Published 17:41 IST, June 29th 2020
NASA's Hubble Telescope shows how space looked on your birthday, here's how to check
In collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA released Hubble telescope’s back catalogue on the website which allows one to enter birth month.
- Science News
- 2 min read
NASA has released the cosmic photos recorded by its valuable Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope throughout its journey in the space and now allows people to view its activity at the time of their birthdays. This comes after NASA celebrated Hubble's 30th-anniversary since it was first launched on April 24, 1990, into the orbit. In an archive released on its website, NASA features Hubble’s events and images that it captured in the past years. According to NASA, its Space Telescope spent nearly three decades travelling over four billion miles, capturing space phenomenon 24 hours a day.
In collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA released Hubble telescope’s back catalogue on the website which allows one to enter their month of birth and the year to experience the telescope’s journey and its whereabouts in the Earth's atmosphere approximately 13.4 billion light-years away at the speed of 27,000 kilometers per hour. For instance, if one entered March as the month, and 1997 as the year on the Hubble Birthday Site, it listed that the space telescope had captured Galaxy NGC 3310. Further, the result mentioned some key details, saying, “There are several hundred star clusters in the starburst galaxy NGC 3310. They appear in this image as the bright, blue clumps that trace the galaxy's spiral arms.”
Hubble has made astronomy relevant
Currently located about 340 miles (547 km) above Earth’s surface, the Hubble's telescope completed almost 15 orbits per day and five miles (8 km) per second. According to an astronomy report, Hubble is 43.5 feet long (13.2 m) and 14 feet wide (4.2 m) and weighs about 27,000 pounds (12,246 kg). The telescope is the size of a school bus and operates on six large batteries. “Hubble’s seemingly never-ending, breathtaking celestial snapshots provide a visual shorthand for its exemplary scientific achievements,” NASA and the ESA said in a blog post. It added, “Unlike any other telescope before it, Hubble has made astronomy relevant, engaging, and accessible for people of all ages.”
Speaking about its mission, NASA wrote, “it has yielded to date 1.4 million observations and provided data that astronomers around the world have used to write more than 17,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications, making it one of the most prolific space observatories in history. Its rich data archive alone will fuel future astronomy research for generations to come.”
Updated 17:40 IST, June 29th 2020