Hubble .:. Change Your View of Our Universe

The Hubble Space Telescope

Since the earliest days of astronomy, since the time of Galileo, astronomers have shared a single goal — to see more, see farther, see deeper.

The Hubble Space Telescope‘s launch in 1990 sped humanity to one of its greatest advances in that journey. Hubble is a telescope that orbits Earth. Its position above the atmosphere, which distorts and blocks the light that reaches our planet, gives it a view of the universe that typically far surpasses that of ground-based telescopes.

Hubble is one of NASA‘s most successful and long-lasting science missions. It has beamed hundreds of thousands of images back to Earth, shedding light on many of the great mysteries of astronomy. Its gaze has helped determine the age of the universe, the identity of quasars, and the existence of dark energy.

Hubble’s discoveries have transformed the way scientists look at the universe. Its ability to show the universe in unprecedented detail has turned astronomical conjectures into concrete certainties. It has winnowed down the collection of theories about the universe even as it sparked new ones, clarifying the path for future astronomers.

The Legacy of Edwin Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope was named after astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble (1889–1953), who made some of the most important discoveries in modern astronomy.

In the 1920s, while working at the Mt. Wilson Observatory with the most advanced technology of the time, Dr. Hubble showed that some of the numerous distant, faint clouds of light in the universe were actually entire galaxies—much like our own Milky Way. The realization that the Milky Way is only one of many galaxies forever changed the way astronomers viewed our place in the universe.

But perhaps his greatest discovery came in 1929, when Dr. Hubble determined that the farther a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it appears to move away. This notion of an “expanding” universe formed the basis of the Big Bang theory, which states that the universe began with an intense burst of energy at a single moment in time — and has been expanding ever since.

The Man Behind the Machine

Lyman Spitzer, Jr. (1914—1997), a world-renowned theoretical astrophysicist, developed the concept of a telescope in space. In 1946 — more than a decade before the launch of the first satellite — Spitzer proposed the development of a large, space-based observatory that would not be hindered by Earth’s atmospheric distortion and span a broad range of wavelengths. This lofty vision ultimately became the Hubble Space Telescope.

Spitzer was instrumental in the design and development of the Hubble Space Telescope. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he was an enthusiastic lobbyist for the telescope, both with Congress and the scientific community. Even after Hubble’s launch in 1990, Spitzer remained deeply involved in the program. Not only did he make some important astronomical observations with the telescope that was essentially his brainchild, but he also spent a great deal of time — right up until the end of his life — analyzing Hubble data.

In addition to space astronomy, Spitzer’s work greatly advanced knowledge in other fields, including stellar dynamics, plasma physics, and thermonuclear fusion.