Brain Post: Happy 23rd Birthday to Hubble Space Telescope | Hubble’s Best 8 Photos

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SnowBrains wants to send out a big “Happy Birthday” to the Hubble Space Telescope.  This telescope’s photos have made all of our dreams bigger.  Who could have even imagined the objects seen in Hubble’s photos?  Our universe has literally been expanded.  Thanks Hubble.

9 HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE FACTS:

– The Hubble Telescope is 43.5 feet long and 14 feet wide. It weighs 24,500 pounds and cost $1.5 billion initially.

– The telescope was named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Hubble was the scientist who discovered there were galaxies beyond our own and helped confirm that the unierse was expanding beyond our Milky Way. This provided other scientists a foundation for the Big Bang Theory.

– The Hubble Telescope receives its energy from the sun through two 25-foot solar panels while orbiting about 353 miles above Earth.

– Hubble moves at speeding around the world at 17,400 mph. This is twelve times as fast as the cruising speed of the Concorde supersonic airliner (1,410 mph).

– The Hubble can look at extremely far objects, but not close ones.  These are the Sun (so bright it would damage its sensors) and the planet Mercury, which is too close to the sun.

– Hubble is essentially a giant camera but it doesn’t use film. Its cameras capture the light from the universe with electronic detectors (CCD’s) so it is basically a giant digital camera.

– Hubble’s images of the wonders of the cosmos are recorded in shades of black and white, not color.

– The telescope is expected to remain operational until 2014, about 24 years after its launch. It will then be replaced with the James Webb Space Telescope.