Hubble Prints Newsdesk

Eerie, dramatic pictures from the Hubble telescope show newborn stars emerging from "eggs" - not the barnyard variety - but rather, dense, compact pockets of interstellar gas called evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs). Hubble found the "EGGs," appropriately enough, in the Eagle nebula, a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens.

These striking pictures resolve the EGGs at the tip of finger-like features protruding from monstrous columns of cold gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (also called M16). The columns - dubbed "elephant trunks" - protrude from the wall of a vast cloud of molecular hydrogen, like stalagmites rising above the floor of a cavern. Inside the gaseous towers, which are light-years long, the interstellar gas is dense enough to collapse under its own weight, forming young stars that continue to grow as they accumulate more and more mass from their surroundings.

A craggy-looking mountaintop of cold gas and dust that is a cousin to Hubble's iconic "pillars of creation" in the Eagle Nebula, photographed in 1995. Peering into a celestial maternity ward called the Omega Nebula or M17, ACS revealed a watercolor fantasy-world of glowing gases, where stars and perhaps embryonic planetary systems are forming.

The Hubble telescope is one of the biggest creations in the field of astronomy, which has taken it ahead by many miles. Being one of the most versatile and biggest space telescopes around the globe today, the Hubble telescope has revolutionized space research. The telescope had been taken into space by the space shuttle, named discovery in the period of April, 1990. The space telescope derives its name from the famous American astronomer called Edwin Hubble, and has been a very important public relation and research tool. The telescope had been brought into being by the collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA.

The main proposition of having something like the space telescope came for the first time, in the year 1923, with the ideas of the German scientist named Herman Oberth and his colleagues. Although the idea of setting a telescope to revolve around the earth had been proposed nothing concrete was done about it. Later on after this, in the year 1946, another astronomer named Lyman Spitzer put forward a paper on the advantages of having extraterrestrial astronomical view. The advantages that he said, would be available were the visibility of the ultraviolet and infrared radiations and more importantly the angular resolution would be pretty limited.

Spitzer kept pushing to get a space telescope developed and was rewarded in the year 1965, when he was appointed as the head of a committee, which would lay down the basic principles of having a massive space telescope. They started there work and by 1966 had been able to launch a small observatory mission from NASA. Further plans were made to eventually form the first ever space telescope, and it was thought of better to launch it in 1979. However, there was an initial problem of funding the entire project, so that it could be built without compromising on any aspects.

By the year 1970 the NASA had already made preparations to go about their work in a smooth and planned manner. Their initial goal was to divide two teams, among which one would be looking after the project at hand and the other would be developing the scientific aims to this project. However, the funding to be obtained was not the easiest of tasks, as the US Congress brought up several questions regarding the objective of the entire project, eventually cutting down on the actual proposed budget. Later on, under Gerald Ford the entire process of funding for the space telescope project had been stopped, leading to mass lobbying by the astronomers.

The Senate finally gave up to the appeals and came up to the conclusion of providing about half the promised amount. This was a major set back as it brought down the entire scale of the project, reducing the size of the mirror. Under such circumstances the NASA had no other alternative than to approach the European Space Agency. The ESA agreed to everything, from the powering solar cells for the telescope to the funds, along with staffs to work on the project; but they had one particular condition, which mentioned that, the European astronomers would be provided at least 15% from the total observing time on the telescope. From here on everything went positive and the final date of launch was scheduled for 1983, postponing it from 1979.

The overall task of this daunting project was then split into groups of institutions, each working on a particular aspect of the project. The major work of the Optical Telescope Assembly was down lined to Perkin-Elmer by the Marshall Space Flight Center, who had been entrusted with other works, like that of developing and constructing the telescope after designing it. The Goddard Space Flight Center was given the task of controlling the numerous scientific instruments that were to be used, along with the control center to be situated at the ground level. The famous Lockheed, aircraft manufacturing company, was asked to manufacture the carrier that would be taking the giant telescope into space.

The manufacturing process began with acute caretaking to get the desired effects without any fail, while the space telescope was to be launched. The general purpose developments were smoothly going ahead, with the different companies or institutions trying their level best to materialize the ground support, initial instrumentations, the OTA and the space craft carrier. Everything would have gone as planned accordingly, but for the disaster that caught up the space craft challenger, forced the organizations to delay the launch further. The launch was postponed yet again to the 1990, which finally saw the take off of the Discovery space craft carrying the telescope, on the 24th of April.

Although the launch was successful there were initial problems faced once the feedbacks were obtained from the telescope. It was found out that the mirror that was designed might have certain degree of flaws in it, which was preventing the perfect transmission of the images taken. By carefully studying the images that had been taken, it could be found out that the primary mirror was cut out in the wrong shape. The only option to get it fixed was to send a servicing crew up to the telescope, which would replace the mirror and fix the problem. This could be possible only because, the Hubble Telescope was the first ever space telescope to have the option of human servicing in the outer space.

Starting from then in 1994, there have been few Service Missions to the Hubble Telescope to keep it in perfect shape, so that it keeps us updated from time to time, and leads us to several breakthroughs in the field of astrophysics. Including Service Mission 1 there have been four servicing done to the Hubble Telescope, which are Service Mission 2, Service Mission 3A and Service Mission 3B. Another mission had been proposed in the year 2008, but owing to the disaster of Columbia space craft the mission was postponed to 2009. The naming of the space telescope has been ideal, considering the fact that Edwin Hubble had stated the facts of the Universe expanding, and that is exactly what the Hubble telescope shows us every other day.