes rather than Hubble.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/07/ Should this be added to the article?
I believe the mirror diameter is 2.4m, which makes the collecting area 18m2. JamesHoadley 14:16, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That was me, thanks. :) I must've misread the info in the article. However, I'd like to point out that if the diameter is 2.4, the radius is 1.2, and the area is -- zandperl 15:13, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
LOL yes! JamesHoadley 15:38, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
If the HST loses height over time because of atmospheric drag, will it at the same time gain speed, since lower orbits require higher speeds? AxelBoldt
Yes Donald
The abberration in the mirror was not detected because the test equipment itself was not subject to rigorous calibration. 169.207.89.220 07:38, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
and how utterly incompetent the mirror mistake was. Roadrunner 08:58, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
In the words of Yoda: "There is...another." In this case, another space telescope mirror, constructed as a spare for the Hubble. I'm assuming that such a finely-tuned and expensive piece of optical equipment would not be destroyed, so can anyone tell me what if anything will be done with it? Lee M 01:28, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What does this mean? It sounds like it accumulates 3 to 5 gigs a day of pictures, slowly filling up some giant hard disk, just to look at once in a while when it gets lonely. Tempshill 04:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Corrected some information about the use of HST. Without adaptive optics you are never going to get more than 1-2 arcsec resolution regardless of where you put it. Also advances in telescope size are irrelevant for HST.
Also removed this sentence
I wouldn't call the relation between NASA and the astronomy community "good". They aren't horrible, but they can be strained at times. Also the "observers" who think that astronomy ought to be under one roof need to be identified. First of all, a lot of telescopes are privately funded. Second, most astronomers I know would *strongly* scream if this happened. The culture of NASA and NSF are way different. You are talking about different amounts of money. NSF grants practically require that you have outside sources of funding while NASA projects are generally expensive enough so that this is not an option. NASA is far more bureaucratic than NSF because it needs to be (i.e. bad things happen when rockets explode so NASA is much more risk averse than NSF). Also NASA projects require a large amount of internal involvement since NASA has its own staff for these things, whereas NSF doesn't. This means that NASA has a far more closed culture than NSF. Roadrunner 09:20, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is jargon in this page that should be expanded in plainer words to the general public (or linked to the proper articles when available). Example: "Gravity-gradient position". And about "307 nm orbit": not nanometers, I suppose? RodC 04:55, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If somebody knows, could they add information about how scientists apply for a Hubble observation? Do they have to pay? Is it open to all nations? What do they have to submit and where, how long does the application process last, what are the criteria to decide who gets Hubble time? Thanks, AxelBoldt 11:00, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hello, I propose to include this link in Hubble Space Telescope. It's my article from my site, which was republished on two other sites ( Kuro5hin, code0range). My article is about the lack of budget for the fourth servicing mission and it includes an overview of the three past servicing missions, as well as an introduction to the telescope.
If you believe my article is informational, please feel free to use this link or change it as you like:
Thanks, NSK 00:02, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I asked in the talk page and nobody objected me adding a link to my site. I asked in the mailing list and they told me to add my link if nobody objects in the talk page, and I waited more than a week. So I added my link now. NSK 06:00, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As the HST and the NRO's KH-11/12 spy satillite use the same shipping container and Perkins-Elmer Corp. made at least 4 sets of mirrors plus the extreem cost of $2-3 billion. Does anyone else believe Perkins-Elmer ground the lens to the wrong tolerance? I think (due to compartmentation) that HST was built to the wrong focal length. Focused for looking 300 to 500 miles DOWN instead of out in space to infinity. Congressional Investigation anyone?
You seem to be misinformed, so I will add some facts: HST and KH-11 did not use the same shipping container. Perkin Elmer made one set of optics for HST, and contracted with Kodak for them to make one spare set. HST was built to the correct focal length, but with an error in the prescribed primary mirror conic constant. Taking images while looking downward is a physical impossibility for HST.
Psi-phi-sage 01:43, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. Further reading is not the same thing as proper references. Further reading could list works about the topic that were not ever consulted by the page authors. If some of the works listed in the further reading section were used to add or check material in the article, please list them in a references section instead. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 19:13, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
The article currently states:
Unfortunately this doesn't make it clear wheather or not the servicing mission actually went ahead (or has been delayed, or cancelled). I feel that clarification on this matter (now dated in the past) would benefit the article.
-- PJF (talk) 14:49, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
beatiful. could do without the border though. otherwise quite nice.
With apologies to those who have worked on this article, I recently nominated it on WP:FARC and it is now no longer a featured article. I think there's a lot of excellent content here, but my main worry was comprehensiveness. I'd love to see this back up to featured status, and I'm thinking about starting to re-write a lot of the article. I think we would need the following sections:
What does anyone think about this? Many sections would be adequately filled by current content, but others would need some work. Would an article along these lines be comprehensive? Worldtraveller 14:36, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I have removed this sentence from the intro:
The misconception is really the other way around. Hubble's mirror is small by telescope standards at 2.4m in diameter. The Keck telescopes have mirrors 10m in diameter, giving them both over 16 times the light-gathering power that Hubble has - airglow doesn't outweigh that advantage. At the time Hubble was launched adaptive optics was still years away from being useful, and the huge advantage of a space observatory was that it could achieve a resolution ten times better than ground-based observatories were able to. Nowadays, that's less true, and ground-based resolution can approach that of a space observatory. Interferometry can't give you actual images with <0.1 arcsecond resolution, whereas Hubble can, and that's still its main advantage. Worldtraveller 00:05, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
Hm, well I've never liked exposure time calculators, many seem to be designed for instrumentation specialists rather than observational astronomers, and they seem to be biased in favour of stellar rather than nebular observations as well. But I found this page: http://www.eso.org/paranal/sv/svhdfs.html, which says that the VLT can reach Vmag=28 in a three hour exposure. Anyway, this kind of discussion should certainly be mentioned in the article, I know a lot of questions have been asked about whether it's wise to spend 10 times as much on a space telescope as you need to spend for state of the art AO on the ground. I've started a re-draft of the article at Hubble Space Telescope/temp, based on the section headings I suggested above. Worldtraveller 11:50, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I am the software project manager for the Hubble exposure time calculators for ACS, STIS and NICMOS (and coming soon COS and WFC3). I would happily entertain feedback from observational astronomers. I will also be happy to answer any questions that anyone has about the Hubble ETC or the instruments that it supports. Dfmclean 03:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The article mentions: a circle 0.1" in diameter
I changed this to: a circle 0.1 in (2.5 mm) in diameter
It was reverted. Is there a particular reason for removing metric units? Bobblewik (talk) 11:29, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I checked the article--maybe I just didn't see it--but what's the deal with the Hubble's low earth oribt? It seems so dumb to keep it so low (orbit decay, occult). I'd like to see a clear explanation set aside as to why it's kept there. Keep on wikin'. -- Atlastawake 18:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Sweetness. Thank you.-- Atlastawake 00:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I know the Hubble's length is 13,2 metres long and it's said its focal length is nearly 58 metres. How can this be if the focal length is nearly two times the distance between primary mirror and secondary mirror? Doesn't that give the maximum focal length of 26 metres (ignoring that the secondary mirror isn't at the very front of the telescope)? -- 83.171.160.254 23:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Can the Hubble Space Telescope capture?
I wonder if the focal length of the mirror was made to be optically suitable for observing earth? If PE was also making mirrors for spy satellites, that could explain why they had optical devices that were wrong for the Hubble and why no one caught the error--they were used to expecting mirrors to be like that.
I realize that an investigation found that a particular mechanical problem with a particular optical instrument, combined with management malfeasance caused the flaw. However, suppose you imagine that the mirror was correctly made for observing the earth, perhaps at a single wavelength. Would that make sense?
(Optics is not my field, so this is a naieve question.)
Apparently, since no one is talking about doing so, bringing the HST back to earth to be refurbished or to salvage the mirror is not the right thing to do. It seems like this would be a relatively simple robotic mission.
Could someone with knowledge of why this is not an option add that information to the article?
Thanks. I'll be watching for the answer. (apparently Jan 14 07:05 User:Rocky143)
I prefer the parking orbit option myself. However, I have not gotten any information from the experts at http://uplink.space.com as to how big of a booster would have to be sent up. However, that booster could be added as part of the next servicing mission. We do not need a second mission for that. Any second mission might as well bring it back then. Actually, I was hoping the parking orbit would be higher. GEO satellites orbit at something like 24,000 miles up. Will 03:52, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
When it was conceived, the unique feature of Hubble was expected to be its resolution. With the development of new detector technologies and new imaging techniques, certain types of ground-based imaging already had higher resolution than Hubble before it was launched, and the sensitivity of conventional ground-based had reached the limits of atmospheric airglow, so the really unique feature of Hubble ended up being its visible-light sensitivity and not its resolution. Rnt20 08:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
How about the "ground breaking" observations from Hubble. Ironic given how far Hubble is from the ground. Stephen B Streater 20:33, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems that NASA under Michael Griffen are planning a Hubble servicing mission with one of the few flights left pre retirement in 2010. Info about the rest of the 2006 FY budget here: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Postpones_Or_Kills_Several_Major_Projects.html
The relevant paragraph being:
"NASA affirmed its budget includes full funding for a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, probably in late 2008 or early 2009 - although that still depends on whether the agency can solve the existing problems with the orbiter and certify it ready for safe return to flight. I suspect that the main article should be modified to acknowedge this"
The text:
Hubble's spacecraft overall size, shape and design is believed to be very similar to (if not directly borrowed from) the large American spy satellites, specifically the KH-11 Kennan or KH-12 Crystal series [1] [2] [3]. was removed by Worldtraveller at 23:59, 15 February 2006. Now I don't know any relevant written sources offhand, but this is a very commonly discussed point in the astronomy and aerospace communities. The non-conspiracy theory explanation for this is that when the Hubble team put out bids for all the components (mirrors, spacecraft bus etc) the cheapest options were always those which were already being mass-produced for the KeyHole (KH) satellites, so that Hubble ended up being almost identical to a KeyHole satellite, but not by design. Rnt20 07:15, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
It is my understanding that the KH-12 is a radar sat called LaCrosse.-- Will 05:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
The Hubble Wars though did provide its own links to the spy satellites. However, a lot of the differences appear to have been "Not Invented Here". One thing that was kept was the encrypted TRDS satellite system. This drove up the cost compared to communicating with standard communication satellites. I doubt that encryption was a high priority for astronomers. Will 03:57, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Someone is Vanilizing alot and I suspect the IP adress is chaning becose Edits on one IP start where other stops
[4] [5] [6] [7]
E-Bod 01:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Why do Hubble's gyros suck so much? This seems to be the major reason for the constant repair missions. Other spacecraft built during the same time have had thier gyros working for decades. If Hubble's are so crappy why don't they just replace them with something like the ring laser gyros on Cassini that don't have any moving parts?-- Deglr6328 19:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I removed the Template:Current spaceflight as there is nothing particularly unusual happening with Hubble at the moment, according to news searches. Rnt20 08:36, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
The article says:
"and there are also sizable exclusion zones around the Sun (precluding observations of Mercury), Moon and Earth, which cannot be observed." what does this mean?? This can be read as though it cannot take photos of the moon, which it has done:
So what does the above sentence mean? Scaremonger 06:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
how do you work out the closest the telescope can 'see' on the moon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ge0rg10 ( talk • contribs) 09:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
The article states that the original WFPC "contained four CCD chips, three of which were 'wide field' chips while the fourth was the 'planetary camera' (PC)." I remember the original WFPC to be 4 WF and 4 PC CCD chips. I can not find a reference for this at the moment. The WFPC2 made the change to the strange shape you see today due to the 3 WF chips and a single PC chip. I remember a bunch of scientists being very upset with the change. If I find a reference to this, I will come back and change the article. I could not find one online, I will take a quick look at some of the books I have on Hubble at home and use that as a reference. The reason I know this is that I used to work at the Space Telescope Science Institute and have looked at an incredible number of Hubble images!
cbm
The article says: Launch date April 24, 1990. However, Nasa says: April 25, 1990, at 12:33:51 UTC [9]. The article should specify timezone, and UTC is the best one in this case, is it not? - Kricke 13:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Link -- Jack Zhang 02:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
About this article [11] from the Washington Post - it's highly unlikely that there will be a second shuttle on the pad, as Launch Complex 39B is scheduled to be deactivated in 2007, after STS-116, so it can be converted to the Ares I pad.
The sidebar says that the "angular momentum" of the HST is 5.28×10^10 m²/s. Those aren't even units of angular momentum, which would have SI units of kg * m^2/s. I've removed this obviously incorrect value from the main article. Maybe someone could clarify what they really meant. -- Eliasen 22:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I added a "citation needed" tag to the following claim:
While Kodak had ground a back-up mirror for Hubble, it would have been impossible to ... bring the telescope temporarily back to Earth for a refit.
This tag was removed by 128.40.1.175 whose log read:
vast expense of two shuttle missions, technical difficulty of replacing mirror, all covered in existing refs so no need for a cite tag
I put the tag back, but I hit "enter" by accident and my log message was truncated. What I meant to say was that "difficult" and "expensive" do not equal "impossible." The HST was designed to be returned to earth by shuttle; see STS-144. I would agree that it is now impossible to return HST to earth by shuttle, because only Columbia was able to do so. But someone should either explain why it was impossible back then, or re-word the sentence to say "too expensive" or whatever. -- Coneslayer 18:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Someone made some very drastic changes to some sections of the article. For example, 'The flaw meant that Hubble could obtain data about as good as that achievable with a large ground-based telescope' was changed to 'In its aberrated condition the telescope still had angular resolution nearly an order of magnitude finer than was available from any conventional ground-based telescope'. No sources were cited for these changes. I restored the previous version but the unsourced statements have been restored, with the claim that 'deleted info was good'. On what basis was that statement made? Also, the part about 'At this location, the image was conjugate to the pupil of the telescope itself' adds little value, I think. It makes no sense to me, and probably you need to be an optical scientist to know what's meant by 'conjugate to the pupil'. What was wrong with the previous? Compare:
and
This is a huge long article and conciseness is an enormous virtue. What does the second version tell us that the first doesn't in half the space? 81.178.208.69 01:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
As I recall, prior to COSTAR, Hubble mainly had problems with glare. Dim objects near bright objects were erased by the glare. For images of Jupiter or deep field images, Hubble had no real problems. Will ( Talk - contribs) 04:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I have deleted the section on the Hubble Origins Probe as a Hubble follow-on. The HOP is only one of several mission concepts that would serve to replace Hubble's capabilties. It presently is not funded, nor is there any existing program that focusses specifically on making a true Hubble replacement. Other candidates for this role are HORUS, SNAP, TPF-C, and so on. Trlauer 19:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
We seem to have a problem with the <ref> tags starting on , 11 January 2007, with the middle of GMHenninger's three changes. He started to use the cite_web template, (maybe the first for this article?) and not all of the referenes list anymore. I am still investigating. -- 199.33.32.40 00:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not much more than a layperson on science stuff so I'm just reading the article as the intended audience would. The 'Future' section of the article states that the power system of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) failed, rendering the instrument inoperable. The electronics had originally been fully redundant, but the first set of electronics failed in May 2001. It seems unlikely that any science functionality can be salvaged without a servicing mission. and then it never says if it was fixed or not. Certainly Hubble isn't up there with no juice, so could someone who knows a WHOLE lot more than me put something in there that doesn't imply that it's dead? JohnCub 00:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Someone has written a chapter on the Swedish Wikipedia article about Hubble that the telescope has not been worth the costs compared to other methods of observation. Even if a lot of important scientific discoveries has been made with Hubble, so much costs has been associated with it, that the same money used on ground based telescopes would have given more results. Today is possible to create many of the images made by Hubble using ground based telescopes with techniques like adaptive optics and "speckle" techniques. Would you agree with these statements ? -- 217.208.215.203 18:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
It's essentially impossible to credit alternative histories that presume that a large investment of money, but still less than what was spent on HST, would have resulted in superior capabilities. HST retains unique capabilties 17 years after its launch that cannot be duplicated from the ground, and that have little prospect for duplication looking ahead another decade or so. It is frankly a fallacy that the advent of adaptive optics on large ground telescopes supplants much of the capabilities of HST. HST obtains deep diffraction-limited images in the optical wavelengths over angularly large areas with a highly stable PSF. AO currently works on angularly small areas in the near-IR and must contend with a high backgound with an often poorly known PSF. When used with telescopes of 8-m aperture or so, AO can top HST for individual relatively bright objects, where the field of view is not important for the science - as such this is a wonderful compliment to the bulk of work done with HST, not a competition to it. There are notions for how wide-field optical AO might be done, but the problems are profoundly difficult. If we wind the clock back 35 years to when the real development of HST started, there could have been no credible argument (nor was one ever made) that the same pot of money would have allowed this path to have worked. The path to HST was hard enough, but it was based on technology that was vastly better understood. Trlauer 03:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
The Hubble has become such a significant feature of the social landscape that it has been referenced in various works of fiction (books and movies). I think that we should consider listing these references in a "media references" section. I can think of at least three off the top of my head. Dfmclean 15:25, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to start making some notes. Eventually, we will move them to the main page. Dfmclean 04:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I have a recollection that, in the movie Armageddon, that the Hubble was used to image the asteroid, but perhaps I am wrong.
There was a post-apocalypse science fiction novel in which the main characters traveled a long distance to retrieve the contents of a library. During their trip, they came across an unattended AI that had been operating a (two?) Hubble successors, and had found signs of intelligent life.
I seem to recall that in The Seige of Eternity by Frederik Pohl, the Hubble was used to search for a hostile alien spacecraft in the outer solar system.
False color images created from the raw data have shown up in a variety of places:
Star Trek
The cover of the Pearl Jam album Binaural
The opening credits of the movie Happy Feet
Somewhere in the movie Stranger Than Fiction (I only saw that the ending credits had an acknowledgment to the Space Telescope Science Institute, but I didn't notice why)
will someone add to this site the dimensions of the telescope to the page somewhere? I tried to add it but wikipedia has become too fancy for the everyday user to update. the dimensions are 13.1 meters long (41 ft) and 4.3 m wide (14 ft)
The lead section is getting a bit hefty. I will give it a few days to see if somebody else would like first crack at reducing its size, maybe in half?-- SallyForth123 00:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Parts of the main mirror and its support structure would probably survive, leaving the potential for damage or even human fatalities (estimated at up to a 1 in 700 chance of human fatality for a completely uncontrolled re-entry).
Anyone have another source for the "1 in 700" figure? That just seems improbably high. 217.155.20.163 21:44, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Under "Outreach Activities", the first sentence reads: "It has always been important for the Space Telescope to capture the public's imagination, given the considerable contribution of taxpayers to its construction and operational costs, although this view seems circular; the telescope exists to justify its existence." Maybe it's just me, but it sounds a bit editorializing/philosophizing/going off on tangent (all of which are not appropriate for an encyclopedia). I think it might be better if the sentence is just cut down to "It has always been important for the Space Telescope to capture the public's imagination, given the considerable contribution of taxpayers to its construction and operational costs." My reasons for the change is:
Given the attention (I assume) this page receives, I'll wait a while before going ahead and making the change. novakyu 04:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
'Data are' is technically correct, since data is the plural of datum. But in common usage, 'data are' sounds very pedantic. I reverted this to the grammatically correct 'data are', but this sounds stilted to me. What do others think?? Is there a standard policy for this? LouScheffer 05:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if there is a policy or not, but pedantic or not, 'data are' is correct and should be used. We're supposed to be upholding a higher standard, aren't we? Dfmclean 16:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Is it meant to say poop on this page?
I was looking through the edit history and noticed that 10k of the article was lost to vandalism from a school ip during the last week. (
diff here). I restored the lost content by pasting it back in (to keep the good edits made since), but if anyone out there could do a check, to make sure I got it all - to be sure to be sure? :O).
FlowerpotmaN·(
t)
23:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
The top of the page, the first couple paragraphs, are v. difficult to read. I'm going to indent them and see if that helps. Any reason for me not to? The rest of the article appears to have indents. ---edit- okay, it's not all indented. alright, i'm going to leave as is, then , if only for uniformity. 24.74.141.22 ( talk) 20:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
In the archived discussion, there is a link to an older (no longer operational) version of the exposure time calculator for ACS. The newest version of the HST ETCs can be found at:
http://etc.stsci.edu/webetc/index.jsp
Dfmclean ( talk) 13:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
breakthrough and mike griffin need disambig Randomblue ( talk) 22:42, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
If possible, add that they are used to point the telescope —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.205.229.220 ( talk) 23:07, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Much of the article is written in past tense ("Anyone could have applied for time", "Calls for proposals were issued roughly annually"...), but surely the telescope is still operational? Jpatokal ( talk) 06:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Interesting point. Correcting the tense makes sense - especially since it appears that it will be operational for another 5-10 years. Dfmclean ( talk) 16:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Just so nobody misses it, please see Wikipedia:Featured article review/Hubble Space Telescope. Currently expressed concerns are the length of the lead, referencing (format?), and "a few short paragraphs". -- Rick Block ( talk) 04:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
There were 5 references that are referred to multiple times, are available on-line, and form the basis for most of the information in the article. Also, there is so much on the web about the Hubble that it's fairly hard to figure out where to start if you are looking for information. So I took these 5 references (Spitzer's article, the Marshall history, the Allen failure report, the detailed repair document, and the Operations Primer) and moved them explicitly to the top of the references, with a short description of each. Then the references to these documents are of the form Dunar, p. 508 which makes editing much easier.
I think this is more helpful, but if your opinion differs please let me know, LouScheffer ( talk) 06:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Quote: "However, following the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, the fifth servicing mission, initially planned for 2004, was canceled on safety grounds. After spirited public discussion, NASA reconsidered this position." My question is, what position? I think there was something in there before the "discussion" bit, but got deleted. So, just revisit this and flesh it out. I would, but I have no idea what used to be here, or what it should say. ;) Queerbubbles | Leave me Some Love 16:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
On both Firefox and IE, the lead section had a large blank space at the bottom right, below the infobox and next to the table of contents. This looked like a great place to put the exploded view of the Hubble, where you could make it big enough to read the labels without taking any more room. So I moved the diagram here. It works well on Firefox, but IE now moves the table of contents down to match the image, negating most of the space savings. Any suggestions for how to add the image so that this does not happen are appreciated. Thanks, LouScheffer ( talk) 15:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Does the HST sometimes use Gravitational lensing? -- CyclePat ( talk) 19:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I was going to add angular_resolution to the infobox, but it's unclear from the article what that is, or if it's different for different experiments. -- Beland ( talk) 02:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
In general, angular resolution is a function of wavelength and aperture size (that's why radio telescopes have apertures measured in kilometers). Since HST's range goes from UV (about 1100 angstroms) up to near IR (25,000 angstroms) the angular resolution covers a fairly wide range. What makes the Hubble different from ground based telescopes isn't its angular resolution (which is only fair considering the size of the aperture) but the fact that there is no blurring of the images due to atmospheric effects. Dfmclean ( talk) 12:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
From: http://www.ghostnasa.com/ STOP the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 now!!! It's TOO dangerous!!! There's NO "ISS safe haven" near the Hubble!!! Do you want TWO Shuttles and 11 astronauts LOST in space??? It could be THE END of the Shuttle program and (perhaps) THE END of ALL manned Space programs for a LONG LONG time!!! There are SEVERAL (much safer!!!) ways to upgrade the Hubble, WITHOUT risk to lose 11 astronauts lives and make 11 widow(er)s and 20+ orphans!!! Please consider, that, MANY (new and upgraded) Earth-based Telescopes will give us soon the SAME or better scientific results than an upgraded Hubble!!! So, the "advantages" of the SM4 are nearly ZERO!!! In other words, they'll risk their lives for NOTHING!!!
http://www.ghostnasa.com/hubbledeathtrap.jpg
posted by gaetano marano —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.10.104.171 ( talk) 12:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
NOT A DISCUSSION FORUM. PLEASE STOP VANDALISIM!!-- Navy blue84 ( talk) 15:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
my post was not intended to start a forum-like discussion but to explain a different point of view about the SM4 safety (as in some paragraphs of wiki articles titled "criticisms") since no other have done that
posted by gaetano marano
Sorry don't have time to edit myself. Conrad T. Pino ( talk) 21:13, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
Last sentence of second paragraph of "Equipment failure" section: "Estimates of the failure rate of the gyros indicate that Hubble may be down to one gyro by 2008, in which event continued science observations would not be possible." It is now 2009, so perhaps someone in the know could update this sentence? Have any more gyros failed? Captain Chaos ( talk) 11:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Many of the other space telescopes have a mention of size... Cant find any dimensions in this. Do you think there should be a mention of them ? Especially as it is one of the largest telescopes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kernel geek ( talk • contribs) 18:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I am not an astronomer. I followed the construction and launch and the dawning realization of the massive fowl up by both NASA and Perkin-Elmer. There are several statements that I challenge. They claim that the optics have been fully corrected. Last I heard, this was not the case. A reference is needed. If this claim is based on minimum operating specifications, then the polly annas who wrote this article (pretty good over all) should say so. It is clear that the blunder by both the NASA administration and the Perkine Elmer management cost our space program, and is still costing it. I vote to include those managers names in this article. They deserve the opprobrium of history for the next century or two, anyway. Perhaps after that, I will have forgiven them for their gross incompetence. My main point is I do NOT believe it to be the case that the optics are fully restored. I understood that such a feat was technically impossible. The statements claiming this and later in the article implying this need to be qualified, and references need to be given. 69.40.250.215 ( talk) 16:35, 10 April 2009 (UTC)Dave Nalepa
I just noticed that the European space agency logo is right next to the NASA name... anyone know why they are on there, what, if anything, they contributed... Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.120.182.253 ( talk) 01:37, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I suggest adding the following data to the sidebar at the top of the article: length = 13.2m, orbit inclination to equator = 28.5° (data from: http://www.spacetelescope.org/about/general/fact_sheet.html) I tried to add it but failed. Could an experienced editor do it? Thanks. Jedwards01 ( talk) 21:56, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Currently the article includes the following statement:
I'm not sure this goes quite far enough. Didn't the HST provide the evidence needed to conclusively confirm that supermassive black holes exist?— RJH ( talk) 22:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I recall hearing (somewhere...) HST "discovered" 2 new galaxies. True? If so, which 2? TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 04:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I failed to find some information in the given sources.
Jan.Kamenicek ( talk) 21:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I recall hearing (somewhere...) gravity at interstellar/intergalactic distances might differ from that at local (measured) distances, which might also explain the change. Can anybody confirm? (Or is that Uneven Expansion of Space?) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 02:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
The statement that the accelerated expansion of the universe is commonly attributed to "dark energy" is well supported. From Science,
Discovered less than a decade ago, a mysterious antigravity force suffuses the universe. Physicists are now trying to figure out the properties of this "dark energy"--the blackest mystery in the shadiest realms of cosmology."
Dark Energy Tiptoes Toward the Spotlight, 20 June 2003: Vol. 300. no. 5627, pp. 1896 - 1897 DOI: 10.1126/science.300.5627.1896 by Charles Seife.
Also note that google scholar shows 22K+ hits for "dark energy", three times more than "accelerated expansion" and hundreds of times more than any other explanation I could think of. (Though if you have more references for alternatives, it would be good to see them.)
Since this is a HST page, not a dark energy page, the "commonly attributed" seems right - it allows that it is not a done deal, but surely it is the common name. LouScheffer ( talk) 03:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
NASA-Audio (Wednesday, June 3, 2015@1pm/edt/usa) - Panel of experts to discuss latest "surprising" findings by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Moons of Pluto. [1] - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 12:17, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
References
The article has a slight pro-astronomy bias and very little mention of the extensive criticism this program has received. For example, the "Servicing Mission 4" section reads like an "us vs. them" piece with much coverage of astronomer's POV and none for those trying to end the program. It's not clear if the bias in this article was an accident or by design.
The talk archives includes Talk:Hubble_Space_Telescope/Archive_2#The_Hubble_Wars. The Hubble Wars by Eric Chaisson looks like a decent source for criticism.
I looked through the talk archives to see if the subject of criticism had been brought up and found this talk thread which mentions the lack of criticism and also reminded me of some of the controversy surrounding SM4. The image posted with that talk comment also reminded me of the proposal to send two shuttles at the same time to the HST with the plan being that if one of the shuttles was heavily damaged during ascent it would be abandoned and everyone would return to Earth in the remaining shuttle. That plan does not get mentioned in the SM4 section. A similar plan had the second shuttle on the ground, ready to launch, as a rescue mission. That does not get mention either. Unfortunately,it seems that digging up and WP:RS the SM4 controversy will be a bit of a pain. -- Marc Kupper| talk 22:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
I remember back in the day the news media reported that the problem with the fuzzy mirror was that the specification did not correctly anticipate the change in the mirror shape due to the difference between Earth's gravity and the lack of same in orbit. Is that not the case?
I also just watched a documentary on this on Nat Geo (Hubble's Cosmic Journey). They interviewed the engineers from Perkin-Elmer who (surprise!) blamed NASA, claiming that the reduction in funds and NASA's refusal to authorize more testing was the cause of the problem. The article here seems to give only NASA's side of the story - shouldn't there be more info from Perkin-Elmer's side? __ 209.179.55.119 ( talk) 02:23, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Can someone please clarify if Hubble Space Telescope et al are supposed to be italicized? NASA doesn't italicize unmanned robotic platforms like Hubble or Voyager, and neither was Wikipedia until someone started making a bunch of changes. G0T0 ( talk) 02:59, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I would suggest that they should not be italicized, and often should not be bolded. It looks like "someone" is using it as a form of emphasis that is non-standard. I can understand their intentions, but they are probably incorrect. And if you do do something like that, it should only be rarely and for the first mention, not throughout. Maybe a more senior editor could offer some insight.-- WillBo ( talk) 03:32, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I double-checked with the NASA Manual of Style and how Wikipedia does it everywhere else. Unmanned platforms such as Voyager 1 do not get italicized. G0T0 ( talk)
From the point of view of the reader, I think the italics hurt. They interrupt the reading flow for (in this case) no good reason. In some cases italics help the reader understand the meaning, particularly if the non-italic names could make sense in the sentence. For example, "Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in The Spirit of Saint Louis" reads differently than "Piccard crossed the Atlantic in the spirit of Charles Lindbergh", and here the italics help the reader. But in the case of Hubble there is no ambiguity, and the reader is best served by uniform case. The two most famous scientific journals, Science and Nature, do not capitalize Hubble, nor does the New York Times or the BBC, so there is certainly support for this practice. LouScheffer ( talk) 16:07, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Not sure if this was ever posted on the Hubble telescope wiki, but before NASA could send up a replacement they still wanted to make the best use of Hubble. So they developed image processing software to remove blur and declutter images of stars. When looking at the initial images and the processed images, there was a similarity of the initial image to microcalcification in mammogram images. Microcalcification is a very good predictor for breast cancer. Eventually the researchers enthusiastically teamed up and a grant was obtained to investigate if there was any potential use of NASA's image processing technique. This led to the technique being used in helping identify early stages of breast cancer.
If you guys think this is noteworthy enough to add to the Hubble wiki page, I'll compose a serious entry rather than a talk entry.
Old Source: http://ipp.nasa.gov/innovation/Innovation41/HubbleFights.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Interkin ( talk • contribs) 13:46, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
43.5 feet (13.2 meters) long, weighs 24,500 pounds (11,110 kilograms). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.166.224.2 ( talk) 12:47, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
SM4 tested the Relative Navigation Sensor System FLIGHT RESULTS FROM THE HST SM4 RELATIVE NAVIGATION SENSOR SYSTEM for the cancelled HRSDM - HRSDM ? - Rod57 ( talk) 11:23, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
A minor point: To quote the article 'Although JWST is primarily an infrared instrument, its coverage extends down to 600 nm wavelength light', however 600nm is in the visible spectrum which is higher than the infrared therefore should the article not say 'its coverage extends UP to 600 nm wavelength'? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.52.205.64 ( talk) 22:57, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
compare: "Orbit period 100 min" (in the table on the right) and "...orbiting the Earth every 97 minutes." (in first sentence of Technical description).
97 or 100? Make up your midnd!
According to the article:Evidence of planets surrounding stars other than the Sun was obtained for the first time with Hubble. However, I think that this is wrong. I am pretty sure that the first exoplanets were discovered by ground-based telescopes rather than Hubble.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/07/ Should this be added to the article?
I believe the mirror diameter is 2.4m, which makes the collecting area 18m2. JamesHoadley 14:16, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That was me, thanks. :) I must've misread the info in the article. However, I'd like to point out that if the diameter is 2.4, the radius is 1.2, and the area is -- zandperl 15:13, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
LOL yes! JamesHoadley 15:38, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
If the HST loses height over time because of atmospheric drag, will it at the same time gain speed, since lower orbits require higher speeds? AxelBoldt
Yes Donald
The abberration in the mirror was not detected because the test equipment itself was not subject to rigorous calibration. 169.207.89.220 07:38, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
and how utterly incompetent the mirror mistake was. Roadrunner 08:58, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
In the words of Yoda: "There is...another." In this case, another space telescope mirror, constructed as a spare for the Hubble. I'm assuming that such a finely-tuned and expensive piece of optical equipment would not be destroyed, so can anyone tell me what if anything will be done with it? Lee M 01:28, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What does this mean? It sounds like it accumulates 3 to 5 gigs a day of pictures, slowly filling up some giant hard disk, just to look at once in a while when it gets lonely. Tempshill 04:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Corrected some information about the use of HST. Without adaptive optics you are never going to get more than 1-2 arcsec resolution regardless of where you put it. Also advances in telescope size are irrelevant for HST.
Also removed this sentence
I wouldn't call the relation between NASA and the astronomy community "good". They aren't horrible, but they can be strained at times. Also the "observers" who think that astronomy ought to be under one roof need to be identified. First of all, a lot of telescopes are privately funded. Second, most astronomers I know would *strongly* scream if this happened. The culture of NASA and NSF are way different. You are talking about different amounts of money. NSF grants practically require that you have outside sources of funding while NASA projects are generally expensive enough so that this is not an option. NASA is far more bureaucratic than NSF because it needs to be (i.e. bad things happen when rockets explode so NASA is much more risk averse than NSF). Also NASA projects require a large amount of internal involvement since NASA has its own staff for these things, whereas NSF doesn't. This means that NASA has a far more closed culture than NSF. Roadrunner 09:20, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is jargon in this page that should be expanded in plainer words to the general public (or linked to the proper articles when available). Example: "Gravity-gradient position". And about "307 nm orbit": not nanometers, I suppose? RodC 04:55, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If somebody knows, could they add information about how scientists apply for a Hubble observation? Do they have to pay? Is it open to all nations? What do they have to submit and where, how long does the application process last, what are the criteria to decide who gets Hubble time? Thanks, AxelBoldt 11:00, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hello, I propose to include this link in Hubble Space Telescope. It's my article from my site, which was republished on two other sites ( Kuro5hin, code0range). My article is about the lack of budget for the fourth servicing mission and it includes an overview of the three past servicing missions, as well as an introduction to the telescope.
If you believe my article is informational, please feel free to use this link or change it as you like:
Thanks, NSK 00:02, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I asked in the talk page and nobody objected me adding a link to my site. I asked in the mailing list and they told me to add my link if nobody objects in the talk page, and I waited more than a week. So I added my link now. NSK 06:00, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As the HST and the NRO's KH-11/12 spy satillite use the same shipping container and Perkins-Elmer Corp. made at least 4 sets of mirrors plus the extreem cost of $2-3 billion. Does anyone else believe Perkins-Elmer ground the lens to the wrong tolerance? I think (due to compartmentation) that HST was built to the wrong focal length. Focused for looking 300 to 500 miles DOWN instead of out in space to infinity. Congressional Investigation anyone?
You seem to be misinformed, so I will add some facts: HST and KH-11 did not use the same shipping container. Perkin Elmer made one set of optics for HST, and contracted with Kodak for them to make one spare set. HST was built to the correct focal length, but with an error in the prescribed primary mirror conic constant. Taking images while looking downward is a physical impossibility for HST.
Psi-phi-sage 01:43, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. Further reading is not the same thing as proper references. Further reading could list works about the topic that were not ever consulted by the page authors. If some of the works listed in the further reading section were used to add or check material in the article, please list them in a references section instead. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 19:13, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
The article currently states:
Unfortunately this doesn't make it clear wheather or not the servicing mission actually went ahead (or has been delayed, or cancelled). I feel that clarification on this matter (now dated in the past) would benefit the article.
-- PJF (talk) 14:49, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
beatiful. could do without the border though. otherwise quite nice.
With apologies to those who have worked on this article, I recently nominated it on WP:FARC and it is now no longer a featured article. I think there's a lot of excellent content here, but my main worry was comprehensiveness. I'd love to see this back up to featured status, and I'm thinking about starting to re-write a lot of the article. I think we would need the following sections:
What does anyone think about this? Many sections would be adequately filled by current content, but others would need some work. Would an article along these lines be comprehensive? Worldtraveller 14:36, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I have removed this sentence from the intro:
The misconception is really the other way around. Hubble's mirror is small by telescope standards at 2.4m in diameter. The Keck telescopes have mirrors 10m in diameter, giving them both over 16 times the light-gathering power that Hubble has - airglow doesn't outweigh that advantage. At the time Hubble was launched adaptive optics was still years away from being useful, and the huge advantage of a space observatory was that it could achieve a resolution ten times better than ground-based observatories were able to. Nowadays, that's less true, and ground-based resolution can approach that of a space observatory. Interferometry can't give you actual images with <0.1 arcsecond resolution, whereas Hubble can, and that's still its main advantage. Worldtraveller 00:05, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
Hm, well I've never liked exposure time calculators, many seem to be designed for instrumentation specialists rather than observational astronomers, and they seem to be biased in favour of stellar rather than nebular observations as well. But I found this page: http://www.eso.org/paranal/sv/svhdfs.html, which says that the VLT can reach Vmag=28 in a three hour exposure. Anyway, this kind of discussion should certainly be mentioned in the article, I know a lot of questions have been asked about whether it's wise to spend 10 times as much on a space telescope as you need to spend for state of the art AO on the ground. I've started a re-draft of the article at Hubble Space Telescope/temp, based on the section headings I suggested above. Worldtraveller 11:50, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I am the software project manager for the Hubble exposure time calculators for ACS, STIS and NICMOS (and coming soon COS and WFC3). I would happily entertain feedback from observational astronomers. I will also be happy to answer any questions that anyone has about the Hubble ETC or the instruments that it supports. Dfmclean 03:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The article mentions: a circle 0.1" in diameter
I changed this to: a circle 0.1 in (2.5 mm) in diameter
It was reverted. Is there a particular reason for removing metric units? Bobblewik (talk) 11:29, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I checked the article--maybe I just didn't see it--but what's the deal with the Hubble's low earth oribt? It seems so dumb to keep it so low (orbit decay, occult). I'd like to see a clear explanation set aside as to why it's kept there. Keep on wikin'. -- Atlastawake 18:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Sweetness. Thank you.-- Atlastawake 00:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I know the Hubble's length is 13,2 metres long and it's said its focal length is nearly 58 metres. How can this be if the focal length is nearly two times the distance between primary mirror and secondary mirror? Doesn't that give the maximum focal length of 26 metres (ignoring that the secondary mirror isn't at the very front of the telescope)? -- 83.171.160.254 23:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Can the Hubble Space Telescope capture?
I wonder if the focal length of the mirror was made to be optically suitable for observing earth? If PE was also making mirrors for spy satellites, that could explain why they had optical devices that were wrong for the Hubble and why no one caught the error--they were used to expecting mirrors to be like that.
I realize that an investigation found that a particular mechanical problem with a particular optical instrument, combined with management malfeasance caused the flaw. However, suppose you imagine that the mirror was correctly made for observing the earth, perhaps at a single wavelength. Would that make sense?
(Optics is not my field, so this is a naieve question.)
Apparently, since no one is talking about doing so, bringing the HST back to earth to be refurbished or to salvage the mirror is not the right thing to do. It seems like this would be a relatively simple robotic mission.
Could someone with knowledge of why this is not an option add that information to the article?
Thanks. I'll be watching for the answer. (apparently Jan 14 07:05 User:Rocky143)
I prefer the parking orbit option myself. However, I have not gotten any information from the experts at http://uplink.space.com as to how big of a booster would have to be sent up. However, that booster could be added as part of the next servicing mission. We do not need a second mission for that. Any second mission might as well bring it back then. Actually, I was hoping the parking orbit would be higher. GEO satellites orbit at something like 24,000 miles up. Will 03:52, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
When it was conceived, the unique feature of Hubble was expected to be its resolution. With the development of new detector technologies and new imaging techniques, certain types of ground-based imaging already had higher resolution than Hubble before it was launched, and the sensitivity of conventional ground-based had reached the limits of atmospheric airglow, so the really unique feature of Hubble ended up being its visible-light sensitivity and not its resolution. Rnt20 08:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
How about the "ground breaking" observations from Hubble. Ironic given how far Hubble is from the ground. Stephen B Streater 20:33, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems that NASA under Michael Griffen are planning a Hubble servicing mission with one of the few flights left pre retirement in 2010. Info about the rest of the 2006 FY budget here: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Postpones_Or_Kills_Several_Major_Projects.html
The relevant paragraph being:
"NASA affirmed its budget includes full funding for a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, probably in late 2008 or early 2009 - although that still depends on whether the agency can solve the existing problems with the orbiter and certify it ready for safe return to flight. I suspect that the main article should be modified to acknowedge this"
The text:
Hubble's spacecraft overall size, shape and design is believed to be very similar to (if not directly borrowed from) the large American spy satellites, specifically the KH-11 Kennan or KH-12 Crystal series [1] [2] [3]. was removed by Worldtraveller at 23:59, 15 February 2006. Now I don't know any relevant written sources offhand, but this is a very commonly discussed point in the astronomy and aerospace communities. The non-conspiracy theory explanation for this is that when the Hubble team put out bids for all the components (mirrors, spacecraft bus etc) the cheapest options were always those which were already being mass-produced for the KeyHole (KH) satellites, so that Hubble ended up being almost identical to a KeyHole satellite, but not by design. Rnt20 07:15, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
It is my understanding that the KH-12 is a radar sat called LaCrosse.-- Will 05:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
The Hubble Wars though did provide its own links to the spy satellites. However, a lot of the differences appear to have been "Not Invented Here". One thing that was kept was the encrypted TRDS satellite system. This drove up the cost compared to communicating with standard communication satellites. I doubt that encryption was a high priority for astronomers. Will 03:57, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Someone is Vanilizing alot and I suspect the IP adress is chaning becose Edits on one IP start where other stops
[4] [5] [6] [7]
E-Bod 01:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Why do Hubble's gyros suck so much? This seems to be the major reason for the constant repair missions. Other spacecraft built during the same time have had thier gyros working for decades. If Hubble's are so crappy why don't they just replace them with something like the ring laser gyros on Cassini that don't have any moving parts?-- Deglr6328 19:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I removed the Template:Current spaceflight as there is nothing particularly unusual happening with Hubble at the moment, according to news searches. Rnt20 08:36, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
The article says:
"and there are also sizable exclusion zones around the Sun (precluding observations of Mercury), Moon and Earth, which cannot be observed." what does this mean?? This can be read as though it cannot take photos of the moon, which it has done:
So what does the above sentence mean? Scaremonger 06:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
how do you work out the closest the telescope can 'see' on the moon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ge0rg10 ( talk • contribs) 09:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
The article states that the original WFPC "contained four CCD chips, three of which were 'wide field' chips while the fourth was the 'planetary camera' (PC)." I remember the original WFPC to be 4 WF and 4 PC CCD chips. I can not find a reference for this at the moment. The WFPC2 made the change to the strange shape you see today due to the 3 WF chips and a single PC chip. I remember a bunch of scientists being very upset with the change. If I find a reference to this, I will come back and change the article. I could not find one online, I will take a quick look at some of the books I have on Hubble at home and use that as a reference. The reason I know this is that I used to work at the Space Telescope Science Institute and have looked at an incredible number of Hubble images!
cbm
The article says: Launch date April 24, 1990. However, Nasa says: April 25, 1990, at 12:33:51 UTC [9]. The article should specify timezone, and UTC is the best one in this case, is it not? - Kricke 13:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Link -- Jack Zhang 02:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
About this article [11] from the Washington Post - it's highly unlikely that there will be a second shuttle on the pad, as Launch Complex 39B is scheduled to be deactivated in 2007, after STS-116, so it can be converted to the Ares I pad.
The sidebar says that the "angular momentum" of the HST is 5.28×10^10 m²/s. Those aren't even units of angular momentum, which would have SI units of kg * m^2/s. I've removed this obviously incorrect value from the main article. Maybe someone could clarify what they really meant. -- Eliasen 22:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I added a "citation needed" tag to the following claim:
While Kodak had ground a back-up mirror for Hubble, it would have been impossible to ... bring the telescope temporarily back to Earth for a refit.
This tag was removed by 128.40.1.175 whose log read:
vast expense of two shuttle missions, technical difficulty of replacing mirror, all covered in existing refs so no need for a cite tag
I put the tag back, but I hit "enter" by accident and my log message was truncated. What I meant to say was that "difficult" and "expensive" do not equal "impossible." The HST was designed to be returned to earth by shuttle; see STS-144. I would agree that it is now impossible to return HST to earth by shuttle, because only Columbia was able to do so. But someone should either explain why it was impossible back then, or re-word the sentence to say "too expensive" or whatever. -- Coneslayer 18:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Someone made some very drastic changes to some sections of the article. For example, 'The flaw meant that Hubble could obtain data about as good as that achievable with a large ground-based telescope' was changed to 'In its aberrated condition the telescope still had angular resolution nearly an order of magnitude finer than was available from any conventional ground-based telescope'. No sources were cited for these changes. I restored the previous version but the unsourced statements have been restored, with the claim that 'deleted info was good'. On what basis was that statement made? Also, the part about 'At this location, the image was conjugate to the pupil of the telescope itself' adds little value, I think. It makes no sense to me, and probably you need to be an optical scientist to know what's meant by 'conjugate to the pupil'. What was wrong with the previous? Compare:
and
This is a huge long article and conciseness is an enormous virtue. What does the second version tell us that the first doesn't in half the space? 81.178.208.69 01:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
As I recall, prior to COSTAR, Hubble mainly had problems with glare. Dim objects near bright objects were erased by the glare. For images of Jupiter or deep field images, Hubble had no real problems. Will ( Talk - contribs) 04:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I have deleted the section on the Hubble Origins Probe as a Hubble follow-on. The HOP is only one of several mission concepts that would serve to replace Hubble's capabilties. It presently is not funded, nor is there any existing program that focusses specifically on making a true Hubble replacement. Other candidates for this role are HORUS, SNAP, TPF-C, and so on. Trlauer 19:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
We seem to have a problem with the <ref> tags starting on , 11 January 2007, with the middle of GMHenninger's three changes. He started to use the cite_web template, (maybe the first for this article?) and not all of the referenes list anymore. I am still investigating. -- 199.33.32.40 00:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not much more than a layperson on science stuff so I'm just reading the article as the intended audience would. The 'Future' section of the article states that the power system of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) failed, rendering the instrument inoperable. The electronics had originally been fully redundant, but the first set of electronics failed in May 2001. It seems unlikely that any science functionality can be salvaged without a servicing mission. and then it never says if it was fixed or not. Certainly Hubble isn't up there with no juice, so could someone who knows a WHOLE lot more than me put something in there that doesn't imply that it's dead? JohnCub 00:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Someone has written a chapter on the Swedish Wikipedia article about Hubble that the telescope has not been worth the costs compared to other methods of observation. Even if a lot of important scientific discoveries has been made with Hubble, so much costs has been associated with it, that the same money used on ground based telescopes would have given more results. Today is possible to create many of the images made by Hubble using ground based telescopes with techniques like adaptive optics and "speckle" techniques. Would you agree with these statements ? -- 217.208.215.203 18:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
It's essentially impossible to credit alternative histories that presume that a large investment of money, but still less than what was spent on HST, would have resulted in superior capabilities. HST retains unique capabilties 17 years after its launch that cannot be duplicated from the ground, and that have little prospect for duplication looking ahead another decade or so. It is frankly a fallacy that the advent of adaptive optics on large ground telescopes supplants much of the capabilities of HST. HST obtains deep diffraction-limited images in the optical wavelengths over angularly large areas with a highly stable PSF. AO currently works on angularly small areas in the near-IR and must contend with a high backgound with an often poorly known PSF. When used with telescopes of 8-m aperture or so, AO can top HST for individual relatively bright objects, where the field of view is not important for the science - as such this is a wonderful compliment to the bulk of work done with HST, not a competition to it. There are notions for how wide-field optical AO might be done, but the problems are profoundly difficult. If we wind the clock back 35 years to when the real development of HST started, there could have been no credible argument (nor was one ever made) that the same pot of money would have allowed this path to have worked. The path to HST was hard enough, but it was based on technology that was vastly better understood. Trlauer 03:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
The Hubble has become such a significant feature of the social landscape that it has been referenced in various works of fiction (books and movies). I think that we should consider listing these references in a "media references" section. I can think of at least three off the top of my head. Dfmclean 15:25, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to start making some notes. Eventually, we will move them to the main page. Dfmclean 04:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I have a recollection that, in the movie Armageddon, that the Hubble was used to image the asteroid, but perhaps I am wrong.
There was a post-apocalypse science fiction novel in which the main characters traveled a long distance to retrieve the contents of a library. During their trip, they came across an unattended AI that had been operating a (two?) Hubble successors, and had found signs of intelligent life.
I seem to recall that in The Seige of Eternity by Frederik Pohl, the Hubble was used to search for a hostile alien spacecraft in the outer solar system.
False color images created from the raw data have shown up in a variety of places:
Star Trek
The cover of the Pearl Jam album Binaural
The opening credits of the movie Happy Feet
Somewhere in the movie Stranger Than Fiction (I only saw that the ending credits had an acknowledgment to the Space Telescope Science Institute, but I didn't notice why)
will someone add to this site the dimensions of the telescope to the page somewhere? I tried to add it but wikipedia has become too fancy for the everyday user to update. the dimensions are 13.1 meters long (41 ft) and 4.3 m wide (14 ft)
The lead section is getting a bit hefty. I will give it a few days to see if somebody else would like first crack at reducing its size, maybe in half?-- SallyForth123 00:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Parts of the main mirror and its support structure would probably survive, leaving the potential for damage or even human fatalities (estimated at up to a 1 in 700 chance of human fatality for a completely uncontrolled re-entry).
Anyone have another source for the "1 in 700" figure? That just seems improbably high. 217.155.20.163 21:44, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Under "Outreach Activities", the first sentence reads: "It has always been important for the Space Telescope to capture the public's imagination, given the considerable contribution of taxpayers to its construction and operational costs, although this view seems circular; the telescope exists to justify its existence." Maybe it's just me, but it sounds a bit editorializing/philosophizing/going off on tangent (all of which are not appropriate for an encyclopedia). I think it might be better if the sentence is just cut down to "It has always been important for the Space Telescope to capture the public's imagination, given the considerable contribution of taxpayers to its construction and operational costs." My reasons for the change is:
Given the attention (I assume) this page receives, I'll wait a while before going ahead and making the change. novakyu 04:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
'Data are' is technically correct, since data is the plural of datum. But in common usage, 'data are' sounds very pedantic. I reverted this to the grammatically correct 'data are', but this sounds stilted to me. What do others think?? Is there a standard policy for this? LouScheffer 05:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if there is a policy or not, but pedantic or not, 'data are' is correct and should be used. We're supposed to be upholding a higher standard, aren't we? Dfmclean 16:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Is it meant to say poop on this page?
I was looking through the edit history and noticed that 10k of the article was lost to vandalism from a school ip during the last week. (
diff here). I restored the lost content by pasting it back in (to keep the good edits made since), but if anyone out there could do a check, to make sure I got it all - to be sure to be sure? :O).
FlowerpotmaN·(
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23:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
The top of the page, the first couple paragraphs, are v. difficult to read. I'm going to indent them and see if that helps. Any reason for me not to? The rest of the article appears to have indents. ---edit- okay, it's not all indented. alright, i'm going to leave as is, then , if only for uniformity. 24.74.141.22 ( talk) 20:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
In the archived discussion, there is a link to an older (no longer operational) version of the exposure time calculator for ACS. The newest version of the HST ETCs can be found at:
http://etc.stsci.edu/webetc/index.jsp
Dfmclean ( talk) 13:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
breakthrough and mike griffin need disambig Randomblue ( talk) 22:42, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
If possible, add that they are used to point the telescope —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.205.229.220 ( talk) 23:07, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Much of the article is written in past tense ("Anyone could have applied for time", "Calls for proposals were issued roughly annually"...), but surely the telescope is still operational? Jpatokal ( talk) 06:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Interesting point. Correcting the tense makes sense - especially since it appears that it will be operational for another 5-10 years. Dfmclean ( talk) 16:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Just so nobody misses it, please see Wikipedia:Featured article review/Hubble Space Telescope. Currently expressed concerns are the length of the lead, referencing (format?), and "a few short paragraphs". -- Rick Block ( talk) 04:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
There were 5 references that are referred to multiple times, are available on-line, and form the basis for most of the information in the article. Also, there is so much on the web about the Hubble that it's fairly hard to figure out where to start if you are looking for information. So I took these 5 references (Spitzer's article, the Marshall history, the Allen failure report, the detailed repair document, and the Operations Primer) and moved them explicitly to the top of the references, with a short description of each. Then the references to these documents are of the form Dunar, p. 508 which makes editing much easier.
I think this is more helpful, but if your opinion differs please let me know, LouScheffer ( talk) 06:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Quote: "However, following the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, the fifth servicing mission, initially planned for 2004, was canceled on safety grounds. After spirited public discussion, NASA reconsidered this position." My question is, what position? I think there was something in there before the "discussion" bit, but got deleted. So, just revisit this and flesh it out. I would, but I have no idea what used to be here, or what it should say. ;) Queerbubbles | Leave me Some Love 16:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
On both Firefox and IE, the lead section had a large blank space at the bottom right, below the infobox and next to the table of contents. This looked like a great place to put the exploded view of the Hubble, where you could make it big enough to read the labels without taking any more room. So I moved the diagram here. It works well on Firefox, but IE now moves the table of contents down to match the image, negating most of the space savings. Any suggestions for how to add the image so that this does not happen are appreciated. Thanks, LouScheffer ( talk) 15:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Does the HST sometimes use Gravitational lensing? -- CyclePat ( talk) 19:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I was going to add angular_resolution to the infobox, but it's unclear from the article what that is, or if it's different for different experiments. -- Beland ( talk) 02:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
In general, angular resolution is a function of wavelength and aperture size (that's why radio telescopes have apertures measured in kilometers). Since HST's range goes from UV (about 1100 angstroms) up to near IR (25,000 angstroms) the angular resolution covers a fairly wide range. What makes the Hubble different from ground based telescopes isn't its angular resolution (which is only fair considering the size of the aperture) but the fact that there is no blurring of the images due to atmospheric effects. Dfmclean ( talk) 12:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
From: http://www.ghostnasa.com/ STOP the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 now!!! It's TOO dangerous!!! There's NO "ISS safe haven" near the Hubble!!! Do you want TWO Shuttles and 11 astronauts LOST in space??? It could be THE END of the Shuttle program and (perhaps) THE END of ALL manned Space programs for a LONG LONG time!!! There are SEVERAL (much safer!!!) ways to upgrade the Hubble, WITHOUT risk to lose 11 astronauts lives and make 11 widow(er)s and 20+ orphans!!! Please consider, that, MANY (new and upgraded) Earth-based Telescopes will give us soon the SAME or better scientific results than an upgraded Hubble!!! So, the "advantages" of the SM4 are nearly ZERO!!! In other words, they'll risk their lives for NOTHING!!!
http://www.ghostnasa.com/hubbledeathtrap.jpg
posted by gaetano marano —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.10.104.171 ( talk) 12:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
NOT A DISCUSSION FORUM. PLEASE STOP VANDALISIM!!-- Navy blue84 ( talk) 15:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
my post was not intended to start a forum-like discussion but to explain a different point of view about the SM4 safety (as in some paragraphs of wiki articles titled "criticisms") since no other have done that
posted by gaetano marano
Sorry don't have time to edit myself. Conrad T. Pino ( talk) 21:13, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
Last sentence of second paragraph of "Equipment failure" section: "Estimates of the failure rate of the gyros indicate that Hubble may be down to one gyro by 2008, in which event continued science observations would not be possible." It is now 2009, so perhaps someone in the know could update this sentence? Have any more gyros failed? Captain Chaos ( talk) 11:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Many of the other space telescopes have a mention of size... Cant find any dimensions in this. Do you think there should be a mention of them ? Especially as it is one of the largest telescopes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kernel geek ( talk • contribs) 18:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I am not an astronomer. I followed the construction and launch and the dawning realization of the massive fowl up by both NASA and Perkin-Elmer. There are several statements that I challenge. They claim that the optics have been fully corrected. Last I heard, this was not the case. A reference is needed. If this claim is based on minimum operating specifications, then the polly annas who wrote this article (pretty good over all) should say so. It is clear that the blunder by both the NASA administration and the Perkine Elmer management cost our space program, and is still costing it. I vote to include those managers names in this article. They deserve the opprobrium of history for the next century or two, anyway. Perhaps after that, I will have forgiven them for their gross incompetence. My main point is I do NOT believe it to be the case that the optics are fully restored. I understood that such a feat was technically impossible. The statements claiming this and later in the article implying this need to be qualified, and references need to be given. 69.40.250.215 ( talk) 16:35, 10 April 2009 (UTC)Dave Nalepa
I just noticed that the European space agency logo is right next to the NASA name... anyone know why they are on there, what, if anything, they contributed... Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.120.182.253 ( talk) 01:37, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I suggest adding the following data to the sidebar at the top of the article: length = 13.2m, orbit inclination to equator = 28.5° (data from: http://www.spacetelescope.org/about/general/fact_sheet.html) I tried to add it but failed. Could an experienced editor do it? Thanks. Jedwards01 ( talk) 21:56, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Currently the article includes the following statement:
I'm not sure this goes quite far enough. Didn't the HST provide the evidence needed to conclusively confirm that supermassive black holes exist?— RJH ( talk) 22:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I recall hearing (somewhere...) HST "discovered" 2 new galaxies. True? If so, which 2? TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 04:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I failed to find some information in the given sources.
Jan.Kamenicek ( talk) 21:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I recall hearing (somewhere...) gravity at interstellar/intergalactic distances might differ from that at local (measured) distances, which might also explain the change. Can anybody confirm? (Or is that Uneven Expansion of Space?) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 02:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
The statement that the accelerated expansion of the universe is commonly attributed to "dark energy" is well supported. From Science,
Discovered less than a decade ago, a mysterious antigravity force suffuses the universe. Physicists are now trying to figure out the properties of this "dark energy"--the blackest mystery in the shadiest realms of cosmology."
Dark Energy Tiptoes Toward the Spotlight, 20 June 2003: Vol. 300. no. 5627, pp. 1896 - 1897 DOI: 10.1126/science.300.5627.1896 by Charles Seife.
Also note that google scholar shows 22K+ hits for "dark energy", three times more than "accelerated expansion" and hundreds of times more than any other explanation I could think of. (Though if you have more references for alternatives, it would be good to see them.)
Since this is a HST page, not a dark energy page, the "commonly attributed" seems right - it allows that it is not a done deal, but surely it is the common name. LouScheffer ( talk) 03:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
NASA-Audio (Wednesday, June 3, 2015@1pm/edt/usa) - Panel of experts to discuss latest "surprising" findings by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Moons of Pluto. [1] - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 12:17, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
References
The article has a slight pro-astronomy bias and very little mention of the extensive criticism this program has received. For example, the "Servicing Mission 4" section reads like an "us vs. them" piece with much coverage of astronomer's POV and none for those trying to end the program. It's not clear if the bias in this article was an accident or by design.
The talk archives includes Talk:Hubble_Space_Telescope/Archive_2#The_Hubble_Wars. The Hubble Wars by Eric Chaisson looks like a decent source for criticism.
I looked through the talk archives to see if the subject of criticism had been brought up and found this talk thread which mentions the lack of criticism and also reminded me of some of the controversy surrounding SM4. The image posted with that talk comment also reminded me of the proposal to send two shuttles at the same time to the HST with the plan being that if one of the shuttles was heavily damaged during ascent it would be abandoned and everyone would return to Earth in the remaining shuttle. That plan does not get mentioned in the SM4 section. A similar plan had the second shuttle on the ground, ready to launch, as a rescue mission. That does not get mention either. Unfortunately,it seems that digging up and WP:RS the SM4 controversy will be a bit of a pain. -- Marc Kupper| talk 22:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
I remember back in the day the news media reported that the problem with the fuzzy mirror was that the specification did not correctly anticipate the change in the mirror shape due to the difference between Earth's gravity and the lack of same in orbit. Is that not the case?
I also just watched a documentary on this on Nat Geo (Hubble's Cosmic Journey). They interviewed the engineers from Perkin-Elmer who (surprise!) blamed NASA, claiming that the reduction in funds and NASA's refusal to authorize more testing was the cause of the problem. The article here seems to give only NASA's side of the story - shouldn't there be more info from Perkin-Elmer's side? __ 209.179.55.119 ( talk) 02:23, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Can someone please clarify if Hubble Space Telescope et al are supposed to be italicized? NASA doesn't italicize unmanned robotic platforms like Hubble or Voyager, and neither was Wikipedia until someone started making a bunch of changes. G0T0 ( talk) 02:59, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I would suggest that they should not be italicized, and often should not be bolded. It looks like "someone" is using it as a form of emphasis that is non-standard. I can understand their intentions, but they are probably incorrect. And if you do do something like that, it should only be rarely and for the first mention, not throughout. Maybe a more senior editor could offer some insight.-- WillBo ( talk) 03:32, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I double-checked with the NASA Manual of Style and how Wikipedia does it everywhere else. Unmanned platforms such as Voyager 1 do not get italicized. G0T0 ( talk)
From the point of view of the reader, I think the italics hurt. They interrupt the reading flow for (in this case) no good reason. In some cases italics help the reader understand the meaning, particularly if the non-italic names could make sense in the sentence. For example, "Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in The Spirit of Saint Louis" reads differently than "Piccard crossed the Atlantic in the spirit of Charles Lindbergh", and here the italics help the reader. But in the case of Hubble there is no ambiguity, and the reader is best served by uniform case. The two most famous scientific journals, Science and Nature, do not capitalize Hubble, nor does the New York Times or the BBC, so there is certainly support for this practice. LouScheffer ( talk) 16:07, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Not sure if this was ever posted on the Hubble telescope wiki, but before NASA could send up a replacement they still wanted to make the best use of Hubble. So they developed image processing software to remove blur and declutter images of stars. When looking at the initial images and the processed images, there was a similarity of the initial image to microcalcification in mammogram images. Microcalcification is a very good predictor for breast cancer. Eventually the researchers enthusiastically teamed up and a grant was obtained to investigate if there was any potential use of NASA's image processing technique. This led to the technique being used in helping identify early stages of breast cancer.
If you guys think this is noteworthy enough to add to the Hubble wiki page, I'll compose a serious entry rather than a talk entry.
Old Source: http://ipp.nasa.gov/innovation/Innovation41/HubbleFights.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Interkin ( talk • contribs) 13:46, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
43.5 feet (13.2 meters) long, weighs 24,500 pounds (11,110 kilograms). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.166.224.2 ( talk) 12:47, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
SM4 tested the Relative Navigation Sensor System FLIGHT RESULTS FROM THE HST SM4 RELATIVE NAVIGATION SENSOR SYSTEM for the cancelled HRSDM - HRSDM ? - Rod57 ( talk) 11:23, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
A minor point: To quote the article 'Although JWST is primarily an infrared instrument, its coverage extends down to 600 nm wavelength light', however 600nm is in the visible spectrum which is higher than the infrared therefore should the article not say 'its coverage extends UP to 600 nm wavelength'? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.52.205.64 ( talk) 22:57, 6 January 2018 (UTC)