20 Years of Hubble

GPLHost-Thomas writes "The Hubble Space Telescope roared into space 20 years ago to begin a career rewriting what we know about the universe around us: the age of the universe, the composition of galaxies' cores, how planets form, and much more. NASA released some of the most spectacular photos for the event."

Ultra Deep Field View

[balsy2001]

One of the most sublime photos ever taken. I am amazed every time I look at it.

Re:Enhancements

[MartinSchou]

but it's not what you would see if you were positioned to look without equipment.

What's your point? If we didn't have equipment, we couldn't see the rings around Saturn. We couldn't see Uranus let alone Neptune.

Once you accept that we can use equipment to see things that are beyond the ability of our naked eye, you'd be an idiot to limit said equipment to our eyes' limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

This, of course, leaves us with a dilemma - how do we visualize something that we cannot see with our naked eye? If we just display pictures using the actual wavelengths, we can't see anything. So we use false colours.

Re:Enhancements

[ArsonSmith]

I think he meant that you couldn't even take a space ship to some point in space and see the same thing, while with Saturn's rings you could fly to some specific distance from Saturn and see it in it's entirety, while the pillars of creation from almost any point in space would look like mostly empty space.

Re:Enhancements

[drooling-dog]

If we're going to overcome gravity to get to the vicinity of those objects, we certainly should be willing to overcome the limits of the visible spectrum to experience them to the fullest...