The Hubble and the Webb

35 Years of Space-based Telescopes

The Hubble Space Telescope trumps the Keck observatory mountaintop location by being in low earth orbit, just over 300 miles above us, lapping the earth every 97 minutes. The Hubble has exceeded its intended lifespan, thanks partly to five shuttle service missions, the last in 2009.

After a service call to repair a tiny mirror defect, the Hubble has helped pinpoint the age of the Universe at between 13-14 billion years, studied galactic formation, located the most distant extrasolar planets yet found and discovered the existence of dark energy, the enigmatic force said to accelerate the expansion of the Universe. The Hubble transmits up to 120 gigabytes of data every week and has so far beamed back hundreds of thousands of deep and near space images. Operated by N.A.S.A. and the European Space Agency, the Hubble is open to scientists from any country, The data discovered is released publicly one year after it is provided to the scientist who submitted the proposal. About 20% of the 1,000 proposals submitted annually are approved.

Alas, the space shuttle is gone now so this most noble, 43-foot vessel and its multiple ‘scopes will gradually stop functioning. The James Webb Space Telescope replaced the Hubble in 2023. The Hubble has literally opened the Universe, mankind has never before seen it in such detail and with such clarity. Discoveries made by the Hubble have revolutionized astronomy and will be studied for decades, if not centuries to come.

You can find some of these images online at the Hubble’s website or on many other sites. But I’m “old school”. Knowing this, my son sent me The Hubble Cosmos, 25 Years of New Vistas In Space. Inside authors David Devorkin and Robert W. Smith guide us through hundreds of the “Greatest Hits” images from the ‘scopes first quarter century. If you’ve ever wondered what you could see if you were in space with a pair of super powerful glasses, well here’s pictures of billion light year distant objects or shots showing dozens of galaxies seemingly clumped together.

t's an impressive feat to have a space telescope in low earth orbit, the James Webb Space Telescope was a different matter entirely. The JWST was precisely positioned 900,000 miles from Earth, so far it takes light nearly five seconds to cover the distance, and that’s nearly four times as distant as the Moon.

After a month’s long journey, the JWST was in its exact position, in an orbit so stable the JWST will be there longer humans will be on Earth to look through it.

The sixteen mirrors arranged hexagonally, also had to be lined up perfectly, as each unfolded. Dozens and dozens of complicated operations had to go exactly as planned and programmed.

And everything did, so now we are seeing our Universe in more details than the Hubble.

One of the Hubble’s most iconic photos was when they presented an image from a part of the sky that seemed empty to all previous telescopes.

The Hubbell revealed a sky packed with galaxies.

The JWST scanned the same spot and revealed at least 2,500 galaxies.

As I’ve motioned in OF AMERICAN ORIGIN before, we now can see further into our past than ever, closer to seeing almost back to the “Big Bang” from whence we all came, just 14.8 billion years ago. And off we go into cosmological question like “If indeed all the material in the universe came as a rust of this BB, where did all the material come from to explode out into our Universe. Is the Universe expanding or is it contracting?

I’ll leave you to ponder these questions until the next post. For more – whole lot more on the Hubble, Webb and space telescopes, heres a terrific You Tube clip that explains it all.