Exploring the Universe with the Hubble Space Telescope

United States Tenth Circuit Bench and Bar Conference 8th September 2006
Matt Mountain

Space Telescope Science Institute

Our Universe big, light takes time to arrive

Mimas, seen against Saturn's
(Cassini spacecraft)

The Hubble captures galaxies less than 700 millions years old

Time for this picture to reach Earth ~1 hr

Time for their light to reach Earth ~13 Billion years

Space

Ground

The Hubble Space Telescope is both our forensic lab and time machine

The journey began in 1990

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The Trouble
Shortly after launch, a flaw was discovered in the telescopes main mirror. It was polished perfectly, but to wrong specifications!

The Drama

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which makes Hubble unique

The Trouble with Hubble is Over!

- Senator Barbara Mikulski

The corrective optics (COSTAR) made the telescope even better than the original specifications.

An Inspiration
The Hubble Space Telescope has done much more than just being an incredible research instrument. It has brought the excitement of discovery into the homes of millions worldwide.
Mario Livio, Senior Astrophysicist, Space Telescope Science Institute

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Mars

Jupiter Aurora

Northern Lights, Aurelia Borealis

Jupiter Aurora

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Jupiter

Saturn Aurora
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The weather on Neptune is..

Neptune

HST measures 10th Planet

2003 UB313 Xena

Xenas diameter is 1,490 miles mile

Plutos diameter is 1,422 miles mile

Orion Nebula The Stellar Nurseries in Orion

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Cone Nebula

Trifid Nebula

Eagle Nebula M16

V838 Mon

V838 Mon

V838 Mon

Cats Eye Nebula Planetary Nebulae: The deaths of stars like the Sun

NGC 6543

Eskimo Nebula

Helix Nebula

Crab Nebula More massive stars explode as supernovae

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The shattered stellar fragments and newly formed elements from the supernova explosion Cassiopeia A

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With the Hubble we can see in vivid detail the whole cycle of birth, middle age and death (in some cases violent death) of stars in our galaxy - a span of some 10 Billions years of stellar history
Hubble was designed to investigate the age and provenance of the Universe

M51

A picture of our galaxy

~100,000 light years
~30,000 light-years

~20,000 years at the speed of light

computer projection Fastest human object is leaving the solar system ~40,000 mph = 0.00006 x speed of light (Voyager, New Horizons)

This journey would take ~300 million years

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Edwin Hubble discovered the Universe was expanding

NGC 1300

NGC 5866

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The Active Galaxy M82

AM AM 0644-741 0644-741

NGC 2207&IC 2163

Exhibit A: Ballistics - as objects move away from us they become red-shifted

Exhibit A: Ballistics - as Galaxies move away from us they become red-shifted

3C 273

By measuring speed and a distance we can determine when the expansion started.

Exhibit B - standard candles

Cepheid Variable Star in Spiral Galaxy M100
HST WFPC2

Cepheid variable stars in M100

The Hubble Key Project was able to measured the periods of 800 Cepheid variable stars

Now we have a time machine

he GOODS Galaxy Field - 10 billion years of cosmic history - an animation animatio

Exhibit C Chain of Events Galaxies in the past look smaller and more irregular.
Hubble Hubble Ultra Ultra Deep Deep Field Field HST HSTACS ACS

UDF

UDF Crop

UDF Detail Galaxies built their mass by mergers and acquisitions to form todays regularly shaped galaxies.

The Mice tNGC 4676 Collisions continue even today

Hubble observations tell us the Universe started its expansion 13.7 billions years ago, and todays Great Galaxies formed through a process of acquisitions and mergers from primordial clumps of early stars

Hubble's verdict

Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689

A Black Hole visits Baltimore harbor

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A Gravitational Lens

Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689

Dark Matter

Normal and Dark Matter in two colliding galaxies

ubble Space Hubble Space Telescope Telescope and and the the Chandra Chandra X-Ray X-Ray Observatory Observatory

bright Supernova as very Keplers SN

standard candles

can be seen halfway across the Universe

A supernova in a galactic neighborhood 100 million light-years away seen by Hubble

Supernovae some 6-7 billion lightyears away reveal accelerating expansion

Expansion Rate Change

Today, the Universe is being pushed apart, and we dont know by what..

Cosmic Pie

Humility in the face of the persistent great

unknowns is the true philosophy that modern physics has to offer

- Joseph Silk, Cosmologist

A decade ago we didnt know if there were planets around other stars. Today we have found more than 180, and

HD209458 Light Curve

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Artists concept of extra-solar planet HD 209458 detected by HST

Hubbles spectrograph detected Sodium, Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen in the atmosphere of this planet approximately 150 light-years from Earth

O2 , C

Then we lost our spectrograph....its been four years since Hubble was last serviced

In June this year, Hubble was observing some of the most distant galaxies in the Universe

UDF

UDF

Hubble space craft engineers switched to a redundant set of electronics

Discoverys seemingly unblemished flight raises some hope that a shuttle mission to rejuvenate the Hubble Space Telescope, NASAs most important scientific instrument, may prove feasible. New York Times Editorial, July 18, 2006

STS 121 returns safely home

Thanks to bravery of the Shuttle astronauts, Hubble's exploration will continue

Eagle Nebula M16

Visualization of a young planet forming disk

A journey to one of the Frontiers

Is there life on this planet?

A journey to one of the Frontiers

A journey to one of the Frontiers

The faint trace of Life

Astronaut

The James Webb: The Way Beyond Hubble

The James Webb: The Way Beyond Hubble

The James Webb Space Telescope

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The journey continues ..

Circa. 2015, observing with JWST the faint eclipse of a neighboring red dwarf star

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Spectrum of object # JWST 0042

Within the next decade or so, we will have the capability to search for the signatures of life in our solar neighborhood.

what as a Society should we do next?

If we find Life's faint trace on an extra- solar planet,

To be continued.

Water geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus

The black hole in M87

H2O

91 3 % wt.

Things we didnt know about a decade ago..