Hubble's View Of The Universe (Part 3)

Hubble's View Of The Universe [Part 3 of 10]

THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE

Hubble works on the same principle as the first reflecting telescope built in the 1600s by Isaac Newton. Light enters the telescope and strikes a concave primary mirror, which acts like a lens to focus the light. The bigger the mirror, the better the image.

In Hubble, light from the primary mirror is reflected to a smaller secondary mirror in front of the primary mirror, then back through a hole in the primary to instruments clustered behind the focal plane (where the image is in focus).

THE UNIVERSE

Hubble's longest exposures are like a core sample of the universe, recording galaxies at many different distances. This is one of the deepest core samples ever taken. It shows a few nearby stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The rest of the objects are distant galaxies, extending from 1 billion to over 10 billion light-years away.

STARS

Stars live and die over the course of millions to billions of years. It is unusual to see changes in individual stars. To learn more about them, we must piece together snapshots of stars at different life stages — from birth to death.

The birth, life, and rebirth of stars is an ongoing process in the universe. The byproducts of this process include planets and the elements that make life possible.

GALAXIES

Galaxies come in diverse shapes and sizes. NGC 4414 — which is located about 62 million light-years away — is an example of a spiral galaxy. As with most spirals, the central region of NGC 4414 contains primarily older, yellow and red stars. The outer spiral arms are considerably bluer due to ongoing formation of young, blue stars.

The stars form a flat disk that circles the nucleus — a disk we see tilted, so it doesn't appear flat. Spiral galaxies like NGC 4414 display beautiful spiral arms made up of millions of young stars.

http://hubblesite.org/

Part 4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qjL_a1Ea1bE

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Hubble
• Universe
• Astronomy
• Cosmos
• Stars
• Galaxies

[8journey8]

It just absolutely stuns me that little man, puny little creature, figured how to make a telescope, launch it, keep it in space, bring back images like these. This, after a long history of earthbound survival, ever growing knowlege and awareness (and boundless curiosity)...I'm awestruck.And proud to be a human being.

[willtopaint]

@mikilavush

your religion is poison. You might as well huff paint.

[EricSchwin22]

@mikilavush.....trolololololol­ollolllolool

[NLPCPNL]

This piece of music together with the images is true awesomeness. It makes me realize deep inside that we have so much potential as human beings. When watching this clip I realize how tiny and foolish we are but also how wonderful the gift of life actually is. This clip in itself describes life and the beauty of life so much better than anything else. You don't need to read the bible just watch this 5 minute clip and you've learned so much more.. more than most will learn in a lifetime...

[xjjxchrizzlesx]

so beautiful.

[mikilavush]

All those nebulas in the space are not beautiful to me, so I ask myself: Why did God create them, and why does God let the present generation see them? Nebulas look like burning fire and smoke among the stars, so to me nebulas could be God`s way of telling now days humans that his words in the Bible, which say that the universe on the Judgement day will all burn up, are soon going to be fulfiled. Only true christians and not responsible youth will survive on the Judgement day.

[natureboy84]

A place like the universe...so hostile yet so beautiful. I agree with you teneg. I'm a little sad myself about not knowing what we're going to find what's out there in the far future. :( But I guess it's all fair because the earlier scientists and astronomers didn't have the luxury of viewing distant galaxies through Hubble like we do.

I just wish NASA and the government would stop being douchebags and just show us some life on Mars already!

[teneg]

All i have to say is I'm a little sad because I wont be alive by the time we develop the technology to go to these other planets and galaxies :) wow how breathtaking... the human life is an blink of an eye compared to the universe