More than 30 years ago, a telescope was put into orbit with the aim of understanding the immensity of the universe. This was a great revolution in science, after all, it is not every day that a telescope goes into orbit. Did you know that this telescopecalled Hubble, still in orbit?
Hubble Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, made history by being the first telescope to be inserted into space. This was another mission from NASA (United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
and belongs to the great space observatories.
It consists of four orbital observatories. In this way, it is possible to keep an eye on the universe in different wavelengths (visible light, gamma rays, X-rays and infrared).
It has always been a big dream to unravel the secrets of the universe. In the past, it was only possible to observe the stars with the naked eye. However, that changed more than 410 years ago, when Galileo pointed a telescope at the sky.
After the creation of the telescope in 1610, several advances were made throughout the history of science. After Galileo, Hubble became the second revolution in astronomy.
The project began in 1940, but it took a long time to put it into practice, and involved several researches until it went on five service missions, between 1990 and 2000.
How does it work?
The telescope is 600 km from the surface of the Earth and has a mirror that is about 2.40 meters. It works like a reflecting telescope, allowing you to take pictures of a wide field of view.
Its resolution is much higher, up to ten times compared to the previous telescope. The longest observation spanned about 13.4 billion light-years from Earth.
It is 13 meters long and orbits around the Earth at 547 kilometers. Solar panels are used as a power source for the telescope, which weighs 11 tons.
Hubble has the ability to produce clean images and helps with several discoveries, such as the age of the universe, the existence of black holes, new planets, mapping dark matter in 3D, galaxies and the emergence of stars.
Furthermore, the telescope makes the understanding of the existence of dark matter and energy. They are responsible for maintaining an unknown dynamic of the universe’s expansion.
