Hubble Space Telescope: Our Eyes to the Universe.
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Transcript of Hubble Space Telescope: Our Eyes to the Universe.
Hubble Facts:• It orbits Earth at 5 miles per second! At that speed, it could
travel across the US in 10 minutes!
• It is about the size of a school bus.
• Hubble was launched in 1990. At the time, it cost $1.5 billion to put into orbit.
• The Hubble is powered by the sun, using 2, 25-foot solar panels.
• The telescope collects enough data in one week to fill 3,600 feet of books on a shelf.
• The James Webb Space Telescope is being constructed to replace Hubble.
Hubble’s Top Ten Most Significant Discoveries
• How massive stars die – in an explosion call a supernova
• The approximate age of the universe, 13-14 billion years old
• What the early universe (and early galaxies) was like
• Extra-solar “solar” systems – planets orbiting other stars in the universe
• Black holes are at the center of galaxies; its gravity helps to hold galaxies together According to
Hubble’s Top Ten Most Significant Discoveries
• The existence of gamma ray bursts, which are the most explosive, dangerous releases of energy, from the death of massive stars
• Quasars, the brightest celestial bodies, releasing an incredible amount of radio waves
• How stars are “born” – in nebulas
• The scars of a collision between Jupiter and comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (1994).
• Planetary nebula (which have nothing to do with planets) that are the gas & dust remnants of medium-sized stars, like our sun