Skylog: Heliosphere

Repaired Hubble telescope back in action

September 10 2009 00:15 UTC | Views: 974 | Comments: 0
Posted by: TonyF in Hubble

Video of the Hubble's Recommissioning Process

Scientists have concluded the checkout period for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and now are revealing images showcasing the power of the much-improved observatory. This video chronicles the checkout period after Hubble's Servicing Mission 4. Also included is the unexpected diversion from the usual calibration procedures to focus the telescope on a possible comet collision on the planet Jupiter.

Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, and M. Estacion (STScI)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, ready to uncover new worlds, peer ever deeper into space, and even map the invisible backbone of the universe. The first snapshots from the refurbished Hubble.

Topping the list of exciting new views are colorful multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation," and a "butterfly" nebula. With its new imaging camera, Hubble can view galaxies, star clusters, and other objects across a wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. A new spectrograph slices across billions of light-years to map the filamentary structure of the universe and trace the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life. The telescope's new instruments also are more sensitive to light and can observe in ways that are significantly more efficient and require less observing time than previous generations of Hubble instruments. NASA astronauts installed the new instruments during the space shuttle servicing mission in May 2009. Besides adding the instruments, the astronauts also completed a dizzying list of other chores that included performing unprecedented repairs on two other science instruments.

Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302