Hubble Telescope Essay

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Hubble Telescope
The Hubble telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a space shuttle which launched from earth on April 24th, 1990 and has orbited the earth till this day. Its position above the Earth’s atmosphere, and is NASA’s most successful science missions. The Hubble telescope gives it a view of the universe that scientist can’t see from the Earth’s surface. Over the years it has beamed hundreds of thousands of images of space back to Earth. Hubble has helped determine the age of the universe, the existence of dark energy and identity of quasars.
It takes the Hubble telescope 97 minutes to do a full spin of the Earth. As the Hubble telescope travels, light from around it hits the main mirror or primary mirror which then bounces of it and encounters a secondary mirror. This mirror focuses the light through a hole in the centre of the first mirror. That then leads to the telescope’s science instruments.
The Hubble telescope is used to get the detailed pictures of the universe you can’t get from the surface of the earth. Even if you have a large scientifically advanced telescope that was built to work from the surface of the earth, you’re still going to have the problem of the atmosphere (atmospheric distortion). The wavelengths of radiation, like ultraviolet, gamma- and X-rays are blocked or absorbed by the atmosphere before they can reach the Earth. The best way scientist can examine objects in outer space is to study it in all types of wavelengths. Scientist has tried to create newer ground-based telescopes to try and correct atmospheric distortion, but no matter if you use technologic advances you can’t see the wavelengths and are stopped from the atmosphere. The way scientists have prevented their problems is by placing a telescope that orbits the edge of the atmosphere.
Although the photos they got back from Hubble were clearer than the ones they got from ground-based telescopes something was wrong, the pictures were blurry. The telescopes primary mirror was just slightly the wrong shape. Because of this, the light bounced off the centre of the mirror and focused in a different place. Scientist placed small mirrors around the telescope which were used to intercept the light reflecting off the primary mirror. By doing this the light then bounced into the telescope’s science instruments.
As the years will past the Hubble telescope will still orbit the earth. Every once
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