The Hubble Mission:

Past and FutureWith thanks to NASA for images!

The most

famous?

Creating the Hubble Space Telescope

• 1918 – Astronomers Hubble and Slipher measure distances and velocities of galaxies.– Pioneered the idea of other

galaxies and an expanding universe

• 1923 – German scientist Hermann Oberth suggests the idea of launching a telescope into space

• 1945 – Astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer proposes an orbiting space observatory

Creating the Hubble Space Telescope

• 1977 – Congress approves funding for a space telescope

• 1981 – Creation of the STScI

• mid-1980s – Telescope named after astronomer Edwin Hubble– Created Hubble’s Law,

proposed expansion of the universe

• 1990 – Hubble is launched– Cost at launch: $1.5 billion

What Does it Do?• Since 1993, Hubble has:*

– taken over 330,000 separate observations

– observed more than 25,000 targets– gathered > 7.3 terabytes of data– traveled 1.489 billion miles– provided data for over 2,663 scientific

papers

Orbits 600 km (375 mi) above the Earth

*according to the NASA website

Specifications

• Precision pointing control system

– Checks for movement 40 times a second, and slowly adjust the gyro speeds to stabilize pointing

• Primary mirror 2.4 m• Secondary 0.3 m• Ultra-low expansion glass• COSTAR corrects spherical aberration

Before After

Active Galactic Nucleus

17 Years of Hubble: Top 10 Discoveries• The Great Comet

Crash• Extrasolar Planets• Death Throes• Cosmic Birthing• Galactic

Archaeology

• Supermassive Black Holes

• The Largest Explosions

• The Edge of Space• The Age of the

Universe• The Accelerating

UniverseMario LivioScientific American (2006)

The Great Comet Crash

The propagation of waves outward from the impact site suggests Jupiter is oxygen-rich. Is it?

Extrasolar Planets• A transiting planet• 30% lighter than

Jupiter• 30% larger in

diameter• Bloated by the heat of

its nearby sun? – P=3.5d, 0.05 AU– 1580 F!

• No rings or massive moons

• Atmosphere contains Na, C, and O

• Evaporating hydrogen gives a comet-like tail

Eagle Nebula M16

• Interstellar gas surrounds young stars about to emerge

• 7,000 light years

• One of the top ten Hubble images

Births of Stars

Natal Disks and Jets

Star Birth Cluster

• The Lynx Arc• Biggest, brightest,

hottest star forming region ever seen

• 12 billion light years away

• Stars as hot as 140,000 K

• >1,000,000 hot, massive, blue-white stars (Orion has only 4!)

• Seen through a gravitational lens

Death Throes I – SN 1987a

• February 23, 1987• Large Magellanic Cloud• The rings are a

remnant of gas ejected by the star a few tens of thousands of years ago

• 1987 was a star with an initial mass of about 18 x the Sun’s mass

• by the time it exploded, it was down to about 12 x the Sun’s mass because of mass loss

Crab Pulsar• Combining

Hubble and Chandra Observatory data

• Matter and antimatter are being accelerated to near the speed of light by the pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star

Death Throes II – The Death of Sun-like Stars• Planetary nebula form

when stars eject their outer envelops into space, revealing the hot dense core at the center of the star

• Radiation from the exposed hot core heats the escaping gas until it glows

• The beautiful shapes are thought to be caused by interactions with companion stars

Stellar Archaeology

• Finding the faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6397

• White dwarfs and red dwarfs

• 8500 LY distant

Ancient Star Cluster M80 = NGC 6093

• One of the densest star clusters in the Milky Way– About 28,000 light

years – Held together by

mutual gravity• Stars are basically

the same age, but have different masses

• Red giants, blue helium-burning stars

Supermassive Black Holes

The Largest

Explosions• A gamma-ray burst detected on 21 November 2001 by satellite• Hubble followed the fading optical counterpart from Dec. 4,

2001, to May 5, 2002• At least some of the mysterious cosmic gamma-ray bursts are

produced in the violent event which ends the lives of massive stars

• These stars end in rapidly spinning black holes• Other types of gamma ray bursts may arise from the merger of

two neutron stars

The Edge

of Space

The Hubble

Ultra-Deep Field

The deepest optical sky image ever taken: Faint red smudges may well be members of the first class of galaxies formed when the universe was only a few percent of its present age. These faint galaxies are dwarf galaxies from which larger modern galaxies must have formed.

The Age of the

Universe

• NGC 4603’s distance is determined from 36 Cepheid variables• The period of pulsation of the Cepheids is related to their brightness,

and allows a measurement of the distance – 108 million light years• Observations like these tell us the Hubble Constant, the relation

between the distances to galaxies and their recession velocities.• A Hubble Constant of 70 km s-1 Mpc-1 means a galaxy should appear

to recede 160,000 miles per hour faster for every 3.3 million light-year increase in distance

• Measuring the Hubble Constant was a major goal for Hubble

• Brightness measurements of distant, ancient supernovae indicate that expansion of the universe began to speed up four to six billion years ago, when the Dark Energy's repulsive force began to overcome the attractive force of gravity over cosmic distances

• Supernovae measured with Hubble hint that Dark Energy's repulsive force is constant over cosmic time and so could be consistent with Einstein's original theory of gravitation

• If the force actually changes with time, the Universe could still end in a Big Crunch or a Big Rip ... but not for at least an estimated 30 billion years

Other Hubble Contributions

• Scientific Productivity – 7% of astronomy papers world-wide are from Hubble

• The Hubble Archive – Half of the science papers each year from Hubble utilize archive data rather than new observations

• Hubble Legacy Program• Education and Public Outreach

Hubble Deep Field

• RA 12h 36m 49s DEC +62d 13' (J2000)

• about 1’ square (1/30 of full Moon)

• 150 orbits• Key Science Results

– Small Galaxies in the Early Universe

– Open versus Closed Universe – Disturbed Galaxies – Stellar Baby Boom – In Search of Hidden Stars – Missing Mass -- Still Missing

DSS Image:

Hubble Today – Crippled, but Still Productive

• Problems– Two instruments

failed• STIS• ACS

– Batteries failing– Gyros failing

(operating with two)

• Still working instruments– FGS– WFPC2– NICMOS

Working Instruments -

NICMOS

• Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectometer (0.8-2.5 microns)– imaging capabilities in broad, medium, and

narrow band filters– broad-band imaging polarimetry– coronographic imaging– slitless grism spectroscopy

• Installed in 1997

Working Instruments - WFPC2

• Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2– High resolution images – wide field of view – 1150 to 11,000 Å– 3 800x800 pixel CCDs + PC– 2.5’ x 2.5’

• Installed 1993, optics to correct…

Working Instruments - FGS

• Part of the HST Pointing Control System (PCS)

• Provides precision astrometry• Milli-arc second resolution over

a wide range of magnitudes (3 < V < 16.8)

• Parallax and proper motion of astrometric targets to a precision of 0.2 mas

• Detect duplicity or structure around targets as close as 8 mas

• Visual orbits can be determined for binaries as close as 12 mas

• Effectiveness limited by 2-gyro operation

Space Telescope

Imaging Spectrograph

• Installed in 1997 • Spectra and images at ultraviolet and visible

wavelengths, probing the Universe from our solar system out to cosmological distances

XSTIS stopped science operations in August 2004 due to a failed power supply

• Possible repair during Servicing Mission 4

Advanced Camera for

Surveys

X Wide Field Channel (WFC) with a field of view of 202x202 square arcsec covering the range from 3700 to 11000 Å and a plate-scale of 0.05 arcsec/pixel

X a High Resolution Channel (HRC), with a field of view of 26x29 square arcsec covering the range from 2000 to 11000 Å and a plate-scale of 0.027 arcsec/pixel

a Solar Blind Channel (SBC), with a field of view of 31x35 square arcsec, spanning the range from 1150 to 1700 Å and a plate-scale of 0.032 arcsec/pixel

Servicing Hubble

• Servicing Mission 1 – December 1993– Installation of WFPC2 and COSTAR

(Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement)

• Service Mission 2 – February 1997– new instruments - NICMOS and STIS

• Servicing Mission 3a – November 1999– new gyros! (+ other infrastructure)

• Servicing Mission 3b – March 2002– New camera (ACS), restored NICMOS

Servicing Mission 4

• Scheduled for 9/11/2008• What will be done?

– Install new instruments• Cosmic Origins Spectrograph• Wide Field Camera 3

– Repair STIS and/or ACS– Refurbish Fine Guidance Sensor 3– Gyros, batteries, thermal blankets

• Extend Hubble’s operating life to 2013

Servicing Mission 4

Cosmic Origins Spectrograph

• Ultraviolet spectrograph• Trace the large-scale structure of the

Universe• Trace the composition of gas in

distant galaxies

WFPC3

• Star formation histories of nearby galaxies

• Probing dark energy• Near UV through optical to near IR

Infrastructure Refurbishment

• FGS – Two are currently degrading– One will be replaced

• Gyroscopes– Hubble designed to use three of six– Four are currently working, two in use– Six new gyros will last until 2013

• Batteries– Original batteries to be replaced to restore

power margins

• New Thermal Blanket (original degraded over time)

Instrument Repairs

• STIS– replace an electronics board – best effort basis – too many

screws!

• ACS – Still not certain what to fix– Cause of electrical short?– Any collateral damage?– Concepts for repair?– How much EVA time needed?– What else couldn’t be done if

ACS is fixed?

After 2013? The James Webb Space

Telescope

JWST Specs• 6.2 meter primary• Observations from 0.6 – 28 microns

JWST to be stationed at L2

• Infrared observations from faint and very distant objects • The telescope and its instruments must be very cold (T <

50 K (-370 deg F))• A large shield blocks the light from the Sun, Earth, and

Moon, which otherwise would heat up the telescope, and interfere with the observations

• Must keep Sun, Earth, and Moon in the same direction, behind the heat shield

WHY JWST?

• First Light - JWST will try to confirm theories about the early universe by finding and studying the "first light" objects.

• Assembly of Galaxies - JWST will observe the small, early building blocks of galaxies in order to understand how they grow and evolve.

• Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems -JWST will examine the birth and early evolution of stars and their planetary systems.

• Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life -JWST will investigate the physical and chemical properties of planetary systems — including our own — and try to determine the potential for the origins of life in those systems.  

Sources:www.hubblesite.orgwww.stsci.edu/hsthubble.nasa.govwww.jwst.nasa.gov

IU Astronomy listserve:email to astdept@indiana.edu