1.
STS-125
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STS-125, or HST-SM4, was the fifth and final space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis occurred on 11 May 2009 at 2,01 pm EDT, landing occurred on 24 May at 11,39 am EDT, with the mission lasting a total of just under 13 days. Space Shuttle Atlantis carried two new instruments to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3. The mission also replaced a Fine Guidance Sensor, six gyroscopes, the mission also carried an IMAX camera with which the crew documented the progress of the mission for the Hubble IMAX movie. The crew of STS-125 included three astronauts who had previous experience servicing Hubble, scott Altman visited Hubble in 2002 as commander of STS-109, the fourth Hubble servicing mission. John Grunsfeld, an astronomer, has serviced Hubble twice, performing a total of five spacewalks on STS-103 in 1999, Michael Massimino served with both Altman and Grunsfeld on STS-109, and performed two spacewalks to service the telescope. NASA managers and engineers declared the mission a complete success, the upgrades will help Hubble to see deeper into the universe and farther into the past, closer to the time of the Big Bang. STS-125 was the visit to the Hubble Space Telescope for Atlantis. The mission was the 30th flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis and also the first by Atlantis in over 14 years not to visit a space station, the fifth servicing mission to Hubble, HST-SM4, was originally scheduled to launch in late 2005 or early 2006. On 16 January 2004, then-NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe canceled the mission, as well as any future missions to Hubble, during the announcement, OKeefe stated that it was his decision alone, and not a recommendation from any other departments. The decision was criticized by the media, the science community. In March 2004, Representative Mark Udall introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that requested an independent panel of experts review OKeefes decision to cancel the servicing mission. With Beckwith when he released the data to the community was Mikulski. This is why I will continue to stand up for Hubble, joining Mikulski as an advocate for servicing Hubble was NASAs Chief Scientist, physicist John Grunsfeld, who was present at the meeting when OKeefe announced the cancellation of the mission. A veteran astronaut of four missions, including two Hubble servicing missions, Grunsfeld had devoted years to Hubble, and was very disappointed when OKeefe canceled the mission. He briefly considered retiring from NASA, but realized if he stayed, instead, Grunsfeld dedicated himself to finding alternate ways to service the telescope, possibly by sending a robot into orbit to do the job. OKeefes replacement, Michael D. Griffin, took just two months after his appointment to announce that he disagreed with OKeefes decision, and would consider sending a shuttle to repair Hubble. As an engineer, Griffin had previously worked on Hubbles construction, on 31 October 2006, Griffin announced that the Hubble servicing mission was reinstated, scheduled for 2008, and announced the crew that would fly the mission, which included Grunsfeld
2.
Hubble Space Telescope
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The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, with a 2. 4-meter mirror, Hubbles four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. Hubbles orbit outside the distortion of Earths atmosphere allows it to take extremely high-resolution images, Hubble has recorded some of the most detailed visible light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The HST was built by the United States space agency NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute selects Hubbles targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center controls the spacecraft. Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923, Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990, Hubbles main mirror was found to have been ground incorrectly, the optics were corrected to their intended quality by a servicing mission in 1993. Hubble is the telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts. After launch by Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, five subsequent Space Shuttle missions repaired, upgraded, the fifth mission was canceled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster. However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission, the telescope is operating as of 2017, and could last until 2030–2040. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018, the history of the Hubble Space Telescope can be traced back as far as 1946, to the astronomer Lyman Spitzers paper Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory. In it, he discussed the two advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. First, the resolution would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere. Second, a telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light. Spitzer devoted much of his career to pushing for the development of a space telescope, space-based astronomy had begun on a very small scale following World War II, as scientists made use of developments that had taken place in rocket technology. An orbiting solar telescope was launched in 1962 by the United Kingdom as part of the Ariel space program, oAO-1s battery failed after three days, terminating the mission. It was followed by OAO-2, which carried out observations of stars and galaxies from its launch in 1968 until 1972. The continuing success of the OAO program encouraged increasingly strong consensus within the community that the LST should be a major goal
3.
Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2
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The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 is a camera formerly installed on the Hubble Space Telescope. The camera was built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is roughly the size of a grand piano. It was installed by servicing mission 1 in 1993, replacing the telescopes original Wide Field, WFPC2 was used to image the Hubble Deep Field in 1995, the Hourglass Nebula and Egg Nebula in 1996, and the Hubble Deep Field South in 1998. During STS-125, WFPC2 was removed and replaced with the Wide Field Camera 3 as part of the missions first spacewalk on May 14,2009, WFPC2 was built by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which also built the predecessor WF/PC camera launched with Hubble in 1990. WFPC2 contains internal corrective optics to fix the spherical aberration in the Hubble telescopes primary mirror, the charge-coupled devices in the WFPC2 detected electromagnetic radiation in a range from 120 nm to 1000 nm. This included the 380 nm to 780 nm of the spectrum, all of the near ultraviolet. The sensitivity distribution of these CCDs is roughly normal, with a peak around 700 nm, WFPC2 featured four identical CCD detectors, each 800x800 pixels. Three of these, arranged in an L-formation, comprise Hubbles Wide Field Camera, adjacent to them is the Planetary Camera, a fourth CCD with different optics. This afforded a more detailed view over a region of the visual field. WFC and PC images are combined, producing the WFPC2s characteristic stairstep image. To allow scientists to view parts of the electromagnetic spectrum the WFPC2 featured a rotating wheel which moves different optical filters into the lightpath. The 48 filter elements included, A set of standard wideband photometric filters, a graduated filter, featuring a wide range of very narrowband filters. By positioning the target object at a part of the field. A number of optical filters tuned to the wavelengths of various atomic emission lines. As predicted, over the course of its mission the WFPC2 experienced degradation of the CCDs, to avoid false positives caused by cosmic rays tripping a given pixel, the output of different calibration shots are compared. Pixels which are consistently hot are recorded, and astronomers who analyse raw WFPC2 images receive a list of these pixels, typically astronomers adjust their photo-processing software to ignore these bad pixels. WFPC2 was largely superseded for broad-band imaging by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, however, the early 2007 failure of ACS resulted in WFPC2 returning to its role as Hubbles primary visible light camera. WFPC2 was removed from HST during Servicing Mission 4 in May 2009, for return to Earth and eventual museum display
4.
NGC 6302
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NGC6302, also called the Bug Nebula, Butterfly Nebula, is a bipolar planetary nebula in the constellation Scorpius. The structure in the nebula is among the most complex ever observed in planetary nebulae, the central star, a white dwarf, was only recently discovered, using the upgraded Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The star has a current mass of around 0.64 solar masses and it is surrounded by a particularly dense equatorial disc composed of gas and dust. This dense disc is postulated to have caused the stars outflows to form a structure similar to an hour-glass. This bipolar structure shows many interesting features seen in planetary nebulae such as walls, knots. As it is included in the New General Catalogue, this object has been known since at least 1888, the earliest known study of NGC6302 is by Edward Emerson Barnard, who drew and described it in 1907. Since then it has been the focus of many works and displays many interesting characteristics worthy of study, interest in recent years has shifted from discussions over the excitation method in the nebula to the properties of the large dust component. It featured in some of the first images released after the servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope in September 2009. A dark lane runs through the waist of the nebula obscuring the central star at all wavelengths. Observations of NGC6302 suggest that there may be an orthogonal skirt similar to found in Menzel 3 The nebula is orientated at an angle of 12. 8° against the plane of the sky. This planetary nebula contains a prominent northwest lobe which extends up to 3′.0 away from the star and is estimated to have formed from an eruptive event around 1,900 years ago. It has a part whose walls precisely follow a Hubble-type outflow. At an angular distance of 1. 71′ from the central star, at the extreme periphery of the lobe, the outward velocity exceeds 600 km/s. It was not seen in the first Hubble Space Telescope images, a temperature of 200,000 Kelvin is indicated, and a mass of 0.64 solar masses. The original mass of the star was much higher, but most was ejected in the event which created the planetary nebula. The luminosity and temperature of the star indicate it has ceased nuclear burning and is on its way to becoming a white dwarf and this detection has been disputed, due to the difficulties in forming carbonates in a non-aqueous environment. One of the characteristics of the dust detected in NGC6302 is the existence of both material and carbon-rich material. Stars are usually either O-rich or C-rich, the change from the former to the latter occurring late in the evolution of the due to nuclear
5.
Horsehead Nebula
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The Horsehead Nebula is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of the star Alnitak, which is farthest east on Orions Belt, the nebula was first recorded in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming on photographic plate B2312 taken at the Harvard College Observatory. The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth and it is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of the shape of its swirling cloud of dark dust and gases, which bears some resemblance to a horses head when viewed from Earth. The dark cloud of dust and gas is a region in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex where star formation is taking place. It is located in the constellation of Orion, which is prominent in the evening sky in the Northern Hemisphere. This stellar nursery, as it is known, can contain over 100 known kinds of organic and inorganic gases as well as dust, some of the latter is made up of large and complex organic molecules. The red or pinkish glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, magnetic fields channel the gases leaving the nebula into streams, shown as streaks in the background glow. A glowing strip of hydrogen gas marks the edge of the cloud. The heavy concentrations of dust in the Horsehead Nebula region and neighbouring Orion Nebula are localized, resulting in alternating sections of nearly complete opacity, the darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust blocking the light of stars behind it. The lower part of the Horseheads neck casts a shadow to the left, the visible dark nebula emerging from the gaseous complex is an active site of the formation of low-mass stars. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebulas base are young stars just in the process of forming, the Horsehead-Nebula and neighboring structures in a classical view The Horsehead Nebula on interactive astro-photography survey at Wikisky. org The Horsehead Nebula at Constellation Guide
6.
Mystic Mountain
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Mystic Mountain is a term for a region in the Carina Nebula imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The view was captured by the then-new Wide Field Camera 3, the new view celebrated the telescopes 20th anniversary of being in space in 2010. Mystic Mountain contains multiple Herbig-Haro objects where nascent stars are firing off jets of gas which interact with surrounding clouds of gas and this region is about 7,500 light-years away from Earth. The pillar measures around three light-years in height. org Star-forming regions in the Carina Nebula by Hubblesite. org
7.
Carina Nebula
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The Carina Nebula is a large, complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina, and is located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm. The nebula lies at a distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light-years from Earth. The nebula has within its boundaries the large Carina OB1 association and several related open clusters, including numerous O-type stars, Carina OB1 encompasses the star clusters Trumpler 14 and Trumpler 16. Trumpler 14 is one of the youngest known star clusters at half a years old. Trumpler 15, Collinder 228, Collinder 232, NGC3324, NGC3293 is the oldest and furthest from Trumpler 14, indicating sequential and ongoing star formation. The nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies, although it is some four times as large and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is much less well known due to its location in the southern sky. It was discovered by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope, Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille discovered the nebula on 25 January 1752. Its dimensions are 120×120 arcminutes centered on the coordinates of right ascension 10h 45m 08. 5s, in modern times it is calculated to be around 6,500 to 10,000 light-years from Earth. Eta Carinae is a highly luminous hypergiant star, estimates of its mass range from 100 to 150 times the mass of the Sun, and its luminosity is about four million times that of the Sun. This object is currently the most massive star that can be studied in detail, because of its location. Several other known stars may be more luminous and more massive, stars with more than 80 times the mass of the Sun produce more than a million times as much light as the Sun. Eta Carinaes effects on the nebula can be seen directly, dark globules and some other less visible objects have tails pointing directly away from the massive star. Within the large bright nebula is a smaller feature, immediately surrounding Eta Carinae itself. It is believed to have been ejected in an enormous outburst in 1841 which briefly made Eta Carinae the second-brightest star in the sky, the Homunculus Nebula is a small HII region, with gas shocked into ionised and excited states. It also absorbs much of the light from the extremely luminous central stellar system and it is the brightest object in the sky at mid-IR wavelengths. Values obtained using this method are around 2.3 kiloparsecs with a margin of error around 100 parsecs, the same calculations also return the inclination of the axis of the Homunculus relative to the line of sight. This turns out to be 41°, or 49° relative to the plane of the sky, john Herschel used the term lemniscate-oval vacuity when first describing it, and subsequently referred to it simply as the oval vacuity. The name Keyhole Nebula then came into use, sometimes for the Keyhole itself
8.
Camera
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Thumb|A2016 Nikon D810 A camera is an optical instrument for recording or capturing images, which may be stored locally, transmitted to another location, or both. The images may be individual still photographs or sequences of images constituting videos or movies, the camera is a remote sensing device as it senses subjects without physical contact. The word camera comes from camera obscura, which means dark chamber and is the Latin name of the device for projecting an image of external reality onto a flat surface. The modern photographic camera evolved from the camera obscura, the functioning of the camera is very similar to the functioning of the human eye. A camera may work with the light of the spectrum or with other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. A still camera is a device which creates a single image of an object or scene. All cameras use the basic design, light enters an enclosed box through a converging lens/convex lens. A shutter mechanism controls the length of time that light can enter the camera, a display, often a liquid crystal display, permits the user to view scene to be recorded and settings such as ISO speed, exposure, and shutter speed. A movie camera or a video camera operates similarly to a camera, except it records a series of static images in rapid succession. When the images are combined and displayed in order, the illusion of motion is achieved, the forerunner to the photographic camera was the camera obscura. The oldest known record of this principle is a description by Han Chinese philosopher Mozi, Mozi correctly asserted that the camera obscura image is inverted because light travels in straight lines from its source. In the 11th century Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham s wrote very influential essays about experiments with light through an opening in a darkened room. The use of a lens in the opening of a wall or closed window shutter of a room to project images used as a drawing aid has been traced back to circa 1550. Since the late 17th century portable camera obscura devices in tents, before the development of the photographic camera, it had been known for hundreds of years that some substances, such as silver salts, darkened when exposed to sunlight. The first person to use this chemistry to create images was Thomas Wedgwood, to create images, Wedgwood placed items, such as leaves and insect wings, on ceramic pots coated with silver nitrate, and exposed the set-up to light. These images werent permanent, however, as Wedgwood didnt employ a fixing mechanism and he ultimately failed at his goal of using the process to create fixed images created by a camera obscura. The first permanent photograph of an image was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles. Niépce had been experimenting with ways to fix the images of a camera obscura since 1816, the photograph Niépce succeeded in creating shows the view from his window
9.
Charge-coupled device
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A charge-coupled device is a device for the movement of electrical charge, usually from within the device to an area where the charge can be manipulated, for example conversion into a digital value. This is achieved by shifting the signals between stages within the one at a time. CCDs move charge between capacitive bins in the device, with the shift allowing for the transfer of charge between bins, in recent years CCD has become a major technology for digital imaging. In a CCD image sensor, pixels are represented by p-doped metal-oxide-semiconductors capacitors, the charge-coupled device was invented in 1969 at AT&T Bell Labs by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith. The lab was working on bubble memory when Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed, in their notebook. The device could be used as a shift register, the essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor from one storage capacitor to the next. The concept was similar in principle to the device, which was developed at Philips Research Labs during the late 1960s. The first patent on the application of CCDs to imaging was assigned to Michael Tompsett, the initial paper describing the concept listed possible uses as a memory, a delay line, and an imaging device. The first experimental device demonstrating the principle was a row of closely spaced metal squares on a silicon surface electrically accessed by wire bonds. The first working CCD made with integrated circuit technology was a simple 8-bit shift register and this device had input and output circuits and was used to demonstrate its use as a shift register and as a crude eight pixel linear imaging device. Development of the device progressed at a rapid rate, by 1971, Bell researchers led by Michael Tompsett were able to capture images with simple linear devices. Several companies, including Fairchild Semiconductor, RCA and Texas Instruments, picked up on the invention, fairchilds effort, led by ex-Bell researcher Gil Amelio, was the first with commercial devices, and by 1974 had a linear 500-element device and a 2-D100 x 100 pixel device. Steven Sasson, an engineer working for Kodak, invented the first digital still camera using a Fairchild 100 x 100 CCD in 1975. The first KH-11 KENNAN reconnaissance satellite equipped with charge-coupled device array technology for imaging was launched in December 1976, under the leadership of Kazuo Iwama, Sony also started a large development effort on CCDs involving a significant investment. Eventually, Sony managed to mass-produce CCDs for their camcorders, before this happened, Iwama died in August 1982, subsequently, a CCD chip was placed on his tombstone to acknowledge his contribution. He was also awarded the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal For pioneering contributions to imaging devices including CCD Imagers, cameras, in a CCD for capturing images, there is a photoactive region, and a transmission region made out of a shift register. An image is projected through a lens onto the capacitor array, once the array has been exposed to the image, a control circuit causes each capacitor to transfer its contents to its neighbor. The last capacitor in the array dumps its charge into a charge amplifier, by repeating this process, the controlling circuit converts the entire contents of the array in the semiconductor to a sequence of voltages
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