Hubble Makes Millionth Observation

sfcrazy wrote in with an article about the Hubble telescope. From the article: "NASA's Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away."

Hope it doesn't break again.

[jra]

It'll be awfully hard to fix...

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[rubycodez]

without a space shuttle? I'd go with hard

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[JoshuaZ]

Hubble has done a very good job and is getting old. The technology has been vastly improved since when Hubble was first put in space. That's why we can have a lot of different space based instruments now, whereas when Hubble was put up it was the primary one. When Hubble finally becomes too damaged for effective use, we will have many other instruments. We already have Spitzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitzer_Space_Telescope [wikipedia.org] and will have the James Webb Telescope around 2018 http://en.wikipedia.org/wik [wikipedia.org]

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[Crookdotter]

Will JWST be able to produce images that fire the imagination of the public like Hubble, being IR? The science will be better, sure, but it seems like the US needs prodding to fund space exploration which Hubble seemed to do by the bucketload.

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[IrquiM]

Guess you haven't read the latest; http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110706-nasa-budget-cancel-webb.html [spacenews.com]

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[TheDarkNose]

I assume they won't bother since it's being replaced soon(ish).

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[camperdave]

Hmm... Can a Dragon module have a Canadarm2 mounted on it? I suppose they could build a special purpose trunk module with a Power Data Grapple Fixture on it, if they really needed to.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Shut down that orbital pork barrel and give me a tax cut!

Vote Tea Party!

Let's do some quick math here (and I'm going to estimate high so you get all the benefit of the doubt):

$6 billion total expenditure to date / 21 years in service = $285,714,286/year

$285,714,286 / 90 million tax payers in USA = $3.17/yearly tax burden

It is difficult to believe that for a $3 change in taxes, you're willing to give up all of the research and scientific good that has come from it. I sincerely doubt the Tea Party believes that either.

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[Fujisawa Sensei]

If you believe that, you don't know enough teabaggers.

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[228e2]

Well, thats only an average. Me and B. Gates aren't quite in the same tax bracket.

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[Kilrah_il]

Some of us are in the same tax bracket as B. Gates, you insensitive clod!

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[Anonymous Coward]

If it could be de-orbited onto a line of medicare claimants the tax cut could be much greater!

Artist's Concept

[Spiflicator]

Why does it seem like every time I read an article about space imaging, there is an artist's rendition, instead of an actual rendition of the image?

Re:Artist's Concept

[lucian1900]

Because the actual image isn't in wavelenghts you can see, has crap resolution and often results indirectly from other information.

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[Spiflicator]

I get that, which is why I said a "rendition" of the image. Maybe its just that they haven't ever processed the image into anything interesting by the time they issue a press release. Personally, I'd rather see a "real" image than an artist's rendering. I feel like an artist's rendering is what you show on cnn.com, while hubblesite.org, or nasa,gov might show the real thing...

Re:Artist's Concept

[Lord Crc]

Why does it seem like every time I read an article about space imaging, there is an artist's rendition, instead of an actual rendition of the image?

The actual image would most likely be of the star itself, and usually is just a few pixels wide. Not a lot for people to look at.

However by observing those pixels over a long time they may see changes in the color / spectrum indicating the vapors in the atmosphere of the planet when it passes in front of the star.

Here's [nasa.gov] a Hubble image of an actual exoplanet, 25 light years away. The exoplanet they're imaging in the story here is 1000 light years away...

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[deadhammer]

Here's [nasa.gov] a Hubble image of an actual exoplanet, 25 light years away. The exoplanet they're imaging in the story here is 1000 light years away...

Psst, don't tell Gandalf, but I think we've found where Sauron went after Barad Dur was destroyed.

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[psithurism]

I get grumpy about the fact that news feels like they have to protect me from the actual science. They need artists to render what some other dudes imagination thinks the planet might look like. I know scrutinizing those pixels and running their color changes through really long boring formulas was tedious and I don't plan to replicate it, but until I came and read your comment, I wouldn't have known they did any of that.

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[camperdave]

Here's a copy of the real image. Please note that it is a photo-negative: [ . ]

HAND.

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[Rich0]

Well, even the target is probably contrived to make for an interesting press release.

If they didn't tweak the sequence the millionth observation would probably be something like "routine image of empty space for dark current calibration" or "routine image of boring star to calibrate sensor xyz" or whatever. I'm sure the schedule was shuffled to make for better reading in the news...

What was it?

[billsayswow]

The One Millionth Observation? "What's the deal with airline food [...]" The 1,000,001st was about how women are different than men, followed by an anecdote about the Hubble, its spouse, and brushing teeth.

Text of the actual observation Hubble made

[Jay L]

"What is the deal with rental car reservations? They never have your car when you show up. It's like they know how to take your reservation, but they don't know how to hold your reservation." -- Hubble

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[rubycodez]

it's a good heads up for an all-important base 2 milestone, the soon to be reached 2^20 observations, so quit yer whining.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Whooptifreakingdoo

[DarthVain]

There is another observation for you...