Atlantis captures Hubble sucessfully

Crusader

Crusader

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Atlantis Captures Hubble Space Telescope
Wed, 13 May 2009 07:18:05 PM GMT+0200

The Hubble Space Telescope has been captured by space shuttle Atlantis' robotic arm. Using views from a camera centered in a structure where the telescope will be berthed, McArthur will lower Hubble into a special cradle, called the Flight Support System, or FSS, in Atlantis’ payload bay. The telescope will be latched to the high-tech, lazy Susan-type device for the duration of the servicing work. An umbilical adjacent to the rotating FSS will be remotely connected to provide electrical power from Atlantis to the telescope. Then, Altman will position the shuttle to allow Hubble’s solar arrays to gather energy from the sun to fully charge the telescope’s batteries.
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Everything looks good so far! Let's hope it continues that way.
 
The first EVA is now being wrapped up. They successfully installed the new Widefield camera as well as the replacement for the data handling device. One latch-over kit was also successfully installed, but they experienced difficulties with the other bolts on the HST.
 
Empiricism Philosopher said:
Do you have a link to the first new picks with that lens. I'm so looking forward to a new background, :D the picks it takes really inspires me :D
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No images will be available for quite some time. Hubble is still firmly attached to Atlantis and the repair mission will take another 4 days barring any unforeseen circumstances.

Today's EVA threw them quite a few surprises with regards to the bolts not functioning properly. Doesn't seem to be anything major though. They couldn't complete installation of all the latch over kits, which would have made it much easier to access the internal components of Hubble during the 3rd EVA.

Man, I was never so nervous watching someone loosening/tightening bolts. :eek:
 
This EVA was the 19th EVA for Hubble repairs and brings total of EVA time on Hubble repairs to over 190 hours.
 
Empiricism Philosopher said:
one slip and they kill my dreams!!!
So is there any word about a performance or picture quality increase?
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It will be a case of wait and see. By all accounts the performance increase will be amazing. The new wide field camera (WFC3) will be able to see simultaneously in infrared and ultraviolet and will be able to look deeper into the past. In ultraviolet the WFC3 will have between 7-16 times advantage over the previous camera.

The camera has a 16MP CCD that's highly sensitive to light and it offers a larger FOV (160x160 arc seconds). That should be a 15-20 times gain in capability. The WFC3 will create 4096x4096 resolution images with a resolution of 0.04" per pixel as opposed to WFPC2's 3x800x800 images (those that had the 3 blocks at the edges missing).
 
Empiricism Philosopher said:
What are the reasons it keeps on breaking?
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Actually it doesn't keep breaking. I think the majority of those hours were put in to correct the optics just after it's launch. It's been functioning for 7 years since the last servicing mission. Taking the harsh conditions in space into account that's amazing.
 
Empiricism Philosopher said:
wow didn't know that, also I was wondering but how are are they able see back into the past?
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Astronomy is kinda like time travel. Light takes a while to travel from an object to your eye (or in this case Hubble's camera). The further away this object is the longer it takes for the light to travel from that object. Most galaxies and stars are very very very very far way. These distances are measured in light years. Most galaxies and stars are thousands or millions of light years away.

Light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth (Earth is about 149 600 000 km from the Sun and the speed of light is 299 792.458 km/s. That means it takes approx. 8 minutes for the Sun's light to reach the Earth.) So you see the Sun as it looked 8 minutes in the past.

The nearest star (aside from the Sun) is Proxima Centauri which is 4.22 light years away. That means the light took 4.22 years to reach the Earth. So in affect you are seeing Proxima Centauri as it looked 4.22 years ago... thus looking back into the past.

Abell 1835 IR1916 is a galaxy that is a candidate for the farthest galaxy observed - 13.2 billion light years away.
 
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So how do they know if there was only "one big bag" maybe there could have been another one so far away that the light has not reached us yet? I read some thing about them seeing another universe, or black hole or end to the universe on MyBB whats up with that?

So about this time travel, it is very interesting, I knew of it but can they see our own galaxy's past?
 
Empiricism Philosopher said:
So how do they know if there was only "one big bag" maybe there could have been another one so far away that the light has not reached us yet? I read some thing about them seeing another universe, or black hole or end to the universe on MyBB whats up with that?
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I don't know about that. From my knowledge there is no evidence of more than one Big Bang, and the Big Bang itself is somewhat disputed. What is known is that the galaxies are speeding away from each other.

Empiricism Philosopher said:
So about this time travel, it is very interesting, I knew of it but can they see our own galaxy's past?
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It depends on what you mean with our galaxy. They can see into the past of parts of our galaxie (nebulae, clusters, stars etc.) but since we can't look in on our galaxy from outside you can't see the past of the galaxy as a whole.

Observing other galaxies of a similar type gives a good idea of our own galaxy and it's past.
 
That makes sense, where do they think our galaxy is in the universe and are they all moving away from each other or away and towards a direction? The one near us seems to be moving towards us hey?
 
Empiricism Philosopher said:
That makes sense, where do they think our galaxy is in the universe and are they all moving away from each other or away and towards a direction? The one near us seems to be moving towards us hey?
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The Universe is everywhere and doesn't have specific regions, so we don't really have a position as such.

Our Milky Way galaxy is part of a group of several dozen galaxies that we call the Local Group. It’s also known that our Local Group is on the outskirts of a giant cluster of several thousand galaxies – which astronomers call the Virgo Cluster.

But it’s only on this relatively small scale – the scale of tens of millions of light-years – that the universe appears clumpy. On a very large scale – a scale of billions of light-years – galaxies appear to be smoothly distributed across space. You could travel anywhere in the universe and, on a grand scale, space would look the same – a sea of galaxies.

What’s more, to our knowledge, there’s no center of the universe – and no edge. As far as we know, the universe looks the same in all directions. So – beyond our Local Group and the Virgo Cluster – it’s tough to describe our galaxy’s location relative to any special or fixed reference point in the universe.
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Empiricism Philosopher said:
That makes sense, where do they think our galaxy is in the universe and are they all moving away from each other or away and towards a direction? The one near us seems to be moving towards us hey?
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You are right. The Andromeda galaxy has a blue shift, which means it's moving closer to us. However in the billions of galaxies there are only about 100 galaxies that have blue shifts. In the grand scheme of things galaxies are moving away from each other. See here
 
First WFC3 images will be released around the 9th of September according to planning provided everything goes well.

Going to be quite a lengthy wait. :(
 
Empiricism Philosopher said:
So they are moving apart from each other or a Specific point in space, are the stuff in the galaxies also moving apart from each other?
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Yes they are moving away from each other. If I'm not mistaken stars within galaxies might be moving away from each other as well although at a much slower rate, but I haven't done much looking into that.
 
Do all planets, moons suns spin/orbit the same direction? Why do solar systems look like the spiral flushing of water backwards? I also don't get orbiting of let's say the moon how can the earth keep it orbiting and yet it is so big that it does not pull away but floats around earth and yet we humans can move about freely? I get the concept of gravity as it weakens as the object is further apart, but what really is gravity is it some sort of wave length of sort what is the energy of gravity called?

I noticed the shape or things in our galaxy are similar to the things happening inside of a atom. Do you think the smaller we go to the core the slower things seem to move apart but are moving much faster? So what about atoms how fast must their cores be spinning if they spin at all?

Also on the big bang note is it possible every galaxy had it's own big bang?
 
Wow, that's a lot of questions. Most of which will require someone who studies cosmology to answer.

All the planets in our solar system seem to orbit in the same direction. There is one that spins retrograde (think it is Mercury).

Gravity is a force and is related to the size and distance between the bodies. Since the Moon and Earth are both huge compared to humans it has a much larger affect on the Moon, keeping it in orbit, whil e allowing us to move around freely.
 
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